{"id":10181,"date":"2018-10-31T09:29:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T14:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hilbertthm90.wordpress.com\/?p=10181"},"modified":"2022-06-21T12:22:11","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:22:11","slug":"becoming-intentional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/2018\/10\/becoming-intentional\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Bullet Journal: Cultivating Intentionality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I do something called Bullet Journaling. I’ve done it for several years as a way to stay organized. If you look this up and you’ve never heard of it before, you’ll probably be overwhelmed by how complicated it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"bullet<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But it only looks that way. Once you do it for a few months, you start to see how simple and beautiful the system is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word “journal” is a bit confusing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not a place where I write my feelings or whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bullet journal<\/strong> is more like a highly efficient planner designed to help you achieve large, unmanageable goals by breaking them into simple tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn’t imagine writing a novel without this method anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this have to do with intention?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Intention is one of those concepts that got a bad reputation from New Age gurus of the ’90s. I can almost hear Deepak Chopra saying something like: “Set an intention for the day and it will be manifested.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s not quite what I’m referring to. One of my favorite writers, Anne Dillard, wrote in The Writing Life<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The concept is so obvious that it’s easy to forget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We often think that as long as we have long-term plans and goals, the meaningless tasks of the everyday don’t really get in the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, without intention, your days will fill with these tasks and activities, and then, all of a sudden, you’ve spent a whole life doing essentially nothing you consider valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, so we can answer the question now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intentionality, to me, is simply taking stock of the way in which you spend your day, so that you end up spending your life the way you intend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullet Journal: How to for Intentionality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is why I opened with talking about the Bullet Journal method. The design of that system forces you to rethink what’s important on a day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has you “migrate” tasks. When you do this, you ask yourself: is this vital? Is this important? Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the answers are: no, no, I don’t know, then you remove it from your life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t overthink it. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as you start making excuses, you start filling your life with stuff that doesn’t matter to you. This means you’re committing to living a life that isn’t meaningful to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make sure you’re intentional about how you fill your day.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Let’s take a simple example before we get into the nitty-gritty details. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn to play the piano, but you’re too busy; somehow, the day just gets away from you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your daily log, start tracking an hourly log to find out if you’re doing things that aren’t intentional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have some Twitter feeds that focus your news articles. This was meant to save time in the beginning. But now you realize a bad habit has formed where you go down the comments rabbit hole and the trending topics and on and on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first hour of your day is shot, you’re filled with rage, and you haven’t even read any actual news articles yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Night<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You relax with some Netflix at night. But you started that one series that everyone loves. You just don’t get it. It adds no value to your life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you keep going, because you might as well finish it now that you’ve started it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there was that time you wanted to know how hard it would be to make French Onion Soup from scratch, so you looked up a Youtube video on it. The sidebar recommended Binging with Babish <\/em>and Alex French Guy Cooking<\/em> and French Cooking Academy<\/em> (all excellent, by the way).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of a sudden, you’re subscribed to a dozen great cooking channels giving you hours of video every week. You feel compelled to at least watch a few, because, hey, you subscribed. There’s like, some sort of obligation there, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe that last one wasn’t you (hint: it was me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullet Journal Habit Tracking<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"bullet<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Little things become habits really fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Habits expand to fill those gaps in your day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were to ever stop and take stock of this, you’d find several hours a day you could have been learning piano. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Netflix series alone commits you to 60 meaningless hours of your life: gone forever.<\/em><\/strong> Sixty hours can get you through the beginner stage—easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask yourself, was that worth it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In twenty years, will you think it was worth it when you still haven’t even sat down at the piano, and now it feels too late? (It’s not too late; this is just another excuse.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe you’re thinking: but turning my brain off after a stressful day, watching something I don’t care about is exactly what I need to sleep better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting frustrated learning the fingering of a B-flat scale is the opposite of relaxing (seriously, that’s a messed up scale compared to literally all the others).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ve answered the why<\/strong><\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Netflix series does have value to you. You’re doing it with intention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t cross that off your list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it’s that Twitter hour in the morning you can cut back on. Maybe right now isn’t<\/em> the time to learn an instrument, and that’s okay, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intention is what matters.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’m not advocating everyone use this method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was actually just an extremely long-winded introduction to say I’m getting intentional about a few things I haven’t questioned for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every year, I put up a Goodreads tracker on the blog to show my progress on reading 52 books a year. For something like five years, I’ve read 60+ books a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a young, immature writer, this was hugely<\/strong><\/em> important to my development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I learned about prose style, genre conventions, story structure, characterization, dialogue, etc, I was constantly testing it against a huge variety of books. I saw people who followed convention, people who didn’t, if it worked, and why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, when I started this practice, it was extremely useful. It had value to me. I did it with intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, I’ve re-evaluated this practice. I’m getting rid of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Imposed Stress<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At this point, I find myself stressing about reading books I don’t enjoy just to check off an arbitrary counter. I’m obviously going to still read, but it will be more intentionally chosen and at whatever pace fits that book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And let’s face it. I’ll probably still get through 40+ books a year. I’m just not going to have the stress associated with it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get that I’m being a bit hypocritical or even egotistical with this because I will continue to recommend other writers do the high volume method. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think most writers greatly undervalue the process of critical reading for the improvement of their writing. Quantity trumps quality until you reach a certain threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another intentional practice is that I’m cutting out forced blog posts and only doing ones that I think add true value to the blog: no more stressing about “Examining Pro’s Prose<\/a>” or “Found Clunkers.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of my most read and liked posts were one-off things I was inspired to write anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve gotten intentional about a few other personal things that don’t need to be discussed here. But I thought I’d give a bit more explanation about some of the changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"bullet<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What is a Bullet Journal?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I know, after all this, I still haven’t told you how to do this. I first urge you to not search for these online. They will only stress you out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People draw fancy title pages and set up highly organized pages with themes. They use tape and stickers and markers and fountain pens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People have fancy multi-colored spreads with professional drawing skills and calligraphy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ignore all of this!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bullet journal can and should be easy. I use no colors, special pens, drawings, or even rulers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My version has three parts: Monthly Pages at the front (Future Log in traditional lingo), the month at a glance, and then the daily pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Month Level<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The organization is simple. As things come up or as I set goals, I add these to the Monthly Pages. For example, if I want to finish writing the rough draft of a book in May, I find the box marked “May” and add a bullet point: “Finish rough draft of Book X.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When May comes around, I go to the first blank page and write numbers down the side for each day of the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I transfer all the stuff I wrote in the May box onto the days for a concrete finishing date. Maybe I think I can be done by the 25th, so I write “Finish rough draft” on the line marked the 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Month at a Glance” page has everything from appointments to goals. It lets me divide the month into manageable goals, and I can make sure it all seems doable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day Level<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, every morning, I do the “dailies.” This is just a daily to-do list. I look at the month at a glance and transfer anything for the day onto the list, and then add goals for the day that are needed to hit all the monthly planned things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I need to average 800 words\/day to get to the rough draft deadline. One of my goals for the day will be “Write 800 words in Book X.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes you can see you won’t get to everything. If that happens, the brilliance of the system is “migration.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe, I’m traveling and I know I won’t get to writing 800 words. I put a forward arrow to mean I’m going to do that in the future. This “crosses it off” the list and gives me peace of mind to complete the other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as soon as I do that, I make sure I actually transfer that to some time in the future. Maybe I put “write 1600 words” for the next day, or just up the words to “1000 words” for a few days until the number gets made up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can also put a backward arrow meaning it got migrated backward to the Monthly Pages. This just means the whole project gets shifted to a future month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullet Journaling Visuals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I know that seems like a lot to take in, so here’s an overview in video form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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