#I am so tempted to make this screenshot the new blog header...

[bumblekastclips]

The devil is whispering in my ear and he wears the face of Kyle Crouse.

New transcripts will be coming tomorrow.

[roseproductivity]

Minimalist bullet journals

Bullet journaling is the poster child of Instagram productivity culture and it is a great example of how all the good intentions of this culture become commodified. Its origin is practical. Designer Ryder Carroll switched from using multiple notebooks for different purposes, such as a planner for planning and a notebook for note-taking, to using one notebook for everything. He used simple icons to differentiate the purposes in-line. He posted his method in a blog post, and an entire movement was born. Much stationary was sold. Originally he just wanted to share an organizational method that worked for him, but now his goals Are loftier. The Bullet Journal website calls it “a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system.” It is not just to help journalers keep track of meeting notes and to-dos but to “live with intentionality,” which Carroll describes in a TEDx talk. Cal Newport even claimed it will “help you become a better person." You don’t, after to all, get to give TED talks just because you figured out a good note-taking method.

This mindfulness tool has become quite profitable for Carroll. He sells a guide to bullet journaling, although you can find the same information for free online, and he sells blank books that are optimized for the task. You can even get those notebooks branded for your company to ensure your employees are taking notes as productively as possible. My preference is for completely blank notebooks, so I have never been tempted by the notebooks, but I was curious to read his book. How does one write an entire book about bullet-pointed tasks lists? In addition to adding hip mindfulness talk, you write stuff like this:

Screenshot taken from the bulletjournal.com

He wrote two lists, used fewer words in one, and is calling it a path to mindfulness. Unlike a lot of productivity methods, there is no science or even pseudoscience to support this, just a gesture towards the minimalist philosophy that instagrammers have internalized. Ironically, now bullet journaling, or “bujo”, is most often associated with a much less minimal aesthetic. In most journal spreads on social media, you will see a splatter of stickers, some washi tape, calligraphic headers with flourishes, and multicolor highlights made with pastel Japanese or Korean markers. Some are closer to “junk journals” with various torn and textured papers and vintage ephemera pasted in; it’s a downright maximalist, Victorian aesthetic. These instagrammed journals contain bulleted lists but seem almost entirely unrelated to the stark, practical examples provided by Carroll.

Throw in the right keywords, however, and you can uncover the subset of minimalist bujo Instagram accounts. Or you can skip the guesswork and visit the somewhat bitter subreddit r/BasicBulletJournals, tagline “It’s a planner, not an art journal.” Despite the side eye cast at “art”, minimalist journals on social media are often as performative as the others. Minimalist bullet journaling is for when you want an art journal but don’t want to be the sort of person who has an art journal. (I am not going to get into the gendered nature of bullet journals right now!)

Screenshot from the instagram of supermassiveblackink

Screenshot from the instagram of nightjournals

What started as a method for one man to simplify his workflow and lug around less note-taking equipment has transformed into just the opposite. Modern bullet journals now entail more art supplies than can be comfortably carried around, although naturally the market has supplied products for you to carry them. Using clean lists may help clear your mind, but now you have more on your mind as you measure out lines, create indexes, and migrate text from one filled notebook to a new one. While the core idea of bullet journaling is that, like the Highlander, there can only be one, in practice many practitioners have another one for sketching and yet another one for long-form journaling, and another to compartmentalize their work into. Stationary is enjoyable, and notebook nerds will find a way to make sure it proliferates in their lives, even while keeping the usage “minimalist”.