Tag Archives: bullet journal

Productivity and Personal Development: Why 6AM Matters

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There is a current debate at the moment in productivity which seems to be pitting the ‘night owls’ against the ‘early risers’. Whilst I’m of the view that as long as you are getting important stuff done it doesn’t matter, I have to say I fall on the early riser side of things.

Don’t get me wrong, I never used to be. As a writer, I always felt my most creative hours were between 10pm and 2am. Which was great – if I didn’t have a day job. Once I did, then the reality was that creative never actually happened.

Then a couple of years ago, I was listening to a GTD Virtual Study Group podcast which brought to my attention the prospect of getting up early to make sure that if nothing else went right that day, you would always have an hour you could look back on, knowing that you had taken another step towards your goal. Towards doing what mattered most to you, not what mattered most to the boss man.

So I made the transition from getting out of bed at the last possible moment (after hitting that snooze button several times), to getting up at 6am, making myself a coffee and refusing to get up and go to work until I got 1000 words down. From now over a thousand mornings, I must have failed to hit that mark less than a dozen times. Getting to work late and then playing catchup all day was a powerful motivator to get typing.

Now I find myself on the other side of the world, having a writing sabbatical. Which some people would say is a fancy way of saying I’m unemployed. Transitioning careers. That kind of stuff. It doesn’t matter what you call it, it means I get to plan 100% of my time now without the 9-5 (or 8-7 as it realistically was most of the time).

All those hours back. All that free time. So what am I doing? I am getting up every morning at 6am to write, just like I have done every weekday for the past few years. Why? Because it works. Because setting up your day to start right is a key to making it a good day, no matter what else life throws at you.

It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you want to achieve. Starting your day intentionally by making it count is the best way to get there. To live a more productive life. Or, to put it in a way I’ve started to feel a lot lately, a more meaningful life.

Bullet Journal: Creative AND Productive?

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It has been a couple of months since I first heard of Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal system. Even if you have no interest at all in productivity, you should check out the website. It is a perfect example of how to do things.

So, the bullet journal system may not contain anything earth-shatteringly new, but it does pull a lot of concepts together that renders them really effective. It is done in a way that makes the use of pen and paper appear creative and vibrant again, rather than archaic in comparison to the gazillion apps there are out there.

For someone trying to manage multiple business projects, it won’t work as a complete system. However, Ryder is completely transparent about this: that is not what bullet journaling is meant to do. I have been using David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology for several years now and I’ve found that bullet journaling has allowed me to successfully work one key element: capturing.

Confession: I am a notepad junkie. Sure, I love a good pen too, but notepads for me are where it’s at. I generally have at least two on the go at any one time. There is my writing notepad, where I flesh out characters and plot outlines. Then there is a handbag size notepad that I will always have with me, to capture ideas on the go, note the names of restaurants, shopping lists etc etc. Over the years, I have accumulated quite the collection. This is precisely the point where it has previously all fallen down.

If something has been actioned more or less straight away, then fine. It is when I know I jotted down the seed of an idea somewhere and now want to find it again, maybe a couple of years later. Previously this has led to me going through all the journals that seem in the right time range and trying to find it. The bullet journal system eliminates this is two simple but hugely effective steps.

Instead of opening the shiny new notepad and straight away creating content, using the bullet journal theory, I set aside about ten pages to create a contents page (or index, as Ryder calls it). Then I number the pages as instructed and make sure that whenever I create an entry, I update the contents page with a brief description and corresponding page numbers. I generally preface with a context (e.g. ‘writing’, ‘list’, ‘journal’ etc) to make it even easier to skim search.

Yes, the initial setup takes a bit of time and the whole thing falls apart if you don’t remember to update the index. However, the rewards of getting into the habit of doing so are amazing if you have a lot of creative elements of your life. I can update spontaneously when I need to, rather than having to wait until I get home to find my travel journal, writing notebook or any other specific analogue device.

Go on, give it a try. For anyone trying a tech diet, it is also a great way to let go of the apps for a while without the fear of everything falling into a void.