Editing The Pen Addict 70/transcript (section)

== Bullet Journal Guest ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' We have another guest this week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We are loaded for bear with guests. I like it that way. It's good to mix it up. It's good to hear from different people. Honestly, the guests we have on are pretty much listener requests.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The gentleman we have on today who we'll introduce in a moment, I've gotten tons of emails about, hey, did you see this? Did you see this? What is this about? What do you know? What do you know? I've got lots of tweets, lots of emails, so we're really happy to have Ryder Carroll, I guess we'll go with inventor of the Bullet Journal. Sure. Is that the best way to put it? The creator. The creative mind behind Bullet Journal, which you can find at bulletjournal.com. We're going to talk to Ryder about how that came to be and some questions I have around the Bullet Journal. I've been using it. Since I knew we were going to have Ryder on the show, I've been going hardcore Bullet Journal. Oh, interesting. So we'll see how it goes. We want to get talking to Ryder, but first we wanted to do a sponsor real quick, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I just wanted to get the first sponsor in just now before we jump into talking with Ryder. So we have a new sponsor for the show this week, and that is Shutterstock.com, which is where you'll find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. You can start searching at Shutterstock to find the perfect image for your website, ad, publication, or any other creative project. Shutterstock gives you the advantage of a global image collection where you can find images from across the world to suit any project that you're working on. You can choose between image packs, monthly subscription packages, or if you just need one image at a time, you can buy them all. Whatever fits your needs, you never have to compromise with Shutterstock. Every time you visit Shutterstock, you're going to find something new since they add 10,000 new images every single day, and it's much more affordable than you think with no extra charge for large files. Download any image in any size and resolution. You don't pay any more for it. You can easily curate and share pictures as you're searching around via lightboxes. So you choose your favorite pictures or videos and just add them to your lightbox gallery as you search around. And they also have an iPad app where you can do this too. They have enhanced license access if this is something that you need. So you can maybe, if you want to use them for trade or print and stuff like that, you can get enhanced licenses for your images. They also have vectors, icons, infographics, and video clips as well as just images. So they have a whole host of media over at Shutterstock. If you need any help, they can give you an account rep, and they also have 24-hour support during the week. So sign up for a free browse account by going to shutterstock.com. There's no credit card needed to do that. When you find the image you like or the images that you like and decide to purchase, use the offer code PENS9. That's P-E-N-S-9. And you'll get 25% off any package. Thank you to Shutterstock for their support.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Thank you, Shutterstock. And while we're doing that, I Shutterstocked a bullet journal. And, you know, I've got some wanted dead or alive posters with some bullet holes in them. So I'm all set now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Probably not the intended thing, but that will work for now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we'll work on that. Well, Ryder, we appreciate you taking some time today for us. Thanks a lot for coming on. Thanks for having me. You got it. And so let's set the stage here a little bit. And why don't you just take a second, tell everyone what you do, you know, what you're all about in your day job and then kind of how you came to create Bullet Journal.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Sure. So I'm a freelance web designer, kind of art director. And the Bullet Journal is sort of the result of a kind of lifelong process of trying to get organized, to be honest. I had pretty bad learning disabilities when I was younger. So I had a really hard time kind of keeping focused on notes. Most of my notebooks kind of just deteriorated into being like sketchbooks pretty much. And over time, I kind of had to work along those lines to get something that I could quickly reference that would actually organize my thoughts, but work more along the lines of the way I thought as opposed to the way I was told to think. I know that sounds a little strange, but a lot of the systems that you see in the Bullet Journal are pretty standard conventions. You know, like I don't think I invented anything necessarily in the Bullet Journal. I think the strength of the Bullet Journal is the way that the systems play along with one another.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' And I developed the system over a long time, and it's still developing today. Even since I brought it out, people have brought up some really good points, places where I can prove on it, and other ideas on conventions that I've been using that are fantastic. And that's really the idea, is that I wanted to create a system that gets out of the way and supplies sort of a framework for people to take notes and get organized, as opposed to some kind of like rigid template that you had to stick to. I just felt that for me, those templates were very hard to stick to and felt unnatural, and sometimes they were unintuitive. And I felt like when I didn't stick to it, I got really disappointed, and then I just didn't want to do it anymore. It was kind of just a bummer. It's like, oh, okay, now I missed four days, and now I'm off the system. And so when I was developing the bullet journal system, I tried to find something that was a lot more forgiving. Like I wanted to be able to pick it up whenever I had time for it, be able for it to catch up very quickly, and kind of just catch any kind of information that I threw at it. So yeah, the way it kind of came to be is that I had been doing it on my own. I had been developing it, and once in a while a friend or a colleague would note that I'm constantly writing down things in this book or drawing. And they'd be like, what are you doing? And for those who were actually interested, I would share it with them. And it seemed to really resonate with some people. And it's really important for my profession to kind of do projects on your own and learn technologies. And I thought it would be a really interesting challenge to try to formalize a system that had been rather informal. And through that process, you know, actually name the conventions that I was using and try to really explain what it was that I was doing over and over and over again in a way that other people could understand it. And it's actually incredibly challenging to teach anybody a system. So yeah, it was just a big challenge and a way for me to, you know, provide hopefully something useful to a network of people that have been incredibly helpful to me. Just like a lot of people give away the things that they've learned for free. And I've benefited greatly from them. So the bullet journal is just kind of a way of saying thanks and, you know, learning some new technologies and, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's fantastic. And you touched on a couple of points that struck home with me, which is why I think I like the bullet journal. One, you mentioned the rigidity of other systems. Like I just hearing you talk, I do my tasks and my lists and, you know, any other type of capturing. It sounds like I do it a lot like you. Like I need a place to capture and organize these thoughts or ideas or tasks. But really I don't, I'm kind of outside of any rigid, you know, hard, fast system that I'm just going to, that's just not going to work for me. You know, I'm going to be frustrated with it in the span of a week that I've gone, you know, outside these lines or missed these few days. And now I feel like I've missed everything. And I think that's one thing that really struck me, you know, about the bullet journal.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, and the other thing is, well, I lost my train of thought. I don't know what. Should have been writing it down. I know, I should have been writing it down in my bullet journal. But why don't you just, why don't you tell us, tell us just kind of an overview of how the bullet journal works and the layout. You don't have to get into like the way nuts and bolts of it, but just like the main components of kind of setting up a bullet journal. And just for people who aren't familiar with bullet journal, this isn't writers, this isn't a paper product. This isn't a notebook that writers selling. It's a system of, you know, capturing your tasks or to-do list or ideas or thoughts and just kind of getting them down in an organized manner. This isn't a product if you're not familiar with that. I just wanted to clarify that.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Yeah, sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So why don't you tell us a little bit about just setting it up from the beginning and just kind of the basics.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Okay, sure. Yeah, so the first part of this was that I kind of wanted it to work in as many different book styles as possible. A big part of the bullet journal is that you can use a book that you're comfortable with.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' A lot of different books have their benefits, but I think everybody kind of is particular to their own individual kind of notebook. The way you set up a bullet journal is pretty simple. You open up to the first page and you create an index. The second major component are monthly calendars, which are basically two pages. On the left-hand side, you actually write down all the days of that month. On the right-hand side, you write down all the tasks you want to get completed that month. Then you number all your pages. You refer back to the index and actually write down the page on which that monthly calendar is. And over time, every time you make an entry in the bullet journal, every single page, you want to title that page if it's an individual part of a larger whole. So like, for example, if you have a shopping list, you have shopping, all the things you want to buy, you flip back to the index, write down the page on which the shopping list is. The index is really critical because it allows you to essentially put down anything you want on paper at any time and then quickly reference exactly where you put that down. It also allows you to quickly pick back up again if you are a person who takes a daily journal, for example. So the monthly journal is one component and then there's also the daily pages. Essentially, you can put today's date on the top of a page, write down your tasks, events, which have a different kind of bullet, and then notes, which have a different kind of bullet. And that's where the system really gets its name from.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' It's a process that I call rapid logging. And essentially, the idea is that you take the most basic component of a thought or a task and jot it down as quickly as possible. Even if it's an event, even if it's something really emotional, you try to really find the shortest, most concise way of saying something and you get it down. The idea is that it's just speed. It's like directly from your mind into your hand onto the paper. And then the index later on will help you kind of sort out where that goes. Now, another very large component is migration. And basically what that means, over the course of a month, you might use three pages, you might use 20 pages. But you'll probably have tasks and events and notes all over the place. So at the end of the month, you create another monthly calendar page. Again, you write down all the numbers and all the numbers and the dates on one side. And then on the other side, you write down the tasks you want to get completed that month. Additionally, you go through the previous month, see all the tasks that you haven't completed yet, and migrate those forward into the new month. That way you don't miss any items. Additionally, and this is really critical, is that you evaluate which tasks are still relevant and cross out the ones that aren't. I find this, like, one of the most important aspects of the bullet journal is getting rid of noise. I think a lot of people, including myself, are guilty of taking very, very long lists. And you take lists that go on forever, and you end up not getting so much done. And again, you run into that kind of disappointment category where, like, you have these never-ending lists. So the bullet journal forces you to move the items forward by hand. And that process creates a friction that I think is really important. It's like, do I really need to move this task forward? Is this something that I want to write down again? Is it that important? And that little process weeds out a lot of noise, in my opinion. So those are some of the main parts of the bullet journal, like speed, being able to really distill information very quickly, and also being able to capture different kinds of information and different kinds of data via the index and page numbers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's fantastic. And it's working really well for me so far, and I want to get into some of my use for it. But real quickly on getting started with it, I thought you did a couple of great things. I mean, one, I am, and I know Myke is, and everyone's raving about your website design, about how that works. Yeah.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Oh, thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's stunning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I think that's part of the reason that it's been so successful, is you go to the page, and it's so inviting. And it's one of those things where it's like I've seen a bunch of people go, like, even if you're not interested, just go to this page and scroll. You know, and I think people like that. It's great. It's excellently well done.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and so the way I did it is you also did a video to introduce it. And the video is, it's only about a minute and a half long. I think it's less than two minutes, isn't it? I mean, it's a pretty short video. So what I did, I was like, okay, I'm ready to start doing the bullet journal. I went through the video because you go through. Is that you in the video? I mean, you just see hands and paper and notebook. It is. That's you doing it. Okay. So you're sitting there and you're showing the framework of how to get it started. Like, okay, here's how we set up, you know, you know, the index page and the calendar page and, you know, starting off the month and things like that. And so I went through the video and I was like, okay, writer's writing this down on this page. So pause. And I'd write down my page. And then I'd hit play and then you'd go to the next page. I was like, okay, first, second, third, fourth, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I was like, okay, pause, play. So I went through that. It was only a minute and a half. That got the framework of it set down for me. And then I went through the website to where, you know, I went through each, you know, separate topic on there on that expanded on the topics. And then also, you know, the, gosh, I'm not a web developer, but how the pages slide in from the right-hand side. It'll show you like a physical example of the notebook page. You know, like if you're looking at the bullet page on here, you know, the page slides in. It shows the date. And mind-blowingly, writer, every time I look at it, it's got the current date on it, which just boggles my mind.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' I'm glad you caught that. There's a couple of Easter eggs in there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I noticed that when I started. I was like, hey, I'm pretty sure that's today's date. And then I came back, like right now I'm looking at it. It says September 3rd on it. So that's really cool. But, you know, but then on, so if we're talking about a specific example, like I'm on the bullets page. So you put in on a notebook page, you know, how the checkboxes work, how the events work, how the notes work, and things like that. So how did you come up with that design to where, you know, let me, it's easy to tell everyone, you know, how to set up this journal. And you can do more videos, longer videos. You can do pictures and screenshots. But this, it's not interactive that I can't interact with it. But it's actively showing me how to plan this out on my page. How did this idea come about? Because I think that's one of the things that works the best about helping, you know, someone like me to get set up doing this.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' I think a lot of it came from the fact that I require some kind of visual aid when I'm learning something. And sometimes when I explained it to people, it was very hard for them to picture. So as soon as I would take out the notebook and start illustrating it literally, things would just click. And the website, the one that you see, is probably my third or fourth attempt at trying to get that across. You know, sometimes it would have just been pictures. But I felt that the actual animations drew your eye over again. Because when you look at the website and some of the feedback I got also is that it can be intimidating with the amount of content that you have. And I kind of just wanted to demonstrate what these, like, big copy blocks were referring to. So as you scroll down the page, sections of the demonstration notebook on the side will actually highlight. And those kind of things. Just to very, very clearly, step by step, spell it out. I think that the system delivered all at once, like in very large copy blocks, could seem very overwhelming. So it was really important to me to try to split it up into small little elements. And that's why the video is so short. Because it only covers a few of the items in the website. Because I didn't want people to be overwhelmed. I just kind of wanted to give them the most essential pieces that could get them started. If they were interested, then they could delve into the website. But I still felt that they needed some kind of visual reference to see exactly how pieces relate to one another. I think the power of the bullet journal is exactly how data relates to itself and to other parts of the book. And cross-referencing things like that. And I found it verbally very difficult to explain to people. You know, they'd get one idea. They'd get the other idea. And as soon as I was trying to explain how the two would work together, I could just see the question marks, you know, popping up in their eyes. And so the website tries to deal with that issue. That's how the design evolved.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and I thought at first, and I'm not going to lie to you, I looked at it and I was like, oh, look at all these things I don't have to do to set this up. Oh, this is going to be like really long and intimidating. But going through the video first, setting up the framework of what I'm going to do, then going through the individual points on the website, by the time I was done reading everything and, you know, at least getting my first understanding of it, I was like, that's it? Okay, I can do this. You know, it's really well done as far as teaching someone to use this system. I thought it worked out well, at least for someone like me who, you know, I don't use any system. I mean, this is why it appeals to me is I'm just basically like a checklist to-do guy, right? I just want, you know, okay, here's today. Here's what I have to do today. And when that's done, I'm going to mark it off. And, you know, some things get lost in the shuffle that way or some things, you know, you don't keep up with things that way. It just gets kind of random. So I thought this would fit me pretty well. And I've got a couple things. I've only been using it for a couple of weeks now. So I don't have a huge, huge data set to go off of. But I did have some questions. One thing I wanted to point out, and I don't know if this is a fair statement or not, but one thing I'm finding is this is not a calendaring type of system. I mean, there's calendar aspects, but it's not like a future planning thing outside of, say, the particular month, what you might have going on that month, right? I mean, that's one of the things that I've said if, okay, a week from now I need to do X. Well, that either needs to go on my main calendar page, right? Just on, say, my September date page where I've listed all the dates. I need to put that task there because I can't really get ahead of it in the daily aspect of it, right?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Am I saying that right? Yeah, yeah. No, no. Absolutely. In terms of having a very heavy and very active calendar, the bullet journal really doesn't do that. I mean, personally, I need to share my calendar with three to five people, and that's just one thing that an analog system doesn't have the bandwidth for that. That being said, though, I will be bringing out another video that does show how to deal with future tasks. There are a couple of different methods that I have designed, and definitely I'm taking feedback and seeing exactly where people are having difficulties planning way ahead of time. But in terms of hourly and daily scheduling, it's definitely not designed for that. It's more of a capturing tool and being able to group ideas and tasks that you may have in the future also, but scheduling them to precise days and times, it doesn't do that just yet. There are a couple of methods that I'll be bringing out that will help people to do that, but none of them are as fast as I would like them to be yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And that's one thing I want to make it clear. I don't want that, right? This isn't a planner or a calendar. It's actually, I like how it's set up, but then as I'm filling it out, like as I'm doing something for today, I was like, you know what? I really need to do that Thursday a week from now. What do I do? So that's when I'm sitting here looking at my notebook going, hmm, what do I do? So it could go on, for now, it could go on the main calendar, so I'll remember to have an event for it or have a note for it or a task for it at a later day.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Absolutely. And I'm actually kind of glad you bring that up because one of the points of the bullet journal that I found that I hadn't really thought of is that it's a system that also allows people to see what they need to focus on also. So, for example, with the calendar, if people realize they really need a calendaring thing, it's not like they have to learn a completely new to-do system or whatever. They can be like, I need a calendar, and then I have the bullet journal for other things. And other people have actually developed their own resources within the bullet journal to deal with individual issues, and I really love seeing that. I love seeing people make it their own and having the book and system evolve with them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, one of the things that I have to do is on the migration piece, like if you finish a month, you go back to the previous month, look at any tasks that were unfinished, either strike them out, they're no longer valid, or move them forward to the next month and the current days. I have to move those from day to day. The way to fit my needs for the types of things that I'm capturing in this system, it's more to-dos and tasks. So if I didn't do that one thing yesterday and that box didn't get checked, that needs to move forward to today. That's just for me personally. It might work. People are capturing different things where they can go back the previous month and move things forward or scratch them out. I have to find myself keeping them moving from day to day, or they're just, for the types of things that I need to use this for, they're not going to get done.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Go ahead. I'm glad to hear that. It's like you were able to, you saw what tools were offered, and then you took the ones that you needed and changed them to adapt. That's what I was hoping would happen. There's no way to be able to tell when you're working on it. It's like, I don't want people to be beholden to what I have shown them. Like, I'm hoping to supply them with various different methods and to pick and choose what works for them and then evolve it. You know, I can't wait until somebody shows me something where I'm like, that's a fantastic idea. I'm going to do that from now on. You know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's awesome. And one challenge I'm having is, and maybe it wasn't, maybe I didn't set this up right from the beginning. I use, I started it in a notebook I was already using. So I don't have a, I don't have a dedicated bullet journal, journal, if you will. So I just picked it up in the middle of a notebook I was using. And, which was really just for the same kind of things that I'm now organizing better in a bullet journal, you know, notes, tasks, sketches, whatever. So in August, looking at my index, August went from pages two to four. All right. Well, from the end of August to the beginning of September, just like in the past week, you know, I'm working on a bunch of things, you know, outside of, outside of work and other things. And I've got, just got pages and pages and pages of notes and sketches in between. So August ended on the fourth and September started on page 14th, page 14. So is that, do you find yourself doing that? I mean, looking at your, how you set it up, you have large gaps in just like the straight, um, straight task lists type of thing, right? You just, you allow for space, I guess, if you will, in between tasks to have like blank pages for sketches, for notes and for things like that. So having like a 10 page gap in between my months, because I filled up these other pages with notes and other important things that don't necessarily fall into the bullet journal itself, or that's a, that's really part of the system, right?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Yes. Yeah. I mean, the, the idea is that because you miss something, um, it, it doesn't throw you off. And, and then, uh, that kind of goes back to the difficulty of planning way ahead because the strength is more about capturing the now really. It's, um, so like I, I, I've literally gone like 10, 20 pages before the next month happens. I just like making sure that I know when the month starts because that's really the most relevant thing in terms of like the chronology. I can see that in August, you know, August started here and I can go back to the August spread, like the actual calendar. And, um, I can see what events occurred that way. And then I can see all the tasks that I need to do. And then everything from that month to the month that follows is pretty much fair game. It's, it's not really important. If it is important, then I titled that page and put it in the index as well. And that could fall within the month and it doesn't have to be its own separate thing. It's, it's, it's the ability to put down anything whenever you want to, wherever you want to is exactly what the index is for. And some people might need a, like a much heftier index. Like for example, if they take an incredible amount of notes and, um, use a bunch of subtopics, which are basically breaking down really large, um, pieces of information. Like, let's say you're, um, planning a vacation and, you know, planning a real, like a world trip or something. You are not going to be able to plan it all on, on one page. And chances are, it's going to take you weeks, if not months to plan it. So essentially you can use your index to find the different places within your book that you planned that trip, you know, and you can jump around. I'm hoping that answered the question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That totally answers it. It says I need to use my index to capture any of these other things that I need to be aware of in between my task lists. So yeah, I need to, yeah, because the index is critical. Yeah. So I'm starting a business. So I've got all these notes and just, just gobs and gobs of things that, you know, I've had to write down. And, you know, that's what that, that 10 page gap filled up in like, you know, two or three days between, you know, the end of August and September. Um, you know, I didn't have any tasks or dates for the bullet journal, but I just had pages and pages of notes. So I need to index them better. Those can, those are the perfect thing to go in my index. It sounds like. So that's good.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Um, yeah. And in terms of gaps, like, I, I've taught this to a couple people before, like I really released it just to see a, if it was useful to them. And I noticed that a lot of people kind of hoard pages, you know, they'll be like, okay, these are going to be my seven pages for this week. And again, Hey, if that works, that's great. But I, again, I found that it was really confining. It's like, now I have to squeeze everything into like set amount of pages. And, uh, because of that, I didn't think the way that I usually do. I'm like, okay, now I only have four pages for this. And then I'm, I'm thinking about the system too much. Like I, I'm trying to create a system that like, you're not really thinking about, like the, the, the, the system should ideally disappear. It should just be, you know, like you put it down whenever you want. If you, if you work with gaps, that's, that's absolutely fine. But it's, it's definitely something that I've moved away from after trying it for a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I guess that's why there's not a bullet journal journal product because it can't be that fixed. Right. I mean, we're all going to use it different ways and to come out with, okay, here's the, you know, here's the paper that you use in the format in here, just print these out or buy this journal or whatever. It's not going to work that way.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Yeah.