With the start of a new year comes the start of a new bullet journal, which means thinking about what I’d like to track throughout the upcoming year. I’ve always loved keeping track of things, which is part of what attracted me to bullet journaling in the first place. And as my bullet journaling has evolved, so have my habit and life tracking skills, and the things that I consider important enough to track continue to grow.
Our brains are designed to seek out patterns – it’s how we make sense of the world, and for me, tracking different aspects of my life is part of how I think on paper. It’s also how I make connections and reflections, and it’s just extremely satisfying to me.
Of course, I do sometimes wonder if all this tracking is worth it. I mean, let’s face it. I could definitely use the hours that I spend notating and figuring and planning, to do other worthwhile things. This thought is actually something that I continue to question and struggle with from time to time, but overall, I’m at peace with the fact that keeping track of what I do in my life each day helps me to live a more productive, more intentional, and more reflective life.
Observing one’s life through journaling is not a new concept, and it’s often said that the most successful people tend to have the habit of daily (or almost daily) journaling. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was an avid journaler and tracker, and had he lived in today’s world, he no doubt would have rocked a bullet journal!
His “Little Book of Virtues” was certainly a precursor to this mindful, structured way of navigating life, and how I wish I could take a look at all the little details that he had felt important enough to document. One of the best things he did to foster intentional living was to ask himself each morning, “What good am I going to do today?” And perhaps even more important was the question he asked each evening before he retired, “What good have I done today?”
Even before I knew of Franklin’s morning and evening questions, I had begun a similar practice, which I have come to think of as “morning intention” and “evening reflection.” It’s so helpful for me to start each day with intentional planning, in order to be able to *hopefully* accomplish the most important priorities of the day. That said, there are many days that unexpected tasks or events pop up, and I often still miss my mark, but I still recognize that had I not taken the time to purposefully and intentionally map out my day, I would have achieved much less.
So what exactly do I track, you might ask? It started with habits and goals, of course. I’ve enjoyed goal-setting since I was a child, and yet, I have often found myself in that all-too-common place on February 1st or so, feeling badly that I’d given up/forgotten about my goals already for the year, and then deciding to just bag them altogether. Bullet journaling has helped me to remedy this, as the tracking part of it gives me a place to continually keep my desired habits and goals at the front of my mind, and a space to reflect on whether or not I’m actually doing what I set out to do.
Even so, I continue to fall short of these goals and habits, and sometimes feel like an imposter. It’s at these times that I remind myself of the old adage, “Shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” I do believe that by dreaming big and setting lofty goals, I accomplish more than I would have, had I not consistently and thoughtfully incorporated daily planning into my life.
Over time, I’ve had more and more ideas about things that I’d like to keep track of in my life, and it’s gone way beyond habits and goals. It’s become a way for me to reflect on the things that are most important to me, and then monitor how well I’m showing up for those things in my life.
If you’re the curious type, here is a list of some of the things that I’m currently tracking this year:
- Books I’m reading and listening to
- Podcasts that I’m tuning in to hear
- My daily workouts
- Bike trails that my family and I ride on
- Movies that I see and who I see them with
- Friends I see throughout the year
- Quotes and aphorisms that I love
- Dates with my husband
- One-on-one time with my kids
- Family adventures, big and small
- Places that I visit, near and far
- Family dinners, what and when
But hold up… it doesn’t just end there. There’s another layer to tracking things that is important to consider and can really help as you try to observe what you’re actually doing/accomplishing in your life. It’s this reflection piece of bullet journaling that can really be a game-changer, as it can add meaning to what you are trying to accomplish with tracking in a significant way.
In the book Idea Flow, written by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn, these Stanford professors ????? shed some interesting light on the practice of documenting and then distilling, in the field of creative thinking. Utley and Klebahn work and teach at Stanford’s “d.school”, a highly-sought-after program where students and faculty come together to design, innovate, and create. Their mantra is: “We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative. The Stanford d.school is a place where people use design to develop their own creative potential.”
Utley and Klebahn advise that the “Discipline of Documentation” is essential in the creative process, which certainly goes along with the idea of tracking what’s important in your life. They have an important saying in their school: “If you didn’t capture it, it didn’t happen.” This really speaks to me, as I believe that it’s this idea that has caused the strategic planning that I do in my bullet journal to become such an important aspect of my life. My faulty and often unreliable memory is quite irksome to me at times, and trying to recall what I had for breakfast on a given day, never mind that awesome idea I had in the shower this morning, is part of why tracking my life has become so important to me.
Equally as important as documenting the important bits of your life, is what the d. School guys call “The Rigor of Review.” Utley and Klebahn, in their book, examined the routine of a certain entrepreneur who filled out a notebook every 10 days or so with his thoughts, plans, and ideas. And each time he started a new notebook, he would go through the previous one and rewrite his favorite ideas at the beginning of the new book. In this way, he ended up with a distilled version of his most important thoughts, ideas, and dreams in each of his notebooks, a highlight reel of sorts.
Not only did this practice refresh his memory and keep what was most important to him at the top of his mind, but it also was a way to prove his own enthusiasm about those things that he considered particularly relevant. In reviewing and reflecting in this way, he would inevitably realize that some of the things he was initially excited about no longer held that much importance to him. It was at this stage of the game that he would know that these were not things that he needed to pursue or keep track of.
I was delighted to read this section of the book and felt validated in my own efforts, as I had just done something similar at the start of my 2023 BUJO. For several years, I had been wanting to start a new year with a recap of the previous year’s highlights. I knew this would be a good method of reviewing what I had accomplished, as well as where I had fallen short. Unfortunately, it has been difficult for me to find the time to review in this way, especially as I’m usually so excited about getting on with the new year and new thoughts and goals and dreams. At the end of 2022, however, I finally took the time to do this (well, at least to start it ) and it was quite satisfying to look back through my life on paper and then create a distilled version of what I had experienced. Moving forward, making the time to do such a practice on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis is going to be a priority for me, as I do believe that there is much to be learned from this sometimes tedious yet rewarding habit.
As you consider your own bullet journaling habits, or simply have the desire to begin down this path, may I remind you of this: one of the best aspects of bullet journaling is that there are no actual rules to this practice! You are free to explore this creative and productive outlet in any way you’d like, and may go about it in whatever way suits your fancy. This could look like tracking all the things, or by contrast, none of the things! It’s completely up to you.
I do, however, hope that this has gotten your creative juices flowing about what you might like to start tracking. The possibilities are almost endless, and the habit of keeping track of the things that we love and are most important to us can bring about a great sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and even joy. May I, in conclusion, remind you of the wise words that have been ascribed to Abraham Lincoln: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”