5 reasons to use multiple bullet journals

複数のバレットジャーナルを使うべき5つの理由

Should you keep all your notes in one notebook, or should you use multiple notebooks to organize different types of notes? This is a question I get asked often, and I ran into a similar challenge recently while I was packing up for a really important trip. Hi, I’m Ryder Carroll, inventor of the Bullet Journal Method. In this video, I’ll share five reasons why you may want to use more than one notebook to organize your life and a couple considerations of sticking to one. If you ever wondered how to keep your life organized across multiple notebooks without losing the plot, this video is for you. Let’s dive in. Let’s start with one of the most practical reasons to use multiple notebooks, separating work and personal life. This choice often boils down to knowing who actually owns your notebook, you or the company you work for. That answer isn’t always obvious. In many organizations, anything that documents company specific information may legally belong to the company. This seems obvious for work laptops, for example, but it can also apply to the notebook that you’re writing in at work. Even if you bought it yourself before you started working there, it’s not seen as private property. It’s seen as theirs. So, make sure your notebook remains your mirror for your mind and not a peepphole for your employer. If you’re not sure if this is a requirement at your workplace, just check with your HR or legal department. So, should you use separate notebooks for your work and your home life? If your employer can claim your notebook, I would suggest using two notebooks. Otherwise, I still suggest using one for both. Why? In short, I think this work life balance is a myth. It’s all just your life. If you’re anything like me, when you’re at home, you’re thinking about work, and when you’re at work, you’re thinking about stuff at home. Chances are, you want to have one place to capture all your thoughts. I don’t want to have to keep deciding over and over again where to write what down. When this is the case, I also risk forgetting where my notes are, but as always, the choice is up to you. Most people go through about 1 to four bullet journals a year. That said, there are projects that may span multiple years. Here are three examples where one dedicated longive notebook makes more sense. First, a fitness tracker. Be it distance, weight, reps. Tracking your progress metrics may not require a lot of space. So, so one notebook can last years. I’ve done this to track my workouts in a pocket notebook, which was also much more convenient because of its small form factor. Second, long educational arcs like pursuing a master’s or a doctorate. You may want to use one notebook to organize all the information that focuses on your thesis. Third, multi-year creative projects like writing a book. You may want a separate notebook where all your thoughts and ideas about that book go. These longer lived notebooks can also be powerful objects that keep us anchored over the long term simply by virtue of their physical nature. You see the things sitting on your shelf and it reminds you of that project. Which brings us to the next reason. The simple act of opening a notebook primes your mind to pay attention. It’s a signal to focus on what you will write about. Maybe it’s work or school or how you’re feeling. This is why we can also use notebooks to create separate contexts. Building on the earlier example, I could have a notebook just for the context of writing a book. When I open that notebook, I create a mental container focused on that project. Another common example is having a separate notebook for long form journaling. So when people sit down with that notebook, it’s for the purpose of exploring their emotions. Another great example is having a separate notebook just for venting. It’s like a rage room with writing, if you will. It’s where you can say the meanest, most petty, grim, hopeless things that come to mind. It’s just a great way to get these things out of your system without hurting anyone or polluting the rest of your notebooks. You open it up, you break things, then you simply close it and get on with your life. Personally, I use one notebook for all this stuff. Again, I just like having everything in one space. That said, I also really see how powerful could be to break long-term goals into separate objects. And I think that if that’s a way that helps you organize your projects better and tackle them more effectively, by all means, separate your notebooks. Each notebook can become a doorway into a specific part of yourself. Not only that, they can also help you create snapshots of who we were at different points in time. Before we get into that though, if you’re liking this video so far, please be sure to like and subscribe. It really means a lot. Thank you. Now, we’ve come full circle. So, what notebook did I end up choosing to bring on that trip I mentioned earlier? I chose a separate notebook, one of our pocket bullet journal notebooks. Why? Because I knew this experience would be exceptional. Literally, the exception to my everyday life. This was something so singular, so far removed from every other part of my day-to-day that it made sense to keep it on its own. Not only could I reference the experience later, just seeing it on my shelf brings back where I was during that time, what I learned. You know, you hear that saying, a picture may speak a thousand words, but an object can hold a thousand memories. Now, could I have taken notes for that event in my main notebook? Absolutely. That said, I really like using these pocket notebooks as self-contained dots on the larger timeline of my life. I don’t do this very often, so when I do, they stand on their own. That’s also why I don’t copy any of that information back into my main notebook. They are their own thing. The only real issue I run into doing it this way is that there’ll be chunks of my timeline missing from my primary bullet journal notebook. But that’s a problem easily solved with one more type of notebook. Now, this is a bit of notebook inception, but one of my favorite uses for a separate notebook is creating a notebook index. For those of you not familiar with BuJo, we create what we call an index to track our topics in our notebook. A notebook index takes this a step further. It becomes a map for our entire library of notebooks. There are two ways that you can go about this. The simplest way is to take a notebook, the pocket is perfect for this, and then list each notebook’s date range. Then below that, transcribe all the topics from its index below. Another more complicated version is that you could actually create a different notebook that’s based on topics. Personally, I find this more complex because in my use case, topics change constantly from notebook to notebook. Now, this may seem like a lot, but it only takes a few minutes for each notebook, and the result is that you have a way of quickly locating any topic at any time across the entire library of your life. I did a whole video about this over here. I think this is time well spent. I think that it can be a really powerful tool to have a way of tracking what you were paying attention to over time, which also helps us clarify what we will pay attention to next. As I said earlier, I usually encourage people to start their bullet journal practice using only one notebook. It keeps things simple, especially when you’re first starting out. But as you can see here, there are really solid use cases for using more than one. So, how do you know when it’s time to add another? This brings me to a much more important point about bullet journaling as a practice. When it comes to tools like a notebook, there’s often a big difference between what we think we want and what time reveals that we actually need. That difference only reveals itself through experience. Start with one tool that checks two boxes. It’s useful and you actually use it. Now, this may seem obvious, but most tools don’t check both. We find things that are helpful but too complicated to sustain or fun but ultimately don’t move the needle at all. This logic applies to notebooks as well. I only used one notebook until I didn’t have a tool to help me track multiple notebooks in the library of my life. So, I added another notebook. It’s proven both useful and I use it. Many think of notebooks as a way to capture our past. Yes. But we don’t spend all those hours to stay there. The whole point of filling our notebooks is to author a better future. That’s ultimately the only question that matters. Will this notebook help me write a better life? If the answer is yes, go for it. If the answer is unclear or you would like to learn more about how to write a better life, consider checking out the bullet journal foundation plan. There, my team and I run live weekly, monthly planning sessions designed to help you get the most out of your notebooks. You can scan the code here or and I’ll leave the link below. And if you’d like to learn more about how a pocket notebook might be able to fit into your life, watch this video next. Thank you for taking the time. See you in the next one.

Join the Bullet Journal Foundation plan: https://bulletjournal.com/products/foundation-plan Turquoise Notebook Gift Set: https://bulletjournal.com/products/turquoise-gift-set Is it best to keep one notebook or multiple? If you’re thinking about making the jump to using a second notebook there are some important considerations to make first. Here are my recommendations for when to add another notebook, and equally as important, when not to. Use the #bulletjournal method to write a better life. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 One Notebook Or Two? 00:31 Work vs. Personal Notebooks 01:59 Project Notebooks 03:15 Notebooks for Collections 04:43 Notebooks for Trips & Events 05:57 Master Notebook Index 07:10 How I Manage Multiple Notebooks GET STARTED: The Pocket: https://bulletjournal.com/products/pocket The Notebook: https://bulletjournal.com/products/edition-2?variant=40267818467425 The Bullet Journal Pen – https://bulletjournal.com/products/the-bujo-drehgriffel The Book: https://bulletjournal.com/pages/book LEVEL UP YOUR BULLET JOURNAL: Foundation Course: https://bulletjournal.com/products/foundation-plan Transformation Cohort: https://bulletjournal.com/products/transformation-plan Weekly Newsletter: https://bulletjournal.com/pages/newsletter SOCIALS IG: https://www.instagram.com/bulletjournal/ Tik Tok – https://www.tiktok.com/@bulletjournalmethod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bulletjournal Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.co.uk/bulletjournal/_created/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rydercarroll USEFUL VIDEOS AND PLAYLISTS: How to Bullet Journal Playlist – https://bit.ly/37wG8S1 What is the Bullet Journal Method – https://youtu.be/o4kueYhGEc8 The Bullet Journal Course – https://youtu.be/iYh6xo7wmO8 Tips and Tricks Playlist – https://bit.ly/39amaN6 Questions and Answers Playlist – https://bit.ly/37wG6cR