[mantlepro]

Productivity increased greatly for me after ditching my smartphone for a dumb phone and using a bullet journal when I'm away from the computer. That plus a disciplined regimen of daily planning, execution, and migrating tasks to the next day if not finished; learned from "Time Management for System Administrators" by Tom Limoncelli.

[codemancer]

Do you have any examples of what you would put in a bullet journal? I don't think I've ever heard of it.

[dredmorbius]

Not OP, but I've found BuJo incredibly useful.

It's less any one element of the concept than the fact that it's immensely negligence-tolerant. Sort of like quitting smoking: you can do it a thousand times, but it's so easy to pick up again.

That and the notion of an index, which is IMO key to the whole concept, moreso than the bullet notations and other organisation.

Longer discussions here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22134879

Also here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22086217

After resumability and index: spreads. Basically, an idea hits you, take a two or four-page section, title it, add it to the index, and collect thoughts on That Thing there.

One early spread I did (and still maintain) is "How to organize BuJo" (or words to that effect). Pages wanted, management ideas, etc. List things you might want to manage, figure out how to do that, and then ... Just Do It.

I make a practice of starting from the front and back of the journal, with more-fixed references (frequently-called numbers / email, reference information, hours of operation, Significant Other details (dates, measures, etc.) in the back, whilst various projects tend to hit where they occur to me in the course of a year.

(And yes, I've been starting a new journal each year, a bit of housecleaning / stop-lossing.)

The manual overhead (numbering pages, adding month overviews, etc.) is slightly tedious, but also a practice-of-presence and/or awareness that helps focus the mind and encourage review.

The Bullet Journal site itself is pretty good (https://bulletjournal.com). There are numerous very artsy BuJo videos on YouTube. I tend to discourage those -- BuJo is a functional tool, but also a personal tool, and the notion of competitive BuJo strikes me a bit like competitive yoga: spectacularly missing the point. If your muse says "glitter-gun and washi-paper All The Things", then great. But if not, a well-used but non-artistic BuJo beats the pants off one that would feature well on Instagram or Pinterest.