The Bullet Journal Method

There are two things we need to separate out here: the Bullet Journal method of organising yourself with the help of one simple notebook and The Bullet Journal Method the book, written by Ryder Caroll, the ‘inventor' of the method.

For anyone who's not come across the Bullet Journal method, or whose main exposure to it is (mostly) women sharing very aesthetic photos of notebook pages on Instagram; Caroll's original idea is extremely simple: just use a single notebook to note down all your tasks, memoranda and other notes on a daily basis using bullet points. It really isn't much more complicated than that.

I've always thought that the best thing about the Bullet Journal method - its simplicity - is also what makes it monetising it so hard. I mean, do you really need an entire book to tell you to ‘write stuff down so you don't need to remember it?' Do you really need to buy special tools or notebooks? Do you need to sign up for courses or membership sites or whatever? No. No, you don't.

That's fundamentally the problem with this book. Caroll made a short set of videos explaining how to bullet journal. You can find them on YouTube. I think the method itself is great. It is simple, cheap, extremely flexible and effective for many people. These short videos explain very clearly in about 10 minutes or so everything you need to know to use the method. Everything else in this book, unfortunately, is basically a waste of dead trees.

The book is not bad: It is easy to read, has some good anecdotes and you can fly through it in no time. Ryder throws in the odd bit of humour and had a nice informal style. It is just that everything is undermined by the fact that this is the archetypical should-have-been-a-blog-post book.

I got it for free as an e-book because I have Amazon Prime. For free, it's alright if you are stuck for something to read, but I do think I would have felt short-changed if I'd actually bought this book.