AIBU Bullet-journaling doesn’t help productivity and organisation

[iwishiwasafish]

I always use notebooks at work. I am in meetings all day and take copious notes with to-do lists etc. I’ve tried switching to OneNote or similar, and it just doesn’t work for me. It’s not how my brain works.

The problem is, my notebooks are a mess. I start off every new notebook with carefully ruled headings, neatest handwriting, date and attendees of meetings etc. By page 5 it has deteriorated to unstructured random scribbles, and it gets me down because it makes me feel disorganised.

I thought bullet journaling might help with this, and was looking up some templates/stencils, but it looks like it’s all hearts and flowers teenager style doodling. What am I missing.

AIBU that bullet journaling has nothing to do with organisation and productivity?

(Phrased as an AIBU for traffic, but really just talk to me about what I am doing wrong or what works for you )

I use it to keep all my lists in one place and important dates like birthdays etc

Its not a scrapbook, you can keep it very plain

I have a bullet journal for home and an A5 ring binder for work, as a PP mentioned. I find I need that flexibility at work.

I use lined paper for general meeting notes - when I’m running out of space I either file them in a specific section if I want to keep them to hand, or store them separately by date so I can find them if I need. The real help is the blank to do lists, I have one for this current week, one medium term and one longer term. I also have one each for person I meet with regularly. It means that if something crops up during a meeting I can immediately slip to the appropriate list and jot it down. Saves me so much stress knowing it’s recorded down and won’t slip my mind. I’m usually going from meeting to meeting so if I don’t note it down immediately I can’t guarantee I’ll remember.

decorating it is a personal choice and not the main reason to have one

I don't do any.
mine is effective, colour-coded, adjusted to suit my needs and it's the only thing that has helped me to be better organised in terms of diaries & notebooks.

5 years and counting.

Thanks for this links. I’m going to watch the YouTube vid now.

This has really helped sparked memories of what used to work for me. I kept having a nagging feeling that I used to be better at this.

Numbered pages and an index! That used to be “my thing” and somehow I got out of the habit and then forgot about it.

Also I used to take 5 minutes at the end of the day to review the notes, update the to-dos. Score out the page if everything on it was actioned. For some reason I don’t do that anymore so it’s just a big book of scribbles.

@TractorAndHeadphones you are absolutely right about everything coming out in a torrent. I need to get the information down now and structure it afterwards. If I wait to set a page up then it’s too late, the idea has gone. I used to do the kind of post-thought organisation you describe, but I forgot! Maybe I should have written it down 😅