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The Bullet Journal-Workshop (Pt. 1): Color-coding the Daily Log

Scrively and the Bullet Journal - Background (click to expand)
I have become a user of the analogue Bullet Journal organization system in the beginning of this year. For that, I have configured a Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot-grid (often the to-go notebook for Bullet Journalers) in the end of 2015 as my new years resolution, because I was tired of the – to me personally – rather ineffective digital ways of keeping track of my daily stuff. This is primarily because I have the feeling that in the digital world many things are somewhat fragmented all over the place (maybe connected by tags, which is not necessarily the most practical way) and it also is hard to really keep track of and see changes in what is going on on a daily basis.

I do, of course, effectively use many digital tools for dedicated organizational purposes (like note-taking apps, to-do lists and calendar), but use those for the rather large, complex or more long term things (e.g. larger life-goals, research projects, …). Anyway, I will soon have a separate major post coming on my personal note taking-system, which is a combination of various analogue and digital applications, products and techniques that all sort of tie into one another. This is why I won´t loose too many words on that one right here and now.

Also, I will not go too much into the details of the Bullet Journaling method because this is already covered very well on various corners of the web. I do only want say as much as the Bullet Journal being a wonderful and super-flexible method of organizing and keeping track of about anything you can think of. To use the words of the inventor of the the Bullet Journal-system, Ryder Caroll, the system “can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.” And this is more than true. The system really has changed the way I go about my daily stuff. For further inspiration I can also recommend having a look at the pages of Kim and Kara, two people who also drive the BuJo-community in a way and that I do take inspiration from, too.

The Bullet Journal-Workshop is meant to share with you the ideas, add-ons, adaptations and small improvements that I have come up with myself, as I use and refine the Bullet Journal in my own everyday-life – being the flexible and open system that it really is.

I hope this section will be helpful to you, maybe serve as an inspiration and that you enjoy reading it!

 

Part 1: Color coding the Daily Log for a productivity birds-eye view

BulletJournal_ColorCoding

This post is a quick look at how I started using color coding in my BulletJournal’s daily logs as a means of giving me a visual birds eye view-representation of how my week went.

I always – at the end of each day when reviewing it and planning for the next day – shade the upper right corner of the daily log according to how the day went productivity-wise (I use 3 colors):  green  (none here 🙁 ) means a highly productive day,  blue  means “it went alright/average day”, and  orange/reddish  stands for “not such a good day/could be better tomorrow”.

I do use the same color coding in the weekly review as well by using the average of the daily codings. E.g. a green day, a red day, and three blue days will sort of make a blue week. Does that make any sense 🙂 ?

I do also use the same color coding that I assigned to each day on the monthly log spread. This will give me a birds-eye view of the whole month.

I hope this was helpful. Feel free to adapt for yourself or leave me a comment. Also, feel free to check out the other parts of The Bullet Journal-Workshop.

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