Reviews and Comments

I encountered the BulletJournal method in 2016, and originally, I resisted it a bit, despite my curiosity... I have tried so many methods to stay on top of my tasks and feel like my life isn't spinning out of control on a regular basis. Some worked ok, some frustrated me thoroughly, some were just too high-maintenance (looking at GTD here), and having my productivity system fall apart was a pretty regular experience.

I'm glad I yielded to that curiosity. Like Carroll, I have ADHD, and somehow my brain responds better to a handwriting-(on-paper-)based approach than to digital tools. I also need an approach that provides structure and clarity, while being flexible enough to adapt to my needs and easy enough to keep it up as a daily habit.

The Bullet Journal method is a cross-over between a to-do list, a journal, project planning and, if you want to, even a calendar, kept with a system of symbols and shorthands that Ryder Carroll calls "rapid logging". The only things you need are a notebook (any notebook you want; I started with a very cheap notebook) and a pen.

My daily planning session now takes no more than 5-10 minutes (as a rule) and has become a cherished start into my working day. While I slack off on some days - mostly weekends or vacation -, the system as a whole has not "fallen apart" for me once since I adopted it as my one self-management method. I use my Bullet Journal for ToDos, project planning, logging exercise, tracking habits and sometimes for journaling (something I rarely did before last year).

So, I was a pretty regular user of the BuJo before "The Book" was published; I hesitated to read it and wasn't sure if I would learn anything new or useful from it. And you don't need to read the book if you just want to use the method; there are good explanations of the core method on Ryder Carroll's homepage as well as on Youtube. However, I found a treasure trove of information, hacks, ideas, and how-tos in this book that helped me deepen my practice and get even more use out of the method. I keep going back to the book to review Ryder's suggestions as they become relevant to my needs in terms of planning and organization.

One caveat: Because the book encouraged me to do so much more with my journal, my BuJo has become a bit messier than it used to be before, and I now go through 2 or 3 notebooks per year instead of one.

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about making use of deeply focused work. This book delivered only partially. There are some interesting pointers on how to integrate more highly-focused work into your life and how to expand your mental capabilities... but a lot of them will be exponentially harder for neurodivergent people, and the suggestions for integrating more "deep work" are probably not feasible for people who have caretaker responsability or people in precarized work. Nearly all of his success stories are people who have a pretty high degree of privilege to begin with.

In the first part, I got annoyed with his sales pitch for deep work - I already knew it was something potentially beneficial and open-plan offices are horrible. Maybe he needed to make this sales pitch because corporate culture is so invested in inhumane, focus-destroying work practices?

I also don't get his abhorrence of email, but perhaps I'm just an outlier in that my email influx is manageable? And although I have come to loathe Facebook and mostly avoid Twitter and Instagram, his "social media is evil and you ought to quit" chapter doesn't convince me either.

Overall, there were a few concepts I might revisit at some point, but otherwise, this book was a disappointment, not because the concept of "deep work" is bad, but because the book is coming from such a privileged and limited perspective.