Editing The Pen Addict 124/transcript (section)

== Pen Blog ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Cool. All right. So, we've got a pen blog of the week I want to mention. And I'm going to ask the chat room to not go to this blog now because you will be lost for hours. And there's only two posts up on it. And that's our friend Thomas Hall's new blog, Penucopia. Y'all know Thomas as my enabler, Myke's enabler. He actually played a role in Myke's pen that's coming next week. And he really pretty much knows everything. And he's a great guy, super nice guy. He's heavy into doing things with fountain pens that most normal people don't do. So, that's what his posts involve. The latest one is tricking out all of his Twisbies with different nibs. So, this is a must-read blog for all you guys and gals. And I appreciate Thomas putting all this information out there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've gotten a lot of this information in the hundreds of emails that I've gotten from him over the years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so, now it's nice to see all this information come out in blog form. So, it's pretty cool to see Thomas dipping his toes into the blogging world. So, I'm excited to see it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Mr. Carroll, you ready for us?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thank you. Thank you for being patient with us. So, what I would like to do, Ryder, real quick. We had you on back when the Bullet Journal website first launched last year. And we had you on Pen Addict Episode 70. And you did a great job explaining all about the Bullet Journal, how it all works. But just for our new listeners who may not have been listening at the time, who are maybe not familiar with the product right now and what the Bullet Journal actually does, can you give us just a little bit of that background on why you created it and what it tries to accomplish? Sure.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Sure. The Bullet Journal is, I guess, the elevator pitch is that it's an analog life logging and productivity system. It can be used in any book, but it's very pen and paper based. And it consists of many different, very simple to use modular methods that are grouped together by a framework. It uses a lot of conventions that people are already used to, like page numbers and indexes, and just arranges them in a way that they can all work together. You can take in, you can use modules, you can take them out. But basically, the strength of the Bullet Journal is that it's modular and that people can modify it to suit their own needs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, one of the things, I think that's probably the biggest difference from when we talked the first time, just talking about, you know, how to use the Bullet Journal, how to set it up. And for anyone playing at home, you can go to bulletjournal.com and find all this information. We'll have all this information at the show notes. What's the link for the show notes, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Relay.fm slash penaddict slash 124.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, we'll have all this information in there. So, you can, I would advise you to look at the Bullet Journal site, at least maybe while you're listening to this, if you're not familiar with it, just to see how this system works. And can you just kind of lay out the, I don't know if you want to, is it, would you call it the modules, just even just the basic, like, calendar and the day planning? Can you just kind of lay out the very basic, basic framework of what it looks like when you're putting this down in a notebook?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Sure. Sure. So, the first couple pages are your index. As you start filling up your bullet journal, you will be giving each one of your pages a page number and a title. Once you're done with that page, they'll take those page numbers and the titles and put them back into your index. So, theoretically, anything that has a title can be referred to at a later point. So, even if it's a drawing or a calendar or just a shopping list, all those things go into your index. And so, no matter where they are in your book, you can access them again quickly. A couple of the really popular modules and the ones that I introduce are the monthly log, which is essentially the left-hand page has all the days of the month on it. And then the right-hand side has a to-do list that consists of the things you want to get done that month and all the things that you hadn't got done the previous month. A big part of the bullet journal is migration. So, essentially, you create every month, every day, you create these to-do lists. And the things that you don't get done get carried forward into your next month. So, basically, there's a time where you have to reflect and judge whether or not each item is worth your time. If it's not, you cross it off. And if it is, it gets migrated forward.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, what I enjoyed about the bullet journal system, I used it for a couple months. And I've never been a system guy or a planner guy or any kind of rigid type system.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'm not using anything currently right now. But the bullet journal, it was definitely one of the most clear, straightforward, simple, useful systems that I've run across bar none. I mean, if I was really into, you know, I've probably checked out every system despite not using any of them on a regular basis. None of them have stuck with me longer than the bullet journal has. Even though I'm not using it right now, that's pretty high praise for me. I think I actually got a good solid two months in there before I, you know, kind of lost track. But I really love the simplicity of this system. It can be as, you know, simple or as complex as you like it. But it's really built around being simple and straightforward to accomplish these things. So, I went back and listened to Pen Addict number 70 in preparation for this episode. And I mentioned during that show, we were talking about how the bullet journal is really good for any piece of paper, notebook, whatever. You can use it however you want it, whatever format you want it. And I, not this is an exact quote from the thing, but from the podcast. But I said, people use it in their own way, which is why there is no bullet journal journal, right? And your answer was, yep. So, at that time, and you had elaborated like on every answer in there. And then I said, but there's no bullet journal journal. And you just gave the yep, which I didn't think of at the time as anything odd. But now, knowing what I know about what has gone on, did you have a plan back then to make a bullet journal journal all the way back when you had this started?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' I mean, I had a lot of ideas. They just weren't ready to talk about, you know, I hadn't really solidified any of those things. As I had mentioned back then, the response to the bullet journal was very unexpected for me. So, I just, I'd rather work on something for a while before I introduce it or, you know, know what I'm talking about. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I thought that was, everyone, I think when they first saw the bullet journal system, they were like, this is just, this is perfect for, you know, a product, if you will. So, it's that simple and straightforward, but it would be totally useful in a product, a physical product that someone could just, you know, walk into the system kind of pre-built instead of, you know, just, you know, doing all the indexing and page numbering and things like that. So, we're definitely going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how this turned into a Kickstarter, how it turned into a physical product. And that's where I really want to dig in today, Ryder, is with Kickstarter. But first, let us take care of a little more business real quick. Myke, do you want to talk about our friends at Pen Chalet?