Do the laundry. Try yoga. Read a book. Water the plants. Buy a bed frame. Learn Italian.
Ever keep a running list of to-dos? Or perhaps several lists, each written on a different scrap piece of paper strewn about house?
Mansfield woman Laura Burns, 37, started list-making at age 8 in a composition journal that her mom gave her.
“I always made a space in my journals for my lists and just kind of kept track of things that way,” she said. “I like to have it all in one place.”
The habit stuck with her through college but later fell by the wayside.
“I took a hiatus from it for awhile because I thought I could figure out a better calendar system, and I wanted something that was pretty — which is not necessarily the most practical thing — but I thought I could find something like that instead of a notebook with all of my dots and dashes and scribbles,” she said.
Finding an organization method that works was a goal of author Ryder Carroll, who was diagnosed with learning disabilities early in life.
Carroll is the famed creator of bullet journaling, which is “best described as a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system. It’s designed to help you organize your what while you remain aware of your why,” according to the Bullet Journal website.
Bullet journals look different depending on who they belong to. Some journals resemble works of art with decorative lettering and doodles, while others are simple lists with mere dots and dashes.
“(Carroll) espouses a more minimal, less decorated option because when he created it, it was designed specifically to help him organize his brain,” said Burns, who read his book, “The Bullet Journal Method.”
“Reading through the introduction to this, I was like, I’ve been doing this for years, I just did it my way and not the ‘official’ way,’” she said. “I’ve adopted some of his methods and then I do some of my own stuff.”
Burns latched onto bullet journaling when she started homeschooling her kids, using it to track their assignments and extracurriculars. She’s since added other lists, including daily tasks and priorities, home renovation projects, Christmas lists, meal ideas and more.
“I use it to keep my thoughts organized and it helps me prioritize work tasks,” she said.
It’s also served as a time capsule of sorts. Leafing through the pages of her blue Leuchtturm dotted notebook are concert ticket stubs and other reminders of events and activities that her family has participated in.
She takes about 10 minutes every morning to jot down the day’s priorities. It’s nothing more than a list with dots and dashes, as well as a tiny illustration in the corner to represent the weather for each day.
She may mix it up here and there with formatting, but she’s found that the dot-dash-scribble system is what works best for her.
“I’m finding that the dots and dashes and scribbles are much more efficient for me because efficiency is my love language. I need that to figure out what I’m doing,” she said.
Bullet journaling encourages users to include an index page to easily locate entries. This works organization wonders, Burns indicated.
“Instead of having sticky notes of lists all over — grocery lists, Christmas lists, etc. — they’re contained in one spot,” she said.
One of her “collections” as it’s called in bullet journal lingo, is a meal matrix that notes her family’s weekly meal plan. “If I forget where (the meal matrix) is, it’s listed in the index and I can just flip to it rather than sifting through stacks and stacks of paper,” she said.
“(Bullet journaling) has cut down on the paper mess in my house because I had so many lists going at the same time and some days I would write them down in one notebook and some days I would write them down in another one and then I didn’t know where anything ever was.”
It’s not just helping clear out the clutter around the house, but in her mind, too.
“When I have my lists and things are organized, I can see all of the different things that are going on in my brain. They’re right here in front of me and it’s organized rather than me trying to dredge up in my memory what I said I was going to do,” she said.
Finding an organization method that works for you can do wonders for your mental health.
“For some people, they get very overwhelmed with life in general and they don’t even know where to start, so being able to plan out the day can be very helpful and one of the ways to do that is to write things down,” said Erin Schaefer, director of operations at Catalyst Life Services.
Journaling in itself can be helpful.
“One of the things that can happen with people is they keep things kind of bottled up and then sometimes when people stuff things in, it comes out sideways. It doesn’t get out or get processed the way that it needs to,” Schaefer said.
“Journaling is one way to process through some of those emotions, some of those thoughts — getting that down and getting that out so that way it’s not going to come out some other way.”
The reasons for bullet journaling vary from person to person. Some may use it to reach health and fitness goals, track symptoms of diseases or record sleeping patterns.
If this, or any list-making method for that matter, is something you’re considering, Burns suggests, “Figure out what you want to get from it. If you want to track your health or fitness, then maybe spend a little bit of time thinking how you would lay out your goals. If you need to use it more for work productivity, then I would recommend looking at how other people boost their productivity because of journaling methods.
“If you have a specific goal, I think you should take some time to plan that out and say, ‘This is what I need to get from this.’ That way you know that with every page you set up, you’re looking at it through the lens of, ’Is this really going to work for me?’”
