The nerdy pen bits

I use Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot grid notebooks for it at the moment. Sometimes the Bullet Journal versions sometimes the regular. It all depends on what is in stock and if I find a color that is cooler than the dull crap they have for the Bullet Journal versions.

Most of the time I use fountain pens. Usually a finer nibbed one for writing and broad stub to underline headings.

How I use it

I usually re-collect things when the number of pages from first to last go beyond 20-30 pages, mostly because I find it easier to deal with. Plus that I often need to replace at least some of the goals every 3-5 days anyways.

On the first two pages I write down my current “yearly” theme, and then I write down some goals I have on some areas of my life. Usually weight and fitness goals are there. Plus some things I focus on improving.

Then I put a marker there. Then I turn the page and make a daily page. I make one every day. And move over whatever was left on the day before.

I just write down the day of the week and the date. And start adding stuff. I usually start by adding auto generated check lists from things that kind of keep my life together.

Usually first work stuff, then my personal daily stuff. I often start with the most important stuff. And then things I have to carry over from the day before. And then I put a marker on the start of the daily page and one marker at the first page with free space to write things.

The first marker is always on the “status / goal page” the second is always at the first page with tasks I haven’t checked off and the last one is always at the first page with available space.

As I complete things and run out of tasks I start refilling it. Usually start with Daily tasks, move over to weekly and monthly if there are anything there I need to do. And after that over to projects that are in focus. First the ones outlined in the Hobonichi and then later anything not hidden in my task manager.

Formatting

I don’t use the official Bullet Journal formatting, I’ve tried a few times but after many years of using Dash/Plus as my task management on paper formatting system I’ve never been able to change it.

The way I do things is that I use one pen and color for writing and another pen and color for underlining things.

I usually only have two levels of headings. One is the day, and then one for the “collection”, when things go deeper than that I typically will do it as sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks etc. Anything that has tasks under it will be underlined. To make it easy to spot.

In addition to this I also often will write a + between different areas. Like when I move from “Work” related tasks to “Daily” tasks etc.

Page layout

My page layout is usually that I align the top level heading (the day and date) to the left written larger than the rest.

The collection I typically center.

I also try to use as much of the page as possible. So, if a collection only takes up half the width or a third of the width of the page, I often will add another section next to it. Other times I write the tasks two or three per line. It all depends on what works and how mindful I am of not wasting page while doing it.