On doodling and productivity

I was never a particularly organized person and bringing three kids, two rabbits, a hamster and a fish into the picture didn't really helped. My everyday life went from just a regular depressing disorganized mess to a really hectic, loud, crazy and even more disorganized, mess.

Last year I was going to put an end to that kind of day-day functioning and be more productive and, consequently, calmer, more patient, more focused and present and, you know, a better parent.
All my roads and ambitions lead to that no matter how lame, unpopular or unambitious it may seem. This point was discussed by one of my favorite Steemers, @uglysweater in her latest post. I load lots of stuff on my to-do list, I try to do it all at once and then I just collapse under it, most of the stuff I would actually enjoy I never even get around to and actually do them, like reading or exercising, and I can't seem to be present. My mind is always on the next thing, always going through tasks on my mental to-do list. I especially need to be less distracted when playing and interacting with my kids, because they notice. The little rascals notice every single thing. And the whole overloading thing has become even more problematic due to my illness because I need more rest because of it.

My mind running around from point to point is also evident here so I'll go back to my main point now. So, last year started great and then, come Marc,h my illness kicked in and we fell into uncharted territory, everything turned upside down and almost all of our plans were suddenly changed, postponed or canceled.

Now we finally got the hold of the situation and considering I'm starting work again and I'm giving this Steemit thing a serious go and all the other super cool decisions and plans I made for this year, I decided to get more organized and this cute little tool, a concept actually, named bullet journal seemed like a nice place to start to make good on my new years resolution #5.

What is a bullet journal, you ask?

Well, according to http://bulletjournal.com it is an analog organizing system for the digital era. The concept was developed by Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer living in Brooklyn, NY. Through many years of trial and error, the system has evolved into the ideas presented here. He sees this as an evolving, adaptable practice meant to be self-curated as you determine what works best for you. It can accommodate a huge variety of planning schemes. You can create calendars and to-do lists, and you can also use it as a diary, a brainstorming notepad, or whatever rings your organizing bell.

How to start?
Even tho when trying to learn more about it most videos you will find are filled with fancy notebooks, expensive pens, sticker and washy tapes written in lovely cursive fonts and decorated with awesome doodles all you really need is a notebook and a pen. Everything else is an upgrade that depends on your needs, wants, and aspirations.
There are lots of tutorials and youtube channels that are all about bullet journals. If you have Instagram or if you're a Pinterest lover you can find even more inspiration there. I'll link in the end some of the Youtube channels that inspired my bullet journal. This is a nice post from BuzzFeed you could summon up as ''How to get your shit together with bullet journaling''

Why is it different than standard journals or planers?
Now you may ask yourself why to go through all this trouble when you can just by a premade planer. The key is in its flexibility, adaptability and it's ability to become very personalized. In the true spirit of trendy Millenials (and I don't necessarily exclude my self from this generalization) it can be totally customized. It's minimalistic, and in a way, I guess, it can help us stay rooted. I mean, after you spend three days going through Youtube videos and Pinterest boards, once you actually get to writing and touching the paper and get away from the screen it is quite relaxing. And after all, planning and planers aren't a new thing and time management isn't a bad life skill.
There is also the simplicity of bullet journaling that I personally like. The notes are short and simple, the symbols aren't complicated and the layout is easy to get through and understand.
Here is a nice break down of the differences from someone who actually uses both a bullet journal and the standard planer.

Basic layout
You basically start with a Index, which I did not do yet and plan to do when I finish my concept.
Next up is the Key list or signifiers. It's a short list of signs that help you with managing your tasks in daily and monthly logs. Like a striped one is when you cancel or a star stands for something important. You can make a system that is your own, of course. As many symbols as you need.
Next things you can do are a ''Year at a glance'' and ''The Future Log''. The first one is basically a standard tiny written calendar and the other is a log with all 12 months in it that you can put some down tasks and obligations that come in advance. Like the festival, you're planning on going to in July or the wedding you have in November. The same concept goes for the monthly log, which you can do at the beginning of each month and then there are weakly logs which are the places where you note your daily tasks. Here is a nice definition of that part I really liked:

Then the light bulb went off, and the Daily Log changed. It's a log. The actual definition of a log is "an official record of events during the voyage of a ship or aircraft." No, life isn't a boat, but it's totally a voyage. We move through life, change, make memories, forget most of them, and wonder why we feel so listless on a regular basis.

Tracking
Tracking is something I found most of the bloggers do. Some track weight, some track exercise. Like all else, you can really customize it. I decided to do a few trackers of what I forget most often and what my most important tasks are: medication, hydration and taking care of my animals.

Collections
Collections are tasks or plans that are either many or really important. They are topical pages. Almost every bullet journal tutorial or flip trough I saw had a Book collection because books are the best. I made a few collections: traveling plans, Steemit goals, Work logs, Books, Garden and Birthdays, to name a few. I really like the collection part because it allows me to bucket my plans into categories and track my progress on said plans. I just found an awesome idea of collections for post formatting in HTML codes (I totally do not know the professional term for that so if you do please write it in a comment) because I do struggle with fonts, centering and other stuff when I write.

Here are the channels I recommend you take a look at if you decide to give bullet journaling a go:
Wing it with Jade
Ink and the Brain
Amanda Rach Lee
Doodles by Sarah

I have to say this is my first bullet journal ever and I will make sure to do a follow-up post to let you know how it's working out for me. I lack the personal experience that I can display here but I tried and explain it the best I could, and as simple I could because it can be quite overwhelming trying to start just by googling it. Please let me know down below if you like the concept or if you are already doing bullet journaling and how it's working out for you. I'm looking forward to your comments.

In addition to my post about this pen and paper organization, I'd like to recommend this great short from TedEx about time management.