I initially began taking notes because, before that, I was feeling overwhelmed. I seemingly had too many tasks and events to keep track of, and I’d constantly forget to do tasks even if it was the only task I had to do for that entire day. Objectively my situation was not overwhelming; I was not flooded in work and I had plenty of free time. And yet, I was feeling overwhelmed. In order to not forget a task I had to constantly keep it at the back of my mind, or do it immediately while I hadn’t forgotten about it. This is roughly when I stumbled upon bullet journaling - an “analog system” for organizing your life, with different pages to keep track of the past, present, and future. It was all the rage back when it came out, so I tried it. I took a blank notebook, titled all of the pages the correct way, and then about an hour later threw the thing into the trash. It was a frankly overcomplicated system, with most of the modules being unnecessary. And it was physical, so I couldn’t rearrange or delete things at a whim. It forced me to spend way too much time figuring out exactly where I was supposed to write down a thing.
And thus I came up with my own brilliant solution, which shall henceforth forever be called “Umni’s Journaling System™”:
- Make a new file on your desktop. Rename it to
notes.txt - Write things in said file that you don’t want to forget.
- Make it a habit to open the file from time to time, notably when you have nothing else to do.
Any time you feel overwhelmed, just find a blank spot in the file to write, make a list of all that troubles your mind, and only then, once you’re finally calm and at peace, you can start rearranging all you’ve written into a sensible order. What that “sensible order” is is entirely up to you. I mostly end up just making numerous bullet lists, but I also made myself a calendar. Said “calendar” is mostly just a list of todos and events, in chronological order, with dates as headers. When a task is done or an event has passed I simply delete it from the calendar. Unfinished todos get moved onto the next day. Ten years later and I still have no idea how to use google calendar, for this simple system has sufficed.
This journaling “system” has easily defeated anything else I’ve tried before and after it. There is no philosophy, there is no structure, there is nothing to mess up. Just grab a digital sheet of paper and write things on it. Simple as that.