TodoistをBullet journal (バレットジャーナル)風に使いつつ、無料版でタスクログを残す方法 - ハックルベリーに会いに行く. TodoistをBullet journal (バレットジャーナル)風に使いつつ、無料版でタスクログを残す方法.

Being organized is fucking incredible. I like limiting stress in my life, especially from academics, so I’ve relied on tools that help me navigate my to-do lists ever since middle school.

My first means of task-management were the standard, pre-planned journals that my school would give me every fall. They kind of slapped, not gonna lie, but since I had no control over their organization and also don’t have any pictures of them (rip), I’m just going to skip over them…

• Jika kamu menggunakan bullet journal hanya untuk pengingat atau daftar tugas, Todoist adalah aplikasi yang tepat. Aplikasi ini jauh lebih sederhana dibandingkan 4 aplikasi lainnya dan hanya berfokus pada daftar. Meskipun tidak memiliki banyak fitur, aplikasi ini mengoptimalkan fungsi-fungsi yang dimilikinya.
• Keep your bullet journal open. If you catch yourself saying, 'I'll remember that,' give yourself the reassurance just by jotting it down quickly. Review your page (s) at the end of the day (and weekand monthand year) 4. Set up your top priorities each morning.

Next, we have bullet journaling, which I took up in my junior year of high school because I was going through a “jesus I do NOT have my life together and really need to feel like I’m being organized, at least for my sanity”phase.⁠01relatable?The good thing about bullet journaling is that you have infinite customizability, but the bad thing is that, uh, you have infinite customizability. Meaning, unless you’re wiling to spend hours pouring every ounce of your aesthetic being into planning and structuring pages and sections, it’s notworthwhile.⁠02overstatement lol

Due to this, I gave up on bullet journaling within a few weeks. My effort level had gone to shit; in the beginning, I’d created a beautiful cherry blossom theme that I’d intended to carry through the journal, but by the end, my pages were chicken scratch. Oop

So…if you’re like me and can’t see yourself maintaining a journal without it feeling like a chore, it’s best to just let your computer do it for you.

Starting from the app I picked up right after abandoning my physical bullet journal…

Todoist

Todoist is…meh. It got the job done when I had a lot of random shit to keep track of, but honestly, I had so much going on in high school that I didn’t take advantage of its task categorization, as you can see from the two measly tags (Colleges and Scholarships).

Pros

• Easy categorization. Due dates and tags are super simple to add to tasks.
• Intuitive. It doesn’t take any guides or YouTube videos to start figuring stuff out…
• Dark mode goes off. Ugh yesssss

Cons

• Limited with the free plan. As many things are. Not that I ever used the projects feature, but…
• Customization is annoying. Bro, what if I want to indicate progress on something? Checking boxes only applies to things that are binary—yes, I sent an email, yes, I finished this logistical task that took 30 seconds. But what about the essay I didn’t finish but still want validation on? Also, making tasks disappear when they’re part of a bigger project stresses me TF out.

I don’t really have much else to say about it. If I had used it properly, that wouldn’t be the case, but!!

Digital Bullet Journal

overview page

In an actual bruh moment, I decided to switch back to “bullet journaling” right after college apps were over since I wanted to track things like working out, eating healthy, and sleeping. I stalked the internet for a good Google Sheets template that I customized until it was so grotesque I could no longer use it.

Don’t be me.

Here’s the template I used, and here are two more examples. But there are better ones out there, if you’re considering this.

If you look at my journal, you can see that I didn’t bother using sections like the gratitude log, but did in fact track my tasks, mood, and the media I consumed. That’s pretty cool; it’s nice to have a record of things so you can look back on it.

Also…can we talk about the “got into MIT” on 12/15? boiiiiii

Here’s how I kept track of smaller tasks. It worked pretty well, tbh.

Pros

• Customization. Dude, the opportunities are endless. Add sheets for whatever you want! You can make it pretty without hurting your wrist :)
  • Note: habit tracking is easy af through Sheets since you can just click and drag boxes to fill out the days you did X. It’s pretty sweet.

    a bitch got hella sleep but didn’t meditate at all lmao

• It’s easy. If you find a template you like, you barely have to do any work. Most people know how to use Sheets, anyway. Plus, it’s in your Drive, so you can access it easily from anywhere.

Cons

• Sheets is not the most aesthetic of platforms. Sigh.
• Combining multiple facets into one sucks. If you have complicated elements, like projects with many details/tags, that you want to keep track of, you’re going to have to get real creative.

Google Keep + Calendar

I came to MIT with a planner but abandoned it in favor of Google Keep as soon as I realized how many things I had to stay on top of. Also, in middle & high school, teachers don’t appreciate if you whip out your laptop or phone to write something down, but in college, no one gives a fuck. Managing your tasks digitally saves so much time.

I made color-coded Google Keep notes for each of my classes, as well as a general note for tracking miscellaneous tasks. It came in handy when I was rushing down the Infinite and needed to get something down quickly; all I needed to do was open the Keep app and write it down there.

Pros

• It’s right next to your Gcal. I have my calendar open ALWAYS, so having my task management system right next to it is lit. If you’re into Calendar reminders, that’s nice too.
• It’s accessible and easy. To think that I used to use Notes as a quick to-do list…

Cons

• Managing more than a few tasks at a time is messy. Unless you want to add every assignment and test into your Google Calendar, which takes FOREVER, Keep doesn’t quite cut it. Also, once you finish a task, it gets marked as a complete, which is nice as a reference but sometimes annoying since it clutters your screen.
• It’s easy to forget to mark things as complete. The general note at the top was super useful, but man, I barely used the individual class notes. They didn’t really serve a purpose for me…

Verdict: decent, but not good enough. I still use GCal, but Keep isn’t the right fit for me in terms of managing tasks.

Notion

mamma mia. Notion is dope as hell. Shoutout to Kathleen for showing me the way!! Read about her use of it here.

Infinite customization stresses me out, honestly. I just want something functional, that will motivate me to use it instead of seeming daunting.

Thankfully, Notion is whatever you make of it! I’m using it to manage work tasks, blogging, the media I consume, appointments, etc. I also started organizing my classes using the template found in this video.

My favorite thing about Notion is the Board View. Dragging things through the process of completion is the most satisfying way for me to feel like I’m getting shit done.

Pros

• Visualize data however you want. Make task management your bitch. Do you want a list, a board, or a calendar? Or all three? You can have that!
• There are so many templates out there. Resources are endless…
• Your friends are already using this. Probably. You can share templates with them!

Cons

• Set-up is daunting. I recommend starting small, testing how it works for you, and then creating other things. If you want your Notion to be aesthetic but are lazy, like me, customize it in small chunks.

I’m aiming to use Notion for the fall semester. Let’s see if I manage to stick with it for the entire year…

What are you currently using for task management? Are you switching to Notion, or are you a loyalist? Let me know! :)

1. relatable?⁠back to text↑
2. overstatement lol⁠back to text↑

Here we go with part 2 of Bullet Journaling using Todoist. It's been a while since I published part 1 of this series, and that's probably okay because it has really given me a chance to see if the bullet journal format I originally talked about works in the long run. I've had a few changes, most are cosmetic in nature, and/or to simplify the process reducing the number of clicks or movement of an item.

As I pointed out in part 1 the 'index' talked about in the bullet journal is automatically created in Todoist. The 'future log' has become a central component of my workflow and I have consolidated the 'daily log' under each month as pictured below.

Note, I use “Future Log temp” as a place to capture routine items such as “Take recycling to curb” which occurs every other week. It’s something I have to do, but I don’t want the reminder clogging up my really important items that may or may not occur on the same day. Reminders are typically set up with Todoist automatic move forward or a single date in the future that I want to see the item again. A good example of this would be a phone call to my Dentist. I want to be reminded of it, but not until after the first of the year. When it shows up in my Today Box, I’ll move it to Daily Log and treat it like any other call. Other items captured under the Future Log Temp list are: “Email - Zero” (daily), Items I’m waiting for, and “Water Softener check and fill” to name a few.

Consolidating daily logs under future logs simply made it easier to archive each month. As future meetings, events and tasks are completed, new daily logs of activities and notes are created. At the end of the month, I could simply drag and drop the entire month to my archive storage location. This seemed to work fine for a while until I needed to search for something. The Todoist search engine is fine but with all the daily histories it simply became too crowded with the 'history' side of a bullet journal.

I also expanded flags to more closely resemble Getting Things Done methodology perhaps because I am used to the context format of GTD I use at work. So here is the mishmash process I currently find to be extremely functional for my personal productivity.

First: To use Getting Things Done verbiage, I use a separate program for all my 20,000 and up categories. In other words, my purpose, vision, roles, and goals I keep separate on another program called The Brain. A type of mind mapping software, I have used since 2005. It currently contains 30,424 “thoughts” which include journal entries, trip reports, lists of peaks, hikes, books I’ve read etc. It also contains 48,519 links between those thoughts as I chase down rabbit trails, which contain my roles and goals. I’ve tried on numerous occasions to use The Brain for actions and perhaps if I sat at a single computer all day it would work just fine. For me, Todoist exists simply for the 10,000-foot runway items in getting things done. This has helped me keep Todoist crisp, clean, and straight forward.

Second: I use a future log for each month of the year, twelve months in advance. When I start a new month - December 2019 - as an example, I create December 2020 at the bottom of the future log list. This makes it easy to capture rolling dates like birthdays and Christmas.

Todoist Bullet Journal Template

Third: I use a daily log captured under the monthly-future log.

Click on the month and I can see all of my monthly commitments organized or sorted in date order (option found under the 3 dot project menu). I can scroll down if I want to see daily items, but I don't generally do this because:

Fourth: Daily items run from newest to oldest. Part of the reason it runs this way is to avoid dragging and dropping each day to reverse order upon creation of the daily log.

Fifth: I don't keep historical information on Todoist anymore. I use Todoist in the way that Todoist excels at, namely items and lists. Each day I capture items, notes, thoughts, ideas, books I want to read, articles I should read, company reports, Christmas cards I should respond to etc. All that capturing needs to be done under the daily log. Years ago I read a blog article by Jason Womack who at the time, was a coach for Getting Things Done.

I don't write things down to get them done. Whether they get done or not is up to future events unfolding in an order that may facilitate productive/efficient choice-making. I write things down to forget about them; get them out of my mind, and come back to where I am...when I am

This is what I use Todoist daily log for. Capture items, by writing them down. The beauty of Todoist is it’s multi platform ability. In a line at the store, I use my phone, at work I use my work computer, home I use either my home computer or notebook. Have a thought while reading? Open Todoist and jot it down. You can set Todoist up to capture voice messages, Google Home can be set up to capture items into the inbox. Truly there shouldn’t be a thought you think that you can’t capture if you need to. Thankfully we don’t need to capture all of them, but gone should be the days of thinking “oh I need to write that down before I forget it”. I use the flags discussed above to put items into context if needed. Does the item need to be done at work? @Office, Is it a call? @Call, Putting up Christmas decorations? @Home-indoors. Including transferring the note, reference material to my personal brain, I use @PBrain. I then use the Autofocus System to process my items.

The autofocus system is designed to be on paper or notebook, but I find it easily adapts to Todoist and the daily log. The concept is simple. 'As you think of a new item, add them to the end of the list' or in this case add them to the daily log. Click on the daily log 2019-12-15, click on the + button and type in the item. Bullet Journaling is correct in its assumption of capturing notes in short phrases, getting them into the system and reviewing at a more appropriate time.

Todoist Bullet Journal Free

The quoted numbered items below are from autofocus and I think the magic to using Todoist for Bullet Journaling and productivity.

1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.

Scroll to the oldest day in your Daily Log, remember this could be last month, although I try to not let them get that old (see number 7 below).

2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.

3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so.

This is the real secret to getting things done, get started on something. I like this format of scanning, looking, thinking and using your intuition to help pick an item. It also helps when personal energy levels are low and you might be cherry picking the easiest items on the list, but the concept is the same, if it’s on the list and it catches your attention then it probably needs to be done. In the picture above note the item: Install: Furnace Filter (every 3 months from install date). Upon reading this item, I went downstairs to install a new filter and found that I didn’t have any new ones remaining. New todo item: Buy: 2 Ace Filters and tagged as an Errand. You’ll learn in 4 below that I brought this item to the current date and added the new todo item. I worked on the item “as long as I felt like doing so” or in this case, as far as I was able.

4. Autofocus says to Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven't finished it.

In Todoist it is more productive and requires less keystrokes to simply hashtag #todays-date to move the item forward. (I generally make a note about what I accomplished before moving the item). Keep in mind that this is where David Allen’s GTD methodology regarding next actions should apply. Whatever is listed should be morphing from a random thought that you captured into a doable action. Also in the picture above “Print and mail: Marilyn Christmas Letter”. This was originally captured as Respond: Christmas card received from Marilyn. It moved forward as Write: Marilyn Christmas Letter where I used the comments section of Todoist to capture my letter over a couple days, moving forward each day. After I print and mail the letter, I will complete the item. Another item that occurs regularly for me is a book I want to read. When I first download the book it is added to the daily log as Read: Tribe (Kindle unlimited). When I start to read the book, it is moved forward to today’s date with Reading: Tribe (Kindle unlimited). It moves forward almost daily as I read the book, then changes to Finished reading: Tribe (Kindle unlimited) @PBrain. The label reminds me to add the book to The Brain journal entry along with my review of the book. I then complete the item on Todoist.

5. Continue going around the same page in the same way. Don't move onto the next page (date) until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out. (this can be done quite quickly)
6. Move to the next page (date) and repeat the process.

Remember, you don’t have to take action on an item on every page, just look for ones that you are ready to make some movement on. In a sense this closely resembles Structured Procrastination.

Todoist Bullet Journal

7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them.

This is the critical behavior of reviewing all of your captured items from oldest to newest. At some point you really have to question if you are going to read that magazine that is now a month or month's old. If it no longer stands out, complete it off the list and throw the magazine into the trash.

8. Once you've finished with the final page (today date), re-start on the first page (date) that is still active.

I delete the date in the daily log when there are no longer any items listed for that day (EDIT: If you are wanting to keep a true Bullet Journal do not delete the date, complete the task, but keep the date so that you can refer to Todoist’s “show completed tasks” if desired). This keeps my Todoist clean and helps me to focus my energy only on those items that continue to hold my attention. Ideally, a date in the daily log should be zeroed out over the course of a month or two, meaning no items should remain in the daily log for that date. If I’m not bringing an item forward to a more current date (meaning I’ve taken no action on the item, see #3 & #4 above) for months, this means I can’t reform the task into a more specific doable action, or I can’t figure out what the exact next step is that needs to be done to be able to complete the task, or I just can’t bring myself to spend a couple minutes on an item. If this is the case, the item needs to be deleted from the daily log. The item might show up again in the future, but as Jason Womack indicated; That’s not really up to me, it’s up to “future events unfolding in an order that may facilitate… choice-making.” It’s my job to capture those items and create an environment where making that choice is facilitated in an efficient manner.