The Ultimate Method To Take Control Of Your Life in 2023 - Ryder Carroll
01:55:38 Share

Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

What you're about to hear is an interview with Ryder Carroll, who is the inventor of the bullet journal method.

Ryder is incredibly inspiring. He has ADD, which caused various problems for him in childhood. Throughout his career as a web and user interface designer,

he found various different tools that he could use to stay productive and those tools are what eventually morphed into the bullet journal method which is now world famous he's written a book called the bullet journal method which is new york times bestseller in the conversation we talk about how he came across the method how he discovered it and how various people over time have used the method

to level up their own intentionality and mindfulness and productivity. - But ultimately that's what you're trying to do as a designer is help people create tools that remove some kind of friction from somebody's life. And eventually what was so funny is that the tool that I was using to organize myself was the thing that would ultimately become the tool that I could share.

All right, Ryder, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This is like super weird coincidence. So I started bullet journaling about a month ago and I mentioned it in my newsletter and you happened to read my newsletter or see my newsletter and then you like just sort of tweeted at me and then we got talking and here we are in London like a few weeks later. Like,

Firstly, thank you so much for coming down. Absolutely. It's going to be interesting. So, like, so much stuff to talk to you about. I'd love to talk about kind of the origin of the bullet journal stuff and, I guess, what you're doing these days. But I guess, like, you know, how...

When you connect the dots looking back, how did all of this start? How did you end up the inventor of this bullet journal thing, which probably most people listening to this will have heard of, if not tried out? Yeah, I would say the origin story, as with most things, is necessity. So I grew up learning disabilities back before the internet, where the only tool I had available to me was pen and paper.

And so I started trying to figure out ways to be organized and productive. And I tested out everything I possibly could, and I had no resources available to me, right? You can't look something up, like how do I ADD? And that's just not there. So I started developing different templates, different approaches, different tools, most of which didn't work. And then every once in a while, something did, and then something more and something more. And then you do that for 20 years, and you start coming up with a system.

where all these different tools start working on top of one another. So I invented the bullet journal method as you know it now because I needed it and I still need it. I need it all the time. People always have this misconception that I'm like some super hyper productive human being and it's not the case. I created this tool because there were challenges that I had but they were different than the ones I thought.

which we can get into a little bit. So I guess just as a bit of context for people who might not have heard about the bullet journal method, like what is it in a nutshell? And then we can kind of explore origin story and like the arc of... Sure. Yeah. I like to describe it as a...

mindfulness practice that's disguised as a productivity system so it helps you organize what you're doing but more importantly it helps you clarify why you're doing what you're doing so it revolves much more around purpose than process but it provides both that's interesting because like i've i've been hearing about it on the grapevine for years i think i first read it about read about it on lifehacker or something like classic and in my mind it was just like oh it's it's

It's a productivity system. The word mindfulness would have been very low on the list of things that I would have used to describe it before I knew about the thing. What's going on there? Is that a common reaction that you hear? It's a common reaction because...

A lot of people initially with bullet journal, when they get to know about it, comes through social media, which is great. And it's both a blessing and a curse in that, like a lot of people, see a bullet journal. But when you encounter something on Instagram or Pinterest, generally speaking, that audience is much more visual. So chances are their interpretations will also focus on the visual aspect of bullet journaling, which means that it can be very creative interpretation or expression of bullet journaling, which is

completely unnecessary. So a lot of people see these incredibly decorated, beautiful bullet journals and like, that's what bullet journaling is. But it can be, to me and to a lot of other people, there's a lot that's lost when you see it online. So I understand why people are like, oh, it's like an artistic notebook. It can be, but that's really...

That's really what I try to get across with a lot of my work. It's trying to figure out what you need it to be. That's the essence of bullet journaling. It's like trying to develop a tool based on a very specific intention. So that's where I like to focus all my work is what is the intention? What problem are you trying to solve? What goal are you trying to accomplish? And then assembling the tools around that.

If that makes sense. That's where the mindfulness comes on. Why do you need to get organized? What do you need to get organized about? That kind of thing. I feel like productivity and process often, I think, comes before the purpose. And that's a huge issue. At least it was for me. As I was developing this methodology, I was kind of guilty of the same thing. If I become productive, then I will accomplish my goals. Okay, great. What happens after you accomplish your goal?

Not much, right? Not much. It's like, it's done. But when you accomplish your goals in service of something bigger, whatever that is, right? Then all of a sudden it's meaningful. And that was the missing part for me. So you grew up with ADD. What is that like? What is that like? I think it's the best way I like it. The best way I can describe it is like trying to catch the rain. That's the best metaphor I can come up with. It's like,

Everything seems important and you don't know what to focus on. Is it this thing? Is it this thing? Is it this thing? Is it this thing? So you spend all your time trying to catch everything and then everything falls through the cracks. So that was my challenge, like trying to catch the rain. And then my, the challenge was that that's impossible and trying to solve for that challenge is also impossible. And over, over time, I guess what I started to realize is,

is trying to understand why you're standing in the first place. Like, what is it that you're trying to do? What is meaningful to you? And then trying to organize around that, like having a core organizing principle before you find the system, if that makes sense.

How did you go about doing that, I guess, before the system developed? Well, sure. The system actually helped me make that realization, which is interesting. At first, it helped me become really focused and productive. It accomplished those things, check, check. That's also why the productivity part of Bullet Journal, I think, was the thing that caught on really quickly because as soon as people start doing it, they get things done, things just start happening.

And once you start doing it for a while, something shifts. You hear this often. And it was interesting, which was something we can get into. Like you start as a productivity method and then all of a sudden something changes. It's not like how to organize something, but it's like, why is this important? The question shifts, you know, it's like, okay, I'm getting more done, but I'm not feeling any better or more accomplished. And it's like, okay, so why are you doing those things? Like, I don't really know.

It's like, okay, maybe that's the question you begin with. And for me, to provide a very clear example, for me, I created this methodology to help me become a lot more productive, right? I accomplished my goals one after the other. I got the raise, I got the position, I got the thing and it was never enough, right? It's like, okay, maybe it's just the next step. It's the next step. And every time I took the next step, I found myself in the same place, which is like, there's gotta be something else. There's gotta be something more.

And this was very much in the corporate ladder. And then I'm like, okay, maybe the problem is that I'm working for other people. So maybe I should work for myself and start my own company, which is something that I ended up doing. For two years, me and this other guy created this startup. And this was on top of our full-time job. So we did the whole startup thing, you know, like sleeping under the desk, ordering pizza, all that stuff for years. And then we launched this product and it was successful.

And it didn't matter. It didn't make me feel any better. The work was great because I love doing the work. I love design work. I love figuring out problems and all these things. But when it finally launched, it didn't matter. And I'm like, why don't I feel any better? It's like, I thought I wanted this and I clearly I don't. So what is it that I actually want? What do I care about? And all of a sudden there's a big question mark there. And I realized that I was accomplishing other people's goals. It's like as a designer,

The whole thing is to have your own design company or to have your own product or to be the art director. And I did all those things and all that wasn't true, right? It was, I accomplished other people's goals and realized that it didn't mean much to me. So all of a sudden I had the system to help me become super productive. But then all of a sudden I took this system and started focusing it on, I would say, like my inner life, right? What is it that I want? And start focusing the same tools as...

my own productivity tools as to becoming more productive with my own, I guess, self-awareness. And that's where it became super interesting, noticing my own patterns. What do I respond to? What do I not respond to? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? And that's where it became really interesting. Okay. Loads more questions on that front. Before we go there, so what was the day job? And then how did that transition to the startup? Like, what was that arc? Sure. So I...

I guess you could say that I was a UX designer for most of my career. Started in the early website design stuff when that wasn't common, actually. I mean, I'm probably dating myself here. What year were we talking? I would say early 2000s. Okay, yeah. So people didn't really have personal websites, but that was happening. So I started designing a lot of websites for small businesses. And then eventually I started designing websites for bigger and bigger businesses. Yeah.

And then I started designing web tools, like actual apps. And that's kind of what I focused on. I liked this idea of creating systems that help people accomplish things.

And a lot of that systems thinking actually went back into the analog space because I found that and very much part of the development of Bullet Journal was like the idea of like applying a certain set of principles to my own life and then actually treating my life as a product was a really interesting shift, right? Like what are the challenges? What are the bugs? What are the features? Yeah.

and tackling it that way. Nice. Yeah, I think, so I, I think I, I did, I did, I built my first website in like 2006 and I remember, um, kind of,

It was in the computer room at school. Some kid had right-clicked on the Google homepage and clicked View Source, like Internet Explorer 4 or whatever it was at the time. And I was like, whoa, this guy's a hacker because he could see all the code and things. And I was like, all right, cool, copy-paste.html. I'll be like, why isn't the image showing? It's like, oh, okay, cool. I need to reference the image locally. And started tinkering with stuff and then got into the world of like, yeah,

trying to design websites for small businesses to make five, $10 here and there, trying to undercut everyone in India who was trying to do the same thing. Were you working for yourself, working for an agency? What did that look like in the early days? At first I was working for myself. And then I started working as a permalance or a different, actually fashion companies who were putting more and more emphasis on their web presence. So they had like very basic sites and then they hired people like me to kind of

zip it up a little bit, right? You know, I had interactive shopping experiences or have digital campaigns like falling snow and winter landscapes and make it a little bit more creative. And so you did that for a few years and then decided to do the startup alongside. Yeah, a few years. I did that for like 10 years. And then, yeah. So at some point I got to be like a senior art director at a major fashion company specifically for web. And then that wasn't it, right? I thought I'd wanted this thing.

And it didn't, you know, the work was fine and I was grateful for it, but it wasn't necessarily fulfilling. So that's when I was kind of like,

hmm, maybe it's time for me to work for myself because I put an incredible amount of hours for other people's dreams. And it wasn't even people. It's just kind of like a huge corporation in an industry that I wasn't particularly interested in. This was just a job. So I'm like, okay, let's have something a little bit more personal, something that might be more meaningful to me and I'll create my own company. So me and

what became a friend of mine, but at the time was just the developer. He had an idea, which was to create like paint by numbers 2.0. Are you familiar with paint by numbers? Yeah. So yeah,

He created an algorithm that would take a photograph and then create a custom paint-by-number map. And so we did that, and we'd get a custom paint set and everything. And so you could paint a picture of your kids or your dog or something like that. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it was a really cute product. And we worked on it, and it was a lot of interesting problems to solve. And we were proud of the product, but it's like...

I don't know, just paint by numbers. That wasn't it for me, right? This is a cute product. I'm proud of what we did. It was high quality, but it just wasn't interesting as a business. It wasn't fulfilling to me. And yeah, so I learned a lot in that time, like creating and launching my own business. And I realized that it had...

that it was empty. There was something missing and that's what happened later. So we sold the company because both of us felt the same way. He felt the same way. It was really interesting. We had this kind of existential crisis simultaneously. We were proud of what we had done and we were done with it. So it's like, what happens next? So when did you sell the company? I would say probably maybe 2008, something like that. Okay.

Yeah. So you sell the company in 2008, like what happens next? I continue to do work as a permalancer, I guess, all over the place, working for companies that I thought were interesting. I tried to go more for big digital agencies because one thing I did like is having a variety of different types of things to work on. But then I started also volunteering for a lot of tech non-for-profits and that's where things started to shift, right? Because like

I had volunteered before and that was fine. But all of a sudden when I realized that I could use my tech skills at scale, that was interesting. At scale then? Yeah. So I spent an hour working here. I helped two people. I spend an hour working here and the tech that I'm working on can serve 20,000 people.

And that was a really interesting concept that never occurred to me. It's like we shipped this one feature that I designed and all of a sudden there's housing available for 10,000 people, you know, or easier, that kind of thing. And that was really fascinating. And that felt very different. That felt very meaningful. So like this little thing that I was working on on the side, like helping these startups, some of which made it, some of which didn't, was just significantly more fulfilling than my day job.

I'm like, God, I wish I could do something like this full time. Because, you know, as a designer, I don't know how it was like for you, but a big part of this is like, I want to solve people's problems, right? And in web design, it's like, sure, like getting insurance faster is solving somebody's headache. I mean, some of these problems weren't necessarily interesting, but ultimately that's what you're trying to do as a designer is help people create tools that remove some kind of friction from somebody's life.

And eventually what was so funny is that the tool that I was using to organize myself and orient myself was the thing that would ultimately become the tool that I could share and would help the most amount of people with any of the work that I would end up doing. What did it feel like? So...

Having a job where you're doing the thing that you enjoy, like you're using your skills, but it feels unfulfilling compared to doing the same thing and it feels fulfilling just because of the, I guess, the industry that you're working in. If you're helping people get housing, that I imagine feels much more rewarding than helping someone spend more money on a fashion website, for example. Yeah, buy another set of pants. Yeah. So what does that feel like? Like what...

And I guess I'm asking because I've been in the fortunate positions as to not really have had a job that felt unfulfilling in some way. Because I went straight from medical school into medicine, into this YouTube stuff. All of which I feel I just ticked the fulfilling box along the way in varying degrees. So yeah, what's that like where you're doing the thing you love, but you're not doing it for the reason that you care about? I think it's...

I think people just have this realization at some point that their career is not really fulfilling. You know, you have these, all these goals and sometimes you accomplish those goals so quickly that that momentum can, can,

remove a little bit of the existential terror of like looking at what you're doing really deeply and it's like is this meaningful is this what i want to do it's like okay well i got the raise cool like i'll you know buy a house and then you focus on the house and then you can fix up the house and like meanwhile like your life keeps going and it keeps going so there's ways to distract yourself from it but i mean you hear this thing called the midlife crisis and i feel like

That's the moment that most people ask that question. You know, for me, I think I don't know if I had my midlife crisis early, but I feel like at some point the distractions go away and then there's this kind of subtle reckoning where you're like, this doesn't mean anything to me. Right. And having that moment.

I think this is part of the human experience and there's nothing particularly wrong with that. It's what happens next that I find really interesting, right? And how do you avoid having that moment? It's just like, I think if you don't ask yourself these questions regularly, eventually they will appear, right? But if you do, you can kind of

Figure this process out. Like what is meaningful to you? What is your, what are your values? You ask in small little steps and you start becoming familiar and you approach your life with curiosity instead of this moment where you're like, oh my God, everything's meaningless and I don't know what I'm doing. And this is like massive self judgment.

And yeah, I found it so much more helpful to kind of tack, as I said, kind of treat my life as a product or as this big experiment and start asking myself, like, what am I curious about? Is this meaningful? And how do I have more of this? How do I have less of this? And approach it from a very systematic perspective, right? Like the whole thing with the bullet journal method is...

I would say the thing that's lost is what happens off the page, which is most of it. It's the way that you think about your life that changes. And that's really the exciting part for me, but that's hard to share with people. It is, yeah. So what sort of tools were you using to stay productive before it coalesced into the method? Everything. I was like a hopeless early adopter. It's like a new app, I'd be on it immediately. And

Sometimes it helped me here or sometimes it helped me there, but it's, I don't know. I mean, you name it, I probably used the app, I used the system, I used all of it. And what's funny is that I learned so much more after I started sharing like Bujo work, right? People are like, oh, have you heard of David Allen? I'm like, no, I hadn't. I probably should have at some point, but like all these great thinkers in the space and I'm like, okay, what do they say about this stuff? And

It's been really exciting for me because I'm as much of a student of all this stuff as I am a teacher.

So yeah, I continue to use stuff all the time. You know, like I love this stuff. It's fun. It's like, okay, how do I make more, how do I better use of my time? And so what were the dots that connected for you to result in that? Oh, this is, this is the pen and paper based method that I have found the most, most helpful. Like having, having tried these like thousand different things. Okay. So there are a couple of things there. One is,

It's not done, which is the fun part, right? Like here are the, here's the minimum viable product. That's kind of what I share with people. Like you're the fewest amount of tools I found to be successful over the longest period of time. Try them on for size and see if they work for you. Um,

I think that I never intended on sharing this. So maybe we can approach it from that angle. What happened was that people always saw me sitting down with a notebook, especially as somebody that's a digital native and working in digital design. People are like, you always have a notebook. What are you doing in there? I'm like, well, thinking. That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out stuff, drawing, whatever. It's a canvas. Yeah.

And then people would be like, well, so how would you deal with this problem? Or how would you deal with this problem? Or how would you organize this? And I would show them like one piece of the methodology or at that time, just what I was doing. And I found over and over again that no matter what their background was, it would be useful, especially for people who only did things online. And I was like, huh, maybe I should share some of this stuff. And that's kind of what ended up

incentivizing me to coalesce everything to share it. And so I stripped everything out but the most helpful tools, the things that had worked over the longest period of time. And a lot of that's just about writing down your thoughts. That's the core of it. In Bullet Journal, you write down three things, the things you have to do, the things that you experience, and the things you don't want to forget.

And then you come back to those things in regular intervals. That's the greatly diminished version of bullet journaling. It's writing things down and reading what you wrote and trying to connect the dots over time. So those three things were writing down what you have to do. Tasks, events, and notes. Tasks, events, and notes. Okay. Yeah, I guess that's kind of what mine looks like as well. Because so I guess...

You must get this a lot, but I first, I mean, I'd heard of the method like years ago on some random productivity blog or something. I always thought, oh, interesting. Like, I'll file that in for later to try at some point.

And then my friend Matt D'Avella did a video recently where he tried bullet journaling. I was like, oh, okay, interesting. Like it's not too artsy-fartsy like I sort of imagined it would be. And then I started watching a few other videos about it. I was like, oh, this actually is really helpful. Like I need a way to look at my year for the whole year because I think like the problem with Google Calendar is that like it's –

forces you to think very zoomed in and if you try and zoom out like something you can't see anything at all because now it's just little dots on a thing and oh this this like future log thing seems great oh like month at a glance yeah i'd love that that'll be really helpful just being able to see my calendar at glance and figure out like you know where where do i have blocks in my calendar where i should probably take some time off and go on holiday or something and

Oh, you know, this daily thing of like actually figuring out what your most important task is for the day or what tasks you have to do. I was sort of doing a version of that. And so we released our own like stationary line, which where it's like every day is a page and it asks you three things you're grateful for. It asks you what's your most important task. And there's sort of the might to do list things that you might you might want to do with like a little brain dump area. And I was like, I'm also I'm already kind of using this this sort of most important task method. Let's let's try this bullet journal thing.

Then I came across the book and I listened to the book on Audible. I think that might have been a mistake because it was hard to imagine what was going on when just listening to it on Audible.

And so I think that that's one of the tricky things about this, because I guess it's, it is somewhat visual, but I guess like with, with that caveat in mind. So like, what are the, like the core principles, I guess, of, of the method. Um, and obviously people will put links to the book, which I recommend not getting on audible because then you can, you can, you can see what's going on when you get it on Kindle or in, or in real life. It really helps to see what's being talked about for sure. Um, okay. Yeah.

Tasks, events, notes. Tasks, events, and notes. So I'm trying to think of a way to have a non-visual version of describing this. I think the best way to think about it is writing down your thoughts in a really distilled way. So a lot of people know how powerful journaling can be, right? They hear about...

all the mental health benefits that it can have. And I very much encourage long form journaling, but it takes a lot of time, right? And a lot of people see it only as an emotional thing, right? It's like I journal when I'm confused or when I'm sad or when I'm angry, and that can be helpful. And then you have bullet lists, which essentially are for very specific things. This is what I have to buy. These are my goals. These are all these things. So bullet journaling kind of combines the best of both worlds.

where it helps you organize your thoughts as bulleted lists. That's one component. There's two parts of the bullet journal method, the system and the practice. The system is how you organize information. And then the practice is more about what you do with what you write down. I like to say that, you know, writing things down is only the beginning.

So you write down the things that you experience. So your events, the things that you don't want to forget, which are your notes, and then your tasks, things that are actionable, right? Okay. Sorry, please. Go ahead. And each one of those has a different icon in front of it. So as you're writing things down, you're also categorizing your thoughts in real time.

And the only way to make that sustainable is figuring out a way to write down less, right? You're really trying to focus on what really matters and that is part of the practice, right? You're listening to somebody and you're like, it focuses, it helps you become an active listener, right? It's like, what about this is the takeaway specifically? So you're starting to think about what's being said in a very different way because like hearing and listening are two very different things. So it's like, what about this is important, right?

And then using your own words to capture it and that process as well, like using your own words helps you retain it better and helps you make it more personal, all these things. And you're doing this throughout the day. So information that's coming from the outside being filtered through your brain and then being added to your bullet journal. So that's like a big part of it, capturing things.

You record. So the bullet journal method works in a cycle, which is record, reflect, refine, and respond. And those are like the four steps. So you record by writing things down. Then you reflect on the things that you wrote down and try to come up with insights and different takeaways. And then you take action accordingly, right? That's essentially what you're trying to do. The bullet journal creates both

a framework for you to organize your information, but also how to think about your information and then make all that insight actionable. That's the big part. Like what do you do with what you learn?

All right, we're just going to take a quick break from the podcast to introduce our sponsor, which is very excitingly Huel. I have been a paying customer of Huel since 2017. So it's been about six years now that I've been using Huel fairly regularly. I started eating Huel in my fifth year of medical school. And I've been using Huel regularly ever since because, you know, I like to be productive. I've, you know, my calendar is full with a lot of things. And often I

don't have the time or don't make the time to have a particularly healthy breakfast or a particularly healthy lunch. My favorite flavor is salted caramel because for 400 calories, you get 40 grams of protein, which is absolutely insane. And you also get a decent healthy mix of carbohydrates and fiber and fat, along with 26 different vitamins and minerals, which are all very good for the

There's nine different flavors of this to choose from. My favorite is the banana version and also the salted caramel version. So what I do is I take my two scoops, I put them into my NutriBullet blender type thing, although you can just use a normal shaker if you want. I mix it up normally with water, but a little bit of milk to add a bit more of a milkshake like consistency to it. And then I just sip that while I'm on my desk doing my work in the morning. And it ensures that I get a very healthy breakfast in that's nutritionally complete rather than some high sugar cereal, which is what I would have defaulted to instead.

Also, Huel is ridiculously reasonably priced. Like a meal for 400 calories comes out to £1.68 per meal, which is super, super cheap compared to what the alternative would be if you were ordering takeout, for example. Anyway, if you like the idea of getting these cheap and healthy and nutritionally complete meals in your diet, then head over to huel.com forward slash deep dive. And if you use that URL, huel.com forward slash deep dive, they will send you a free t-shirt, which are quite nice, and also a free kind of shaker bottle type thing with your first order. So thank you so much Huel for sponsoring this episode.

This episode is very kindly brought to you by Trading212. Now people ask me all the time for advice about investing because I've made a bunch of videos about it on the YouTube channel. And my advice for most people is generally invest in broad stock market index funds, which is exactly what you can do completely for free with Trading212. It's a great app that lets you trade stocks and funds and ETFs and foreign exchange if you really want to. And one of the great things about the app is that if you're new to the world of investing, you can actually invest with fake money. You don't have to

put real money in, they've got a practice mode where you invest fake money and then it actually tracks what the market is doing in real time. So you can see had I invested £100 into this thing, what would my return have been X weeks or X months further down the line. Once you've got some comfort with that, then it's super easy to deposit money into your Trading212 account. You can use Apple Pay like I do initially, or you can use a direct bank transfer. And then once the money is in your Trading212 account, then you can invest it in basically whatever you want.

Now, if you're based in the UK, you might be familiar with the concept of an ISA, which is an individual savings account, which is basically a tax-free wrapper that you can put money in. You can put 20,000 pounds in every year, up to 20,000 pounds, and it resets every April. And then all that money can grow and it's completely tax-free for the rest of your life.

And if you want to sign up for an ISA, you can sign up for one completely for free also on Trading212. So if you haven't yet filled up your ISA allowance or at least put some money into your ISA for this year, that might be a good step forward. The app also lets you auto invest, which is a great thing because then you can automatically invest a percentage of your paycheck into the thing every month. And so if you haven't yet started with investing and you want to give it a go, then you can download the app on the App Store. And if you use the coupon code Ali, A-L-I at the checkout, that will give you a totally free share worth up to £100.

It's available on iPhone and Android, and you can check it out by typing in Trading212 into your respective app store. So thank you so much, Trading212, for sponsoring this episode. So, yeah, so having listened to the book on Audible and sort of watching a few YouTube videos about this, one thing that I sort of took away, and I think I actually got this from the book, because initially I watched a few of these fancy artsy people with really cool spreads and stuff.

And then I listened to the book. I was like, oh, okay, this is actually simpler than I was kind of imagining it to be. And one of the things I really liked about it is that it's very, like, modular. Like, you can just...

slot in the modules or the pages that work for you and just get rid of the ones that don't. And so mine has, I mean, over the last like 30 days or so of doing this, it's really, well, it's evolved a fair bit and I imagine it will continue to evolve in terms of what I personally find useful. But I found that like, and I don't know if this is the actual notation, but I found that I use one symbol for like events. I use a symbol for tasks and I use them for notes, you know, and

I also do like morning pages in it. So like, you know, writing a few pages of by hand of just basic journaling, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking about some stuff related to the book and sort of brainstorming titles and things. And I have this at the start of the month.

a double page spread that has sort of things I'm grateful for and homework for life. Are you familiar with homework for life? So there's a book called story worthy by Matthew Dix best. Well, one of the best books I've ever read. Um, it talks about like how to become a better storyteller. And the idea is that every single day at the end of the day, you write down the most story worthy moment that happened that day, something that made this day different from any other. And you just write it down in a few words and he does it in like a Google sheet or something just so he's got the things. And I've been doing this on and off for a few years.

But I realized that, hey, if I'm using the bullet journal every day, which I now am, then tagging on this sort of just nightly journaling thing, just like, what was one thing that made today different? And so I've been doing that since September the 1st up until September the 21st. So I'm like a day out of date here. And it's been so nice to have a physical thing to kind of ground myself, weirdly. Like in the morning,

I get out the notebook and I'm like, what's my most important task for today? Cool. Can I feel, you know, can I be bothered to do the morning pages? Yeah. Depending on how I'm feeling. Sometimes I type it out. Sometimes I write it by hand and in the evening, you know, what are some things I'm grateful for and what is my story worthy moment? And it's sort of like bookends the day nicely in terms of the morning and the evening practice. Um, yeah, like, so the method is mindfulness disguises a productivity system. Yeah. Like,

From what we've talked about so far, task events notes, that doesn't feel like it would help you answer the question of like, why am I here on this earth? Yeah. So I think the best way to think about the bullet journal method as a whole is as your laboratory for life, right? And I like using a notebook because it's a blank page essentially, and you create whatever game or goal you want to play every day.

And what's beautiful about this methodology, it's powered by your intention. What is it that you're curious about? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? And then you start finding the tools that help support that. I provide a bunch of different tools to help you organize your thoughts and different rituals. So daily ritual, weekly ritual, monthly ritual, those kind of things to help you check in. But a big part of this is about self-discovery, right? So

For me, the thing that was so challenging growing up is people kept shoving productivity systems down my throat. Like, this will make you smart. This will make you more productive. But none of them worked the way that my mind worked.

And a big part about bullet journaling is discovering what works for you. And that changes all the time, which is what makes it relevant over time, right? Like when you're working nine to five, it's one thing. When you become a parent, it's another thing. When you start traveling, it's another thing. When you're reading this, it becomes a different thing, you know? And that's what keeps on making it relevant. So I provide a basic foundation that helps people.

keep everything on the rails, if you will. But then it's like your laboratory and you get to experiment with that. All of it revolves around thinking. Like that's a big part of it. How do you organize your thinking around your intention, around your values, around your curiosity? So we have tasks, events, and notes. That's the most basic piece of the puzzle, right? These are the things that are happening. And a lot of times people think notes are just

you know, this is what I have to do tomorrow. Or, you know, somebody likes the color blue, but for me, notes are like, what are you feeling? What's coming up? Right. So like, okay, I did this thing and I feel this way. And then we have rituals to come back to all of this content and be like, oh, that's interesting. I worked on this thing and I've been feeling sad all month.

Like this project that I thought was really exciting is actually just really bumming me out and it's not bringing me closer to what I want. And I wouldn't have noticed that unless I had read my own story. And that's what you're doing with bullet journaling. You're writing your own story and you're starting to realize when that story is not making sense or it's not the story you want to tell. And then every morning you wake up and you start telling that story anew. I found that I started, I've started writing those sorts of things recently. Oh, like,

Wednesday the 21st, so like two days ago, I wrote event podcast with Alex and Matteo, event podcast with Tim. This other thing that was canceled is something that was canceled. And I said that, oh, I did intermittent fasting 12 to 8 feeding window felt great. And I have never written down something like that before. I mean, except like the day before I was like, you know, let me actually write down how I'm feeling with this bullet journal type stuff.

And just the fact that I now have those two data points that, hey, I actually only ate in between 12 and 8 p.m. Felt pretty good. That's really useful for me to know because I probably would have thought that or felt that in the past. But the fact that I hadn't written it down means that it didn't register with me in some way. And now I'm like, oh, this intermittent fasting stuff really has something going for it. And today I had breakfast with my brother. So I didn't do that. So I'm curious as to how my kind of how my body feels and stuff when I don't do that. Yeah.

Okay, so we've got task events notes, which feels like kind of ground level, like here in the moment, like almost on a daily cadence, what are the tasks events notes? What other, I guess, modules or tools are there that help guide more like intentionality? Yeah, so essentially I would say that

the practice is more about intentionality. So every bullet journal, I always encourage people to set an intention. What is it that you want to learn about yourself, right? Or what challenge do you want to tackle? What goal or ambition do you have? And then a lot of your notes will be anchored around that. And so that's really helpful. And in order for that to work, you need rituals, right? I prefer the word rituals over habits because I feel like habits are

Like brushing my teeth.

which is why I think rituals are so much more important because a ritual is a set of behaviors that serves something meaningful and actually doing those things requires a lot of attention, right? So in Bullet Journal, we don't have habits, we have rituals. And we have daily rituals, weekly rituals, monthly rituals, yearly rituals, and they help us think at different time scales about our life, right? What's happening today might not have context yet. What's happening next week doesn't

It doesn't have context yet, but it will help you contextualize the days and monthly and so forth. So it helps us increase the resolution of both

our past and what we want in our future. We start identifying our own patterns by simply reading the story that we're writing down about our life. And when we realize it's like, oh, I really wish I knew about this, then all of a sudden you can just start taking notes from today onward about that. How are you feeling about your relationship? How are you feeling about your job? How is this project making you feel? So you become the author based on your intention, on your focus, and that shifts constantly. And that's why every bullet journal is completely unique to its author.

What are some rituals that you personally find helpful? I guess, daily, weekly, monthly, annual? Yeah. Writing is really important for me. So I have regular intervals of longer form journaling. So for me, longer form journaling is actually quite taxing, but it's also immensely helpful. So in my weekly ritual, I will have a longer journaling session about the week gone by. For my month, it'll be about the last four weeks, that kind of thing, a year or...

When I get to the end of my notebook, it's about the notebook. Like, what have I learned? And that's really helpful. So I've been doing a lot of that. That's a great ritual. Also, just taking the time to read what I wrote. Like, that's a very consistent ritual of mine, just sitting down at the end of the day and like, what do I need to do? What do I not need to do? That's another really important part about bullet journaling. We rewrite a lot of our content.

That's a big part where we call it migration. So every day, every week, every month, we pick our priorities and we also move things forward. And in that process, we make a choice about the things that we are going to keep in our lives and the things that we let go of. So having rituals where we say no regularly,

is a core part of bullet journaling. It's not about keeping never-ending to-do lists. It's about having a systematized way of curating your life on an ongoing basis based on how your priorities change, your circumstances change. So the rituals are there to recommit to things and let things go and reorganize, right? So not only are you moving your content, you're also...

incrementally changing the way that you organize your content. It's like not only what you're organizing, but how you're organizing it. It's like, oh, this collection is not really working. Like this health tracker isn't really doing anything for me. Why not? I don't know. And again, this gives us an opportunity to approach something with curiosity. Is this fitness routine not working for me? Or is it the way I'm organizing the fitness routine?

And it gives you an opportunity to ask that question and think about it and then take that insight and then improve it next month, next week. So it's an iterative approach to curating your life. I think that's something that I'm not doing consciously enough or like as consciously as I would want to just like really thinking of the intention behind the thing. Because I think...

Like one thing, one thing I have noticed these days is, you know, I have, I have my personal trainer sessions a few times a week. Um, but I never look forward to it and I'm always glad that it's over. And I feel like I said, sometimes the thought strikes me that, Hmm, this thing feels a bit grim. And like when he cancels on me, I'm just like, yes, thank God for that. Uh, and if I were more intentional about how I was feeling and like writing, writing that down, like if at the start of the month I would, I'd be like, or whenever, huh, I w I wonder how I feel about my gym sessions.

And then I would write down how I feel after each one. And then I'd think, okay, you know, what are some other ways to get exercise? I enjoy playing squash. How do I feel after a squash session? I feel freaking great. That's a sign to me that actually, do I really want to do this gym thing just for the sake of getting slightly bigger biceps? Probably not. Like, why don't I do something I actually enjoy? Is that sort of along the lines of what you mean by kind of being intentional about it? Bingo. You know, I think that a lot of us, myself included, fall into this

trap of like automating a lot of our lives or trying to. And then it's no surprise that a lot of the things you've automated feel meaningless or even worse, they feel like a real drain on your energy. You know, it's, it's, it's really hard to go to the gym for yourself. But when you realize that you're doing this thing because your health is at stake or like whatever, you're doing this exercise because you want to be around for your kids, like even a thing that's

feels meaningless to you all of a sudden gets a real sense of purpose. So taking a moment to think about why you're doing what you're doing regularly can help you reconnect to your purpose, your why, your value. So even the things that aren't fun, like nobody likes doing the dishes, right? Very few people, but it's a way for you to show your partner that you're committed to this relationship. So if you only focus on you not doing the dishes, no big deal. But if you focus on you wanting to like have a sustainable and

healthy relationship, you're like, okay, I know why I'm doing this. It doesn't make the dishes great, but it doesn't feel like a waste of time. And that's when things, I think, get really dangerous when you feel like things are a waste of time or they're meaningless. And some things are, and it's really important to stay aware of that. Sometimes we're just doing things because they snuck into our to-do list. And then even things that we were excited about become like, oh, I have to learn French now because...

Two years ago, I thought that was cool. And now I feel ashamed that I haven't done these classes, even though I'm not at all interested in learning French now. So you're just curating and letting go of things constantly based on your current circumstances.

So do you have, I guess, the term you use is collections for like the modules of the bullet journal kind of thing? So basically collections, you can think of them as a combination of folders and apps, but it's where you put all related content. So if it's about a project, chances are projects usually start as one idea, then two ideas, then three ideas over time. And then during one of the rituals, you start realizing like, oh, actually this is going to be a

great article. So I'm going to take all this stuff and put it into a collection. Or I'm going to start a project and I want to dump all my ideas in there. Immediately, you create a collection. Or I want to create a fitness tracker. You create a collection. So that's where you store related ideas. And then you have this thing called the index, which kind of speaks for itself, where you write down the name of that collection so you can quickly find it again later. And then you can quickly find all the projects and focuses in your life. Yeah.

Where, so this idea of like intentionality, where does that come into the system, I guess, if at all? Because I guess, yeah, like I think, this is a bit of a rambling thought, but I find that sometimes the system leads to the behavior that I want to

For example, the fact that I have a page called gratitude that I fill in every day. And the fact that I see a gap from yesterday means like, oh yeah, I should, I should, I should do this and, and, and fill that in. Whereas normally I might forget to keep track of, you know, things, the things I'm grateful for, or this homework for life thing where I, I write down something story worthy that happened yesterday.

The fact that I have the page as part of the system means I will, I'm doing the thing. So I guess kind of for me, what is something I can do in my bullet journal that would help me, I don't know, just be a bit more intentional, I guess, with, with how I'm spending my time. Well, I mean, it sounds to me like you are being quite intentional already. Yeah.

But a lot of it is just asking yourself questions. Is this serving me? Is this not serving me? The idea of the ritual is that you take the step back and just look at the things that you're working on. Is it serving you? Are you getting anything out of it? Why? Why not? And then based on that reflection, if you will, you make a choice. Do I continue doing this or do I not? And then you understand why. It's about being intentional about your actions and your decisions on a

ongoing basis because life changes and your focus and your priorities change. So it's about recommitting over and over again, letting things go. That's what's intentional for me. It's about aligning your actions with your values, with your beliefs, right? Over and over again because it changes.

So, for example, a gratitude log is wonderful, but it must serve a purpose, right? A lot of people do these things because they're told to. It's in the productivity space. You can spend all day doing your morning ritual, meditate three hours, do the ice bath, do journaling, everything. And if you don't know or you've had no connection to it, it won't feel meaningful. So,

For me, productivity is very much about experimentation to see what resonates with you and learning about yourself. It can serve as a mirror. And I find that the notebook is a great, it's a paper mirror, right? It's reflecting your choices back at you, which one of those are helping you lead the life that you want and which ones are not. And what are you going to do about that? And then you make a choice.

Do you migrate it? Do you not migrate it? What do you leave behind? What do you say yes to? What do you say no to? And you're doing that every day. So the choice doesn't become this major existential rabbit hole. It's like, oh my God, do I start this company or not? Yeah. Yeah.

Can you describe this process of migration, I guess, for people that might not be familiar with it? Yeah. So the biggest migration happens once a month. And essentially what you do is you go back through the previous month and you look at all the tasks that are still open. I've been doing this for a really long time and I've never gotten everything, every single thing done. So there's two options there. A lot of us are like, oh, wow, I'm lazy. I didn't do this stuff. And then you beat yourself up and that's the end of it. Or...

What I try to advocate for is ask yourself, why did this not get done? From a genuine part of curiosity and then a genuine place of curiosity. And then you start figuring out the reason. It was too big. It was too complicated. I don't care about this thing. And we use this thing called the filter where we ask ourselves three questions, right?

is this thing vital, right? Does this need to get done? And vital things are usually things that would get us in trouble, right? Rent, student loans, whatever. Then the second question is, does it matter? Does it matter to you or to someone that you love? Usually, it's easier to answer whether or not something matters to somebody that you love. But when it comes to us, it can be a little bit of a grayer area, right? Does this still matter to me? And it's a very

basic question but oftentimes you see that like the french lessons are a great great example it's like okay i've been migrating this thing month after month after month after month and i have to be honest with myself i don't care about learning french anymore and i can just let that go

Right. So does it matter? Yes or no. And you get to determine that. So you're being intentional about what you're recommitting to. And then the third question, if you don't know if it's vital or if it matters, are there any consequences for not doing it ever? It just changes the context around. And if you can't think of a single reason or a single consequence...

for not doing this thing, then chances are it's not vital and it doesn't matter. And then you actually just cross it off. You leave it behind. So once a month, you're making a choice of what you want to recommit to. And then you rewrite those things in your next monthly log.

So that way you're constantly curating the things that you're allowing into your life. Like in the bullet journal, your tasks aren't just stuff you have to do. These are all experiences waiting to be born because every action requires time and attention. This is how your life is constructed. This is how your life is built. So you're choosing what you want to.

your life to consist out of every month. And if something isn't even worth a moment to rewrite it, because people are always like, oh, wait, we have to rewrite stuff that's going to take way too much time. It's a waste of time. I'm like, if something's not worth a moment to rewrite it, then chances are it's not adding a lot of value to your life. So it's not really a bug. It's a feature.

Yeah, this was a big kind of firmware upgrade I had in my mind for this thing that like, exactly this thing that you just said, that it's not a bug, it's a feature. I think before I was, I had some friends who did better journaling. I was like, wait, what? Every month you like draw out the calendar for the month? What a waste of time. And you write down things that you like migrate them from the pre, like, screw that. And then I tried it. I was like, oh, I get it. Like, yeah.

the fact that I am writing down an event multiple times once in my annual log, once in my monthly log means that A, I look forward to it more and B, the ones that I don't look forward to, I'm like, wait a minute, why am I doing this thing? And so I say no to more things. I just looked at sort of the monthly thing that I did. I migrated from the previous month, sign up to new gym because I'm moving house. So I need to do that. Cancel subscription with current gym and

which I actually completely forgot about until I just read it now. So I would have in a week from now would have seen that and been like, oh crap, I actually need to do that. Get preemptive couples therapy with my girlfriend just because why not? I think that's important. Figuring a system for having lunch with the team. I think that's important. There was this thing I was thinking around, like, do I want to take a psychedelic? And I was like, I don't actually don't think that's important to me right now. So I could just cross that because I don't want to migrate it over and sign up for kickboxing.

I still think that would be a cool thing to do. I haven't signed up yet. So I'll just migrate it over to the next month, which will be, I guess, October. And now I at least have those written down. So whether it gets done or not is irrelevant. At least I have it written down. And I've actively every month decided that the things that I'm migrating to this month are sufficiently important at this point in time. And then I'll do them at some point or not. But either way, the fact that I've written them down means that they are there.

Absolutely. And you get a moment to kind of check in with yourself and feel into it. Does this feel meaningful? Is this something you're excited about or not? That might seem like such a basic question but how often do we ask ourselves that of our to-do list?

Does this seem exciting? Is this a game that I want to play? Is this an experiment that I want to run? Because it's all experiments, all of these things. If you're not interested in the experiment, then you better have a really good reason for investing your very limited time and attention into. And that's what's so fun about it. I get to decide, what am I going to commit to? What am I not going to commit to? And why? Because then you get to learn about things. These are things that do not

seem important to me because I identify this pattern over years, right? It's the paper mirror. I'm not doing well right now. What can I do about that? What can I ask for help? Can I get something off my plate? So it helps you really check in with yourself and connect with yourself, which is something that I find

so important and valuable that it's hard to exaggerate. And all you're doing is writing things down on paper. I mean, sure, you can do it in apps. You don't need to do it in a notebook. What I love about a notebook, it helps you go offline immediately. For me, when I was bullet journaling digitally, which I've tried, of course, it's like I'm writing something down that's really meaningful to me and all of a sudden I'm buying socks. I'm like, wait a second, how did that happen? You know what I mean? With a notebook, you just think differently. Yeah.

Okay, so some very tactical questions here. Let's say, you know, David Allen talks about capture, as does Tiago, as does everyone in this space. Let's say you're, I don't know, in the middle of this podcast, you have a thought of, oh, I need, speaking of socks, I should buy some socks for my wife or whatever. What do you do with that thought?

piece of information in like let's say when when you're in the middle of something sure i mean in the podcast i wouldn't do it because this is the most important part and i i would think that it's rude but uh let's say it wasn't a podcast and i remember something that i have to write down goes in my daily log so we have so you take the journal out like physically take it out of your bag and then you write it in your daily log yes

as like a task. So the daily log is kind of like your inbox. It's the messiest part of a bullet journal. Essentially, you have your daily log, weekly log, monthly log to help you with your daily, weekly, and monthly rituals. So there are different templates that help you organize content based on different time scales. And the daily log is designed to be

a good reflection of how crazy our days can be, right? So it's like, yeah, socks, you know, make sure you schedule doctor's appointments and this person flowers. I don't feel great today or I feel great today. You know, just whatever comes up, you're offloading it from your mind so you can stay as present as possible, which is a big part of this. You're just not distracted because once you write something down, you just feel, you feel like I don't have to worry about the system. It'll come up at some point. Yes. And then, okay. And how often are you looking at your daily log?

I mean, it really depends on the day. So my daily rituals in the morning and the evening, I spend between five minutes and half an hour with it, depending on what I need. Like in the morning, it's usually five minutes. Okay, here's the priority. Like if I get this one thing done,

Today is a victory. And it really depends on how much work I have, what I'm focusing on, what my intention is. It's all over the place. It's really hard to say how long it takes, but at least five minutes in the morning and at least five minutes at night. So what is the priority today? And then looking backwards, like what was the most important thing today?

And is there anything else? And then throughout the day, I just write things down so I don't have to think about it. It's like, oh, that's interesting. You know, that's a good idea. This is a bad idea. You know, just your thinking just gets captured and I don't really worry about it. And that's what the bullet, like in the bullet journal, it's like I can quickly categorize my thoughts as well. It's like, oh, this is just an idea. And if it's a really important or exciting idea, then I actually have a different symbol for that, right? I turn the dash, which is the note symbol into a plus, which means expand. Yeah.

That kind of thing. So later on, I can sit down and when I have some time, like, oh, here's three different expands and I'm just going to write about that or that's going to turn into an article. Oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to start doing that. That's good. Because I often have ideas for videos where I've sort of been thinking like, hmm, what do I do with a video idea? It feels like that's the sort of thing that it makes sense to write about on the computer because it goes into the notion and all that crap. Yeah.

Yeah, I can mock things as video ideas. That's good. Yeah. I mean, that's one thing that's so cool about this. You make it yours. You do what works for you. I mean, learning what works for you is earned. You don't know from the beginning. You run these experiments like this is working, this is not working. But yeah, I use the plus for video ideas too. Usually for article video ideas and for journaling prompts. Like sometimes I'll...

I'll get stuck on an idea or an event that's either upsetting or confusing or something like that. And I can't sit down in the middle of the day. I'm like, okay, I'm going to have like this existential journaling session. I've got stuff to do. So I just write down the one bullet with a plus and it's incredibly helpful. It's just like, okay, I don't have to focus on that right now. And when I do have time, it's like now my book is full of prompts that I can actually unpack this. Yeah.

This is great because I have like a nightly journaling-y type thing where I mostly do it on a computer because I can just type way faster and I feel like it's then copy-pastable into a video, etc. Sure. But...

What I haven't done is actually just have the bullet journal open in front of me with like the keyboard so that I can be like, oh yeah, let me expand on this idea. And then I'll expand on that idea. Normally I have a bullet journal in the bag and then I kind of see those two things as being separate, but I can absolutely bring them together and connect them up. It feels very exciting. I mean, for me, like you're very deeply in the PKM space. For me, the bullet journal also solves a huge problem in the PKM space, which is like what goes into your PKM.

So it's kind of like, oh, here's the plus that goes into, in my case, Rome. So I'm a huge Rome guy, but that's how that works. It's like, okay, log that, that's going to become an article, that kind of thing. And I can find it really quickly because as you're actually bullet journaling or rapid logging, as I call it, you can just read the margins of your pages and be like, oh, here's an idea, here's an idea, here's an idea, here's an idea.

It's part of the design geekery of the layouts. No, those are great. So, okay. So, what do you feel like people most get wrong about bullet journaling? I think the most common question or let's say the most common concern that I get is like, I'm not an artist. I can't bullet journal. And that's always...

disheartening because if you see the core of bullet journaling, you don't need to be able to draw a straight line in order to bullet journal. It's very much about just writing down your thoughts. You can make it elaborate and you can make it beautiful, but mostly people think they have to be an artist and it's really not about that. It's as simple as just writing down your thoughts in a line or two, literally, that's it. So for me, it's about setting an intention. What is it that you're trying to accomplish? How can this tool serve you?

And then letting it unfold that way, seeing it as an experiment and seeing what works and what doesn't. And the thing that's so beautiful about it, what is it a laboratory for? I mentioned it is a laboratory. It's for you learning about yourself, seeing what tools you can build to solve problems for the way that you think.

And the only way you're going to figure that out is by doing it and learning from it. And like, okay, this layout is really effective. This one is not. Next month, I'm going to iterate. I'm going to iterate. I'm going to iterate on the way I organize, what I'm focusing on. And you just like learn about yourself very quickly. And it can be really fun. Yeah. One of the things I really love about this is that

You actually like, even though you sort of, you have a business around this and you've got the fancy notebooks, like you're not really trying to sell anything. Like anyone can pick up any old notebook or even just like a random piece of paper and staple it together with another one and do the method like,

It's not that hard. And there's loads of blog posts and stuff on the website and on everyone else's productivity website around how they do it. So within 10 minutes of watching a YouTube video or doing a bit of research and using just a random notebook that you have in your house, you can create your own bullet journal. Absolutely. Oh, it was exactly a month ago when I first started doing it, where I just immediately felt more intentional with how I'm spending my time. But also, weirdly, I feel like

time has slowed down for me because every day I take a moment in the morning to figure out what I want to do for the day. And in the evening, I write down what made today different. And if I think of the rest of almost the rest of this year, pre August, it sort of felt like it went by in a bit of a whir and I almost can't remember it. But these last 30 days,

Like, I'm kind of surprised the month hasn't ended because I'm like, oh yeah, it's been, you know, I've done quite a few things. I looked down at my homework for life thing, the story stuff. And it's like, I almost feel surprised when I get to a new week now because I'm like, oh, I have to draw out the week thing. I'm like, oh yeah, it's been a while. It feels like it's been a while since I've done that. And just very weird feeling of like time slowing down. Have you had that? Like, is that something you've heard from people? Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing what happens when you take the time to study your life.

Because otherwise, I mean, especially in this digital age, time kind of vanishes. And during the pandemic, like time wasn't even a thing anymore. So the way I like to talk about this is like bullet journaling is about taking time. You know, people always talk about making time. And the truth is that time can't be made. Time can only be taken. It can be taken from you or it can be taken by you.

And bullet journaling is about taking the time to figure out what kind of life you want to live. Like, how are you doing? What are you doing? Why are you doing it regularly? So it doesn't become this big existential dilemma. You know, it's like, why am I doing this today? Oh, that's something I can delegate. Yeah.

So, that's time slows down when you think about it that way. And then the time moving forward, to me, it becomes much more intentional. Like, sure, there's times where I'm not bullet journaling and things begin to fray a little bit. It's like, oh, wow, time begins to speed up. And yeah, things start falling through the cracks. So, it's just like, hmm, it's like taking a really deep breath and like looking at your life and being like, okay, this is where we are right now. What happens next? And you get to choose. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so let's rewind back the clock a bit. I think it was 2013 you first started sharing stuff about the Bujo. How did the...

How did your life slash business evolve from that? Like, how did this thing of my mates at work asking me how I manage my to-do list morph into what is now your full-time job and a business surrounding it where basically everyone has heard about what Bullet Journal is? Yeah, I mean...

I had just rolled off a year working on this startup for somebody else. I was just their design director and it was kind of like a soul crushing job. We get paid well, you know, all the things, but I just wanted to work on a personal project. I'm like, okay, what can I build that's helpful, right? It wasn't the best designer in the world, not the best coder in the world, but I did happen to use my notebook in this really curious way that seemed to be helpful. I'm like, okay, so why don't I sit down and actually build a website showing people how I use my notebook? Yeah.

And so in 2013, I sat down for like two, three weeks and then just systematized everything or formalized it, I guess would be the better term, right? Okay, what is the, I need some language here to describe these processes because it's really difficult to describe to other people how you think.

It's unnatural. It's like, this is how I think. So I actually had to create language and all that. And in about two weeks, I came up with the vocabulary and then designed this website to teach people the very basics of bullet journaling. And it was like a four minute video and I had to choose a name and bulleted lists and journaling. It all kind of made sense. I put it together and launched that. And yeah.

Soon it got covered by this lifehacker website and then this thing and it kind of blew up and I didn't really know what to do with it because I was like, I'm going to launch it and that's it. It's just there to help people. So it was just a blog at this point where you were just like, oh, here's the method.

Here's the method. It's helped me. I hope it helps you. And it was kind of like a thank you letter to a lot of people in the early web space just gave away their knowledge for free. Like, I'm trying to figure this out. This is how I solved it. And I benefited from that so much early on in my web career. Like, I don't know CSS or HTML. I'd like look it up online. Yeah, stack of the flow. Exactly. I have like no idea. And all these people sharing this wealth of information for free and...

I was like, okay, my turn. Here you go. And then for the first year, I didn't really know what to do with it, but it kept on gaining more and more and more steam. And then something happened that I didn't realize or never occurred to me is that people started using the bullet journal method to solve challenges that are

completely unknown and unfamiliar to me. You have people dealing with PTSD and veterans and stay-at-home moms. All these different groups started coming up, solving very, very different challenges with the same tool. It helped them organize their thinking in a way. And it was flexible enough to basically play into any kind of solution that they needed. And I was like, oh, wow, that's really fascinating. People showing me how to use the system for problems that I don't have.

And that got really exciting. So in 2014, I was like, why don't I build a website based on how other people use Bullet Journal as opposed to me? And then I created a Kickstarter to finance a new site to actually hire myself because I need to eat as well to build a site based on other use cases for parents, for teachers, for students, all these things. And

As a thank you, I partnered with this company called Leichtum to create a notebook for higher tier backers. And...

I launched the Kickstarter and then within a day, all the notebook tiers had sold out and people got really grumpy about like, why are the notebooks limited? Like I want more notebooks. So all of a sudden this thing that was focused on launching a new website turned into the beginning of launching a notebook that's specifically designed for bullet journaling. You can use any notebook you want, but this thing adds a lot of tools that are

make it even faster, you know, numbered pages and index, like all these different things. And that's when Bullet Journal turned into a business. People really wanted the notebook. And so I started selling the notebook and over time the notebook became more successful and

Yeah, that was the beginning of the business. It's such a nice notebook. Thank you. How did you partner with Leuchtturm? It was a notebook that I was using at the time. So I had used other notebooks before. I've been using notebooks all my life. And then actually I was on a podcast and somebody was like, have you ever used Leuchtturm notebooks? This was before Bullet Journal was ever a business. It was just a blog essentially. I'm like, no, I haven't. They're like, you should try it. And I did. I'm like, oh, wow, this is amazing.

And so I reached out to them and they're like, oh yeah, we've actually heard of you. And I'm like, would you be willing to, you know, do this miniature collaboration? And all of a sudden the demand was really high. And yeah, we designed this notebook from scratch. It's interesting. It's both a blank canvas, but also a really specific and detailed tool. It's a really interesting project to balance.

This episode is very kindly brought to you by WeWork. Now, this is particularly exciting for me because I have been a full-paying customer of WeWork for the last two years now. I discovered it during, you know, when the pandemic was on the verge of being lifted and I'd spent like the whole year just sort of sitting in my room making YouTube videos. But then I discovered WeWork and I was like,

I was a member, me and Angus, my team members, we were members of the WeWork in Cambridge and they have like hundreds of other locations worldwide as well. And it was incredible because we had this fantastic, beautifully designed office space to go to, to work. And we found ourselves like every day, just at nine o'clock in the morning, just going to WeWork because it was a way nicer experience working from the coworking space than it was just sitting at home working. These days, what me and everyone on my team has is the all access pass, which means you're not tied to a specific WeWork location, but it means you can use any of their several hundred coworking spaces around London, around the UK, and also around the world.

And one of the things I really love about the coworking setup is that it's fantastic as a bit of a change of scenery. So these days I work from home, I've got the studio at home, but if I need to get some focused writing work done and I'm feeling a bit drained just sitting at my desk all day, I'll just pop over to the local WeWork, which is about a 10 minute walk from where I am. I'll take my laptop with me, I'll get some free coffee from there, I'll get a few snacks. And it's just such a great vibe and you get to meet cool people. I made a few friends through meeting them at WeWork and it's just really nice being in an environment almost like a library, but kind of nicer because there's like a little

a little bit of soft music in the background and there's other kind of startup bros and creators and stuff in there as well. And it's just my absolute favorite coworking space of all time. It's super easy to book a desk or book a conference room using the app. And it's a great place to meet up with team members if you're gonna collaborate and you'll live in different places. They've got unlimited tea and coffee and herbal teas and drinks on tap. And they've got soundproof booths in which to take Zoom calls and meetings. Anyway, if you're looking for a coworking space for you or your team, then I'd 100% recommend WeWork. Like I said, I've been a paying customer for theirs for the last two years.

which is why it's particularly exciting that they're now sponsoring this episode. And if you want to get 50% off your first booking, then do head over to we.co forward slash Ali. And you can use the coupon code Ali at checkout ALI to get 50% off your first booking. So thank you so much WeWork for sponsoring this episode.

What went into the design of this? Because at first glance, it looks like they're 1917 A5 notebooks with thicker paper. But presumably, you're a UX designer. And this is the first time I've seen an IRL. So there's some stuff that I'm missing. So yeah, what?

What was the process like of designing this? That's also version two. So version one was... So it included the instructions about how to bullet journal. It had three bookmarks, which at the time wasn't a thing, numbered pages and index. So it basically created...

It created all these tools to make bullet journaling ever so slightly easier, right? And more formal. And then over five, six years, we got a lot of feedback. And then we came out with version two. So like the artistry was something that was never something that I anticipated, right? But people like colors and they like different pens and everything. So the next version had thicker paper and it also has guides inside the grid to quickly chop up your pages to create different things. And then there's also...

you know, this way of quickly seeing what the grid of the page is so you can create any tool you want inside and the thinnest tool pack ever. So all these like little stickers to help you annotate your pages or actually take the stickers and put them in things outside of your notebook. As I said, like most of the bullet journal work happens outside of your notebook. So the lightning bolt, for example, is for you to remember an intention that you set. Like maybe it's to

brush your teeth more often. So you just put the lightning bolt on your mirror. You know, it's something that you... Oh, that's clever. Yeah. And just put it wherever you want. Every time you see it, it triggers a behavior. Nice. What are the circles for? Same thing. It's just like, if you don't like lightning bolts, you can do that. Or you can highlight things inside your notebook that are super important. That's so nice. So yeah, that has a detachable notebook. So you can actually learn about it while you have the notebook open. So that's a guide.

It's so nice. It's so like the type of everything about this is just so classy. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm a stickler for good typography. Yeah, it's fun because I spend so much of my time teaching that like being able to work on physical products is kind of like I get to design again. And I do love that. Where did the name bullet journal come from? Well, I was trying to figure out a way to

create a title where it took away a lot of the guesswork. So it's bulleted lists and journaling, bullet journal. And quite honestly, it was like a URL that was available at the time. There was all these other ones like omni journal and like, you know, all these things, but the URL was available. It was memorable. And you know, I never anticipated that it would become what it has. So I just like got it and launched and then all of a sudden it blew up and like, oh, I

I could have spent a little longer thinking about the name, but here we are. This is so cool. Genuinely. So nice. Thank you. How do you feel about the fact that Bullet Journal has been artsified so much by people? Yeah, I feel really split about that. At first, I was really against it. I'm like, that gets in the way. It's like the whole...

I was worried that people were using it as a way to procrastinate, right? They like sit down to plan and they spend like an hour designing their calendar or like a yearly calendar. I don't do a yearly calendar. That was something that just came up in the community. It's really helpful. I find it super helpful. Well, this is how I learned from the community because I, you know, I'm in touch with the community and be like, Hey, like,

I noticed that you did a video where you set up this thing and it looks like it took you like two and a half hours to do. Like when you see my monthly log, it takes me five minutes. Like setting up my template, usually five minutes in all of my templates.

So when I see these things on YouTube, I was at first, I was like horrified. I'm like, no, who's going to do that? Right. And this is where I realized that for a lot of people, when they do this art, it's a way for them to connect with their creative side. It's like the only place in their life where they can do this. Maybe they are, you know, a dentist or the, you know, they, they were an artist in a past life and they get to sit down. It's like for an hour, I'm going to take this time for myself and make this thing pretty and elaborate. And it helps me connect with my values and my goals and relaxes me. And I'm like,

That's the point. You're connecting with the things that matter to you. And in that case, I think it's wonderful. And it never occurred to me because that's not how I do that, right? But this is how you learn from each other.

When people see that, however, and feel like that's the only thing that you do with a bullet journal or that they need to do that to get the value out of it, that's when it gets challenging because a lot of people will sit down, they've heard all this wonderful stuff about bullet journaling, and then they see that it's taken somebody four hours to do something or it takes them that long or they try it and it looks ugly and they're like, okay, this sucks. This means nothing to me. It doesn't work.

And that's kind of heartbreaking because they never really figured out what it was or never got to what's below it. Like a lot of the artists that I've spoken with developed this style, an intentional choice at a time. Yeah. Right. For them, the minimal version of this was not super helpful, but being able to illustrate was. But now I have the reverse problem where a lot of people start with the super elaborate and like, I don't get anything done because I'm spending so much time setting it up and it's not by choice. It's just because they don't know. So it's, it's, uh,

I always tell people start with the basics, start with something that's really meaningful to you with your intention and then develop your style over time. The expression is very much yours but it has to serve a real purpose otherwise it's not going to work. The fun is great and also it's a balance. Sure, like some people will spend all day designing and perfectly getting their planner ready and not get anything done.

Being self-aware in that regard is also important. So I have nothing against the art. It's about what is motivating the art. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think when I first started this, so I actually started on an old Leuchtturm 1917 book.

And I thought, you know what, let's just like MVP this. Like, I don't want to do all the art stuff. And plus Sharpie was bleeding through the paper on ATGSM anyway. So I was like, okay, this is fine. And then after seven days, I was like, all right, now it's September started. I'm going to take this and do it in an artsy kind of way. And I was thinking, oh, I can make a video about this. We set up an overhead rig and everything. And it literally took like three hours to make it look good. And I was like, hmm, how do I feel about the fact that this had taken so long?

And I actually did feel good about it because to me, it's like that thing you said, like everything I do is so digital that to be able to get some nice pastel colored highlighter pens with some emoji stickers and stick them on the page. I didn't know what washy tape was. I found out what washy tape was after watching Amanda Rageley's videos. Like, oh, this is a thing. So this is cute. Like I get to explore my slightly more creative on paper side while also exploring

Just the fact that I'm taking the time to draw out the whole year and the whole month is making me think, yeah.

I have got lots of stuff back to back there. Like, do I really want to do all these things? And so it was like mindfulness and intentionality at the same time as expressing creativity, which felt really nice. But like last week, I mean, at the start of this week, we've got a whole week of batch filming of the podcast. And so my weekly log is very bare bones of just like date, line, line, line, line, line, done. And I think over time I've become kind of less precious about what's in this and sort of embracing some level of messiness, although it still looks somewhat aesthetic, I think.

no, it's been really good. So thank you for inventing. No, sure. Yeah. I love that you have, that you're starting to embrace this journey, which is really what happens. You know, a lot of people will start like really creatively and become much more minimal. And then eventually they'll start becoming much more creative with it and more minimal. It's like different times in their life and having a tool that's,

always there no matter what stage you are in life, I've found to be invaluable. And I've learned how flexible it can be from other people and embrace that as well. Because at first I was trying to be very rigid about this methodology, like it has to be this way. And I'm like, no, that's not how I work. That's not how anybody in the community works. Like how can we embrace flexibility and structure at the same time? And for me, it boils down to intention. Intention is the structure. And then you use the tools that help you

experiment and figure out what that intention means to you and how you can execute it and embody the things that you value. Yeah. So you launched the Kickstarter. What happens next? Like how, how are you feeling when it was blowing up? Like what was going through your mind? It was a very strange time in my life because I had just started a new job with a digital agency. Like the week before I launched the Kickstarter, which was very unintentional. It just kind of became that it happened that way.

And so I launched the Kickstarter. I didn't expect much, but it became like this whole media sensation in itself because it was still in the early days of Kickstarter and it blew up. And then I had to manage the Kickstarter. That was a nightmare. That was an absolute nightmare. October 2015. I've just brought up the Kickstarter. Yeah, it was...

you should have a team to help you with the Kickstarter because having a full-time job and running a Kickstarter, especially when you're trying to ship things internationally is a bad idea. But after I got over that, eventually I had to figure out what was more important to me, like this incredible career that I had been working so hard on. I loved my job. I was doing everything I wanted to do or focus on this kind of side gig. And eventually...

came to the conclusion that the way that I can serve people best is to shepherd this methodology that I never dreamed would have helped other people, but it did. And I got countless letters about how it helped different people. And if I could only be a nexus point to introduce it to other people and see how it helped them, then that would be far more meaningful than anything else that I'd worked on. So the choice became pretty easy eventually. So you quit the job? Yeah. And went full-time on this? Yeah.

How did you know it was going to make enough money to go full time on this? Because for like the Kickstarter, like $79,000 pledged, presumably you could have made more working at an agency. Oh, yeah. New York. I made way more money at my job. Well, I didn't. I didn't.

For me, it was a gamble. It was a risk. I had a very large community at the time and the business was doing all right, but I didn't mind living on less if I could wake up and really care about what I did all the time. And I did.

So for a little while, like that was a big thing, but then came the book deal. Yeah. So I made the choice. I was like, okay, I got to transition because I'm not doing really well in bullet journal. I'm not doing really well in my job because I was so torn. And that's exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to get across, being intentional about the choices you make. So I was like, okay, I got to practice what I preach here. It's like, am I going to do this career that's really comfortable and exciting? Or am I going to do this thing that's super scary and I don't know what's going to happen? Yeah.

And I was like, well, what is a core value? And it's service. For me, service is just a core driving principle. And this is the thing that aligns with that. So it became pretty obvious when I sat down and took the time. And then I was really lucky that a book deal came along and that helped. That's when I started writing the book. So you got the partnership with Leuchtturm around 2014, 2015-ish? 2014, before the...

So the partnership kind of developed throughout the Kickstarter because at first it was limited to like a thousand notebooks. Like that was the partnership. It was a quick collaboration and then both of us saw that there was a real demand for it. So that quickly...

became the partnership that you see today and working with them has been absolutely delightful. They make it possible. I couldn't possibly do this by myself. Then it was just me for the longest time. And then I just kept on focusing on creating more content and surfacing people in my community. That was like the main thing, finding people so unlike myself that use this for in ways that I would have never imagined just finding other people.

And yeah, that worked. It was amazing. And then... How did it go? No, and the thing that was interesting is when I first shared Bullet Journal, I was very much more focused towards the productivity thing because I wasn't really comfortable talking about the more existential part of it, right? It's like the why. I didn't think I was qualified or that people were interested.

But now years have been going by and more and more and more people are like, something's happening while I'm doing this. Like, you know, you had mentioned that there's somewhat of a state shift in the way that you start perceiving time and your life. And this happens to people quite regularly and I hear about it all the time. And I started answering emails like, okay, it's not about like setting goals. It's about setting meaningful goals or like, how do I know what is meaningful? What is not meaningful? Because people started becoming more and more productive and they keep running into this problem where they –

get things done. And then like a day, a week, a month later, it's like, it had never, like they just normalize and then it's over. Right. It's like, okay, so you got the six pack, you know, but you're still insecure. So it doesn't, that, that wasn't the goal. It wasn't about the six pack was figuring out a way to become more confident, you know, and that's a very different journey, you know, and that started happening regularly in all sorts of different ways. So I was like answering all these emails as best I could because, you know, it's,

this is what I'm most fascinated in, the why and figuring out what is meaningful and the reason behind the reason, if you will. And eventually it's like, well, maybe a book would be a better way, better medium of sharing this part of the methodology. The thing that for me is at the heart of it, the why, you know? And yeah, so we start shopping around a book and- What did that process look like? Which part? The book deal getting process. I mean, it was a really wild ride. Um,

bullet journal, I was really, I was really blessed with a lot of attention for this thing, right? And I didn't really know what to do with it. And eventually agents start reaching out to me. It's like, have you thought about a book? And that's not something that happens to a lot of people. And I'm like, I have, but I don't know if I need an agent or something like that. And all of a sudden publishing companies start reaching out to me. And then I started going into publishing companies and they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, here's a deal or here's something else. I'm like,

I need an agent. Like, I don't know if this is a good deal. I don't know what I'm getting into. And it was like the first time where it's like, I really need help because for me, what was most important about the book is that it could serve as many people as possible. Like that was it. Like I wanted to create something that would help.

That was it. That was the goal. It's like, write the best book you can to help as many people as possible. And then that became the guiding rule for all of this stuff. It wasn't about being a bestseller. It wasn't about anything else. Create the best tool you possibly can. Just on that note, that seems awfully altruistic. I find that with my own motivation, they're often muddied with a bit of, yeah, I want to help people, but being a bestseller would be cool. What was that? No.

Balancing the selfish motives with the service motives, I guess, for you. Well, I mean, of course, I would have to be able to feed myself in the process. But the bestseller thing, you know, my father's an author. So I grew up around like the whole idea of bestsellers and books and everything like that. And to me, it always seemed really dangerous to focus on something that's so out of your control. Yeah.

So that's something that I kind of put out of my mind because it's what do I do with the bestseller part? What does that mean? It's like a six-pack thing. You bought six packs, so now what? Yeah. What's the underlying thing that's trying to serve? Right. Would it be nice? Absolutely. I'm not going to throw it out the window or anything. If it happens, great. But what's, to me, just getting to the finish line with writing this book, it was much more important and doing it in a way where I could...

Like, this is the best I can possibly do. That was enough. In some ways, it's not necessarily altruism. It's like setting the bar so low that I can actually do it. It's like, I just want to do the best job I possibly can and finish this thing. Like, so...

you know, and hopefully it helps people. That's, that's all. If I can do that, then great. So it's, it's more about maybe more of a survival mindset. Like I just want to do a good job. I know what you mean. Yeah. I find that anytime I'm sitting down to write, whenever I have the bestseller list in my mind, it just completely takes the fun out of it. But whenever I think, you know what, I just want to write something I'm proud of that can help at least one person.

Suddenly the bar is low. I could write something I'm proud of. And I was chatting to Cal Newport on the pod a few weeks ago, and he said every single time he's written a book, he's told himself, this one just needs to be reasonable. The next one is going to be good. I love that. It's just like lowering the bar. It just needs to be reasonable. Yeah, I think...

Lowering the bar is an incredibly powerful mindset, really. It's like as long as you keep making progress. I actually got this from Austin Kleon on his podcast.

or read his newsletter rather. And he talked about an author whose name I'm forgetting right now who had a card that said, without hope, without despair, every day. And like that was the writing process for me. So without hope, without despair, you just write. That's it. And it worked. You know, it's a sat down. It's like, I don't feel like it. Just write. Oh, this is gonna be great. Yeah, that's it. And it's,

I don't know, my productivity ethos is just do the thing that you committed to regardless. Maybe you'll get more done, maybe you'll get less done, but just do it. Show up. Which publisher did you go with in the end? Penguin Random House. Oh, nice. Same. How do you decide on them? I mean, I guess it's easy enough because they're big, but what were the competing factors? The imprint that I went with was Portfolio. They had published a bunch of authors whose work

I liked a lot. I mean, Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday, those kind of things. I'm like, okay, they get it. They get my space and I think they know what I'm trying to accomplish with this. Like the book for me is a tool, really it is. And I was trying to figure out who would understand that. And I felt like that very much was the case. They understood what I was trying to do and, you know, yeah, they clearly represented people who's thinking I also...

very much enjoy. So then you had a deadline. How did you deal with doing the work when there is a deadline and writers famously procrastinate all the time? Yeah. It took me a year to write this thing on and off, but I also designed it. So it was like a two-part piece.

For me, I think the big mistake I would say is that I felt like writing was just going to be a thing, right? You just sit down and you write this thing. But I felt like for me, my book was more, it ended up being more like a child that grows, right? So at the beginning, it's an infant. It doesn't know what it is. You know, it's like crying all the time. You don't know what you're doing as a parent. But then as you keep writing and you have a strategy for that, like you quickly have to develop a strategy for that.

And it's like just growing up and then all of a sudden it becomes like a toddler. And that has different circumstances. It starts like understanding things, has a little bit of a direction. It's like running around. Then it becomes an adolescent where it starts disagreeing with you. And then like you need a completely different approach in how you write. So the short version of this is that it went from something that was really creative, which required like one approach, to something that was much more editorial approach.

In general, the way that I write is I put way too much stuff on and then I just like, it's more of a sculptural approach, like way too much content and then scrape away everything.

you know, just leave what's necessary. It's like Anne Lamont, you know, it's like, I just write a terrible first draft and I'm okay with that. Yeah. I, I, I got to that point in my career, I guess maybe as a designer, it's just like, get it up and, and then worry about it later. And I feel like that, that was really helpful because I'm like, Oh wow, this really is bad. This is truly bad. But this paragraph and this sentence are something I can build up. Yeah. Yeah. That's the stage I'm at right now. I've done the shitty first draft and I look at it. I'm just like,

Most of it is really bad, but occasionally there are some bits that are reasonable. I'm like, all right, cool. How do we get just more of those bits? Yeah. String them together. So my process was very different depending on what stage I was at in writing the book, but I also handed off pieces of the book early. So like-

I would hand off the first third, and while they were editing it, I was writing the second third, and then I'd give them that back. So it was very cyclical. I was always in some different phase of writing, which was helpful to me. And I know that every writer kind of has a different process. I guess you would have figured out the terminology and the language and stuff beforehand, or possibly not. Because the thing I'm struggling with right now is...

title, subtitle, hook, elevator pitch. Like what is the one line, two line, three line description, like a thing of what is the book about? And I'm just like, oh my God, why is it so hard to condense that?

an idea into just like a few things like how how was that for you i mean that's the hardest part right like what's the famous line i've had more time i would have written you a shorter letter yeah yeah i mean for me i will say i did have the name already it was like the bullet journal method like what is this like it's very important for me that people realize that it is a method it's not a notebook we happen to use a notebook so it's like the bullet journal method yeah

The trouble was distilling the subtitle. And for that, we actually did user testing. I had like, I don't know, 12 different subtitles and which do people respond to. What was the subtitle you went with in the end? Track the past, order the present, design the future. Nice. If someone were to ask you, what is the book about? What's the, yeah, what's your answer? It's funny. Now I need to figure out a one-liner with this. It's like...

how to live an intentional life. Like that's it. That the whole thing of the bullet journal method is trying to figure out what that means to you and how to embody the, your values and how you do that every day. And you get to learn more about yourself. I guess I could keep on putting a comma and a comma and a comma, but yeah, it's a systematic approach to living an intentional life.

We've talked a bit about this idea of values and everyone says this, like, you know, figure out your values and like live in alignment with your values and stuff. Sure. I have tried about five dozen different exercises on the internet around how to figure out your values. I'm curious how you approach that. How should one figure out their values or how did you go about it?

I think it's an ongoing process, right? Because your circumstances change, you learn new things and your values can change, I find. But I think a big part of it is by studying your lived experience. So what have you done that has brought you closer to the life that resonates with you? And what have you done that has brought you further away from that, right? I think a lot of values reveal themselves in the choices that we make and the response we have to the choices that we make.

We learn about ourselves after the fact, right? People are always like, oh, what are my values? And they see this list of 50 values. I'm like, oh, you know, kindness sounds good. Yeah. Right? But it's like, where did kindness ever have an emotional effect on you? I'm not saying that kindness is a bad value, but is it an actual value of yours? Like values, I think, are something that...

are very individual and something that isn't obvious to us all out of the time. But by studying our lived experience, they can reveal themselves. You know, some people think power is a value. It's like, is power a value or do you value control? And is that actual value or is that some kind of coping mechanism? Does that make sense? It's, it's. So what, like what,

What do you mean by value? Like most people would probably say that, yeah, I value kindness. I value honesty, integrity and stuff. Are we talking like

What are moments in your life where you felt like you were doing something meaningful and trying to get stuff out of that? To me, I think it's both sides of the spectrum. It's figuring out what moments in your life have felt most meaningful or more meaningful or meaningful at all. It doesn't need to be most meaningful. And what behavior or value supported that experience. Yeah.

That to me is really interesting. Like what about this felt meaningful to you? And then you have the flip side of that where you feel terrible about something and like what value was not being met or what anti-value, if you will, are you now embodying, right? Is it jealousy? Is it anger? Is it pettiness? That kind of thing. Okay, so what's the opposite of that? If you don't want to feel this way, it reveals what you do want to feel, that kind of thing. And-

For me, embodying your values is critical. It helps you form your intentions because values are, there's no, they're kind of part of the infinite game, if you will, right? They like, it's something that you embody. You have the choice to embody your value or not, but only when you're aware of them. It's like you have choices how to respond. Again, we get back to stoicism here, right? The only thing you control is how you respond. Okay, so what's driving that response?

You know, that's the part that like is missing often. It's like, okay, I have a choice as to how to respond, but then what's driving that choice? And that choice, I would like to argue, should be your value. Because if there's nothing behind the choice, then you might be responding poorly. So are we talking sort of general, almost like your own personal 10 commandments type thing? That's one way of looking at it, sure. I think it's embodying qualities that...

help you find meaning in some ways, right? It's like when I'm being this way, it feels meaningful. When I'm not being this way, it does not. For me, when I'm teaching someone something that I know, it feels very meaningful. When I feel like I'm being authentic and honest, it feels meaningful. When I have to tell a white lie, it feels really bad.

When I don't give someone all the information because it might make them feel bad or something like that, I'm always like, something about this feels really off. And is that kind of what we mean? So sort of figuring out what are, yeah, sort of almost like taking your feelings about stuff seriously and figuring out, okay, what therefore are, like, what does this reveal about the things that I value? Yes, that's exactly right. And I think that that's an ongoing process. And then...

you try to figure out ways to embody those values, right? And I feel like there's also different value domains as well. Like you're not going to have the same values at work as you are at home. Your partner doesn't need the best boss. That's not a value that's meaningful there. And so you can start to qualify where your values are in which domain. And a big part of that is just like studying your life. It's like, okay, I felt badly about doing this thing. Why? Yeah.

Right? And the answer isn't always obvious. I would argue the answer is not obvious. And over time, you start to observe patterns in your own behavior like, huh, when I spend time with this person, things feel good or I feel really connected or I feel very authentic. Why does this person bring that out in me? What do we discuss? What do we do? And then people who don't, like every time I spend time with this person, I feel completely drained or I feel like I betrayed myself or, you know, I'm trying to put on a show or whatever.

I don't feel good. And then you can start like unraveling that whole rabbit hole one piece at a time. And words come up, like you actually have language here, you know, authentic, inauthentic, present, distracted, these kinds of things. And curious for me, you know, value minus curiosity and play. Those are two things that are, how do I bring play into the situation? You know, how do I embody curiosity in this situation? Like I have an option of how I'm going to respond here and how do I bring that up?

Nice. What's your take on three-year planning, five-year planning, 10-year planning, one-year planning? Having heard all the zillions of stories from people, what have you seen, I guess, in your life and in the lives of people who've reached out to you with stories? What's a good amount of planning versus spontaneity to her? Yeah, I mean, for me...

I guess I approach this whole thing differently because for me it's more about being in the present and trying to develop different goals that are for me experiments, they're plays if you will. It's like, "Hey, what am I going to do now that helps me embody this value in some way?" And a five-year plan doesn't really work that way because I know it's going to change. That being said,

kind of having an idea of where I want to head. Okay. So I think the best way I can talk about this is that I have this analogy that goals are like lighthouses. Oh, right. Tell me more. Sure. So a lot of times when I heard about goals in the past, it's like, here is your target. Yeah. Right. And that's how I operated. And it was always disappointing and confusing, at least for me. And the reason why is when you set a goal, right?

You're setting it at the furthest distance away from that reality. From day one is the furthest distance you'll ever be away from that goal. So it means you don't know anything about that experience. You don't know anything about that reality. And every day as you get closer to that goal, it becomes clearer and it becomes more real and

And oftentimes, you change your mind. You're like, oh, wait, this is not what I actually want. Or you learn something new. It's actually over here. So I think that rather it being the final destination, it's like a lighthouse. And from what I understand of lighthouses, I'm not a lighthouse expert, but let's just go with it for now. You never go to the lighthouse, right? The lighthouse stands at a place that's actually really hazardous. It's there to make sure that ships don't go there, but ships can also use it to navigate. And I think that that's a really...

interesting way of thinking about your goals because it's you're setting some destination for you to learn about something along the way and if you think about it as a lighthouse then going off course or you know changing course if you will is part of it right and you just keep on setting different lighthouse goals okay it's like

I want to be this kind of doctor and then you get halfway through and you're like, "Oh, actually, no, it's like this specialty or this thing or actually something completely different that I didn't know about at the beginning of the journey." So, I like lighthouses. To come back to the year-long, five-year goals, I think it's the same kind of thing. If you believe in something strongly and it's going to take you five years, start, right? And then change your mind when it becomes more real. I think having

Objectives is really important, right? But I also think abandoning the objectives based on reality is just as important, if that makes sense. Like when a theory starts becoming very real through your lived experience, it's...

and then resetting along the way. I don't know, for me, everything is a lot more organic than setting five-year goals. Sometimes I want to do something, I'm like, that's going to take five years. Let's start and see what happens. And then I'm not like doggedly pursuing this thing for five years because I've never been in a situation where five years later, I'm the same person. That just hasn't happened for me. It's good to have the direction so I don't get totally lost, right? Yeah. Like a lighthouse. But along the way, I'm just a completely different person.

That's a really great way of thinking about goals. I love it. That's fantastic. Yeah, I think there's a lot of almost moralizing around this, around how it is a morally good thing for you to stick to the goal that you set. And if you move the goalpost, that's considered a bad thing rather than a good thing that you move the goalpost. And often people will... I get this criticism from my mum quite a lot. They're like,

hey, so you know that time you were taking those exams to do residency in the US? Like, what happened to that? And I'm like, why'd you move the goalpost? And she's like, yeah, you know, you moved the goalpost. I'm like, yeah, exactly. I started doing the thing, realized that that's not in fact the person I want to be and changed my mind. And I feel like this is probably a good thing rather than a bad thing. But I guess it's that balance between

being a quitter versus being someone who changed their mind on a goal as they got more data. How do you think about that balance? Sure. Yeah. And there's no ultimate answer to that as well. I feel like one easy way to define the difference or the distinction there is that you continue making progress towards something, right? Rather than like,

this target you're like okay it's over here and you continue to work and like it's going to take two months it's gonna take like the book that i started to write and the book that i handed off are completely different things right i did the work it took the time but the goal and the destination were very different from one another if that makes sense and then there's just giving up sure and i don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing either um

There's a lot of nuance here that I can't really cover, but there's one thing where it's like, you just don't believe in this anymore and that's okay. And sometimes you don't believe, I mean, don't get me wrong, I didn't believe in my book on multiple days in those years, right? It's like, why am I doing this? I got no business doing this, all these things, but it would go away and there's a season for that. But if you truly just don't understand why you're doing something anymore, you know,

then quitting is absolutely okay. You know, we have such limited time here. I think it's understanding why you're quitting specifically. That's important. What about this isn't working for me? And oftentimes like it not meaning anything to you anymore. Now that you realize what the truth about this goal is, is really important. You know, it's, it's, um, it's a process and it's,

A lot of times we set goals that actually seem quite pointless halfway through. You're like, wait a second. Not because it's hard. The hardness shouldn't be the determining factor. It's kind of like, I don't know what value this is adding to my life. And in case like, you know, is this going to make me a better partner, a better teacher, a better whatever? Like you're halfway through. Do you feel that way? You know, the reality is starting to set in.

And if the answer is no, ongoingly, then I think that's a pretty good indication that that might not be worth pursuing. So one of the things we did this time last year, actually, when we first moved into the studio was, you know, worked with a business coach and he talked about kind of making a sort of three-year picture, three-year plan kind of thing.

And I was like, "Oh, come on, three years, social media space, things change a lot." And he was like, "That's fine, but it's useful to think at this stage, what do you just imagine that three-year picture to be? Because then we can start working towards that and see what happens." And at the time I was like, "Okay, three years from now, I want to be doing, I don't know, 10 million revenue. I want to be doing a team of 40 people, physical location in London, multiple studios where we can bring our YouTuber Academy students in and rent them out and stuff."

And we were like, all right, cool. Let's start working towards that thing, that kind of picture. And within probably about six or so months, I started feeling, hmm, that picture no longer feels great. Like I actually don't want to have a team of 50 people and be worrying about revenue numbers and be trying to rent studio space to people. Like that seems like the worst thing in the world. Okay. And then that vision changed and it became much more about like,

Actually, it would be quite nice to be able to focus on doing things I actually enjoy, which is reading, writing, and teaching without having to worry about managing a team and all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm.

And so having, and this is why we only signed up to this studio space for a year, because I knew at the time it was like, okay, this is an experiment. We're going to get gather data throughout this year and see what happens. So now we're as of like tomorrow and next week, we're moving out of this place. I'm moving into a flat with my, with my brother and his wife, and we're kind of building a YouTube podcast studio in the flat to see what that will be like. And again, that's just an experiment for a year to see what happens. And I find that sort of being like,

committing to a path for a certain period of time just to sort of not be too not having a direction but also being completely open to changing my mind on it because knowing that like hey I actually have no data points on this let's just gather data treat it as an experiment and see what happens yeah I

I totally agree with that path. I mean, it's like, you know when you keep on working, right? You're pushing things forward and as you learn, I think it's silly to continue to go towards something when you realize that it's not aligned with what you care about, especially

Because you're experiencing it every day. I mean, with the story, it sounds like you did the work, things came up, you learned, and it didn't feel right. And then you opted to do something else. It wasn't like pulling the plug. So that goal became irrelevant at that point. I do think it's helpful to start somewhere though. To be very clear, it's like, let's create the three-year, let's create the five-year.

For me, again, it always comes back to the value. It's like, okay, the value determines the goals. Like, I want to create a really wonderful company. How do I do that in five years? And then, like, we'll learn. It's great, you know? It's more playful. I think we just need to be much more playful in our productivity. It's like, okay. Playful productivity. Yeah. I was going to call my book Playful Productivity or Joyful Productivity or something. Annoyingly, both those names are taken by other people that have made blogs with those titles. I was like, damn. Yeah.

Changing gears a bit. Sure. Boodle Journal has an app. What's the deal with that? Sure. So for me, people always ask me like digital or analog. And I'm really agnostic to this. It's about finding the best tool for the job. When it comes to Boodle, I find that a notebook, at least to me and many, is really helpful because it helps you go offline. But it also has limitations that are unnecessary, right? Like a notebook is not going to remind you to check in with it.

And technology is really good like that. And having been a UX designer and designing apps all my life, like I really enjoy doing that as well. I'm like, huh, how can I bridge the digital analog in different ways? And the app is like that. It sets reminders. It helps you track how often you've reflected to keep you honest about it. It gives you different quotes. It allows you to take pictures of your notebook so you can have a digital backup. You know, all these things.

tools that can be really helpful to people. You don't need it. I see all of the products that I make as accessories to the methodology, you know, but yeah, I try to fill my own gaps in my productivity system. Like, okay, I actually want to take a picture of this to send it to somebody and

I want to have a backup of it. I lost a lot of my notebooks in a flood early on. So that's a real thing. So the app does that kind of thing. It doesn't replace the notebook, it's an extension of. That's why it's called the companion app. Yeah. Yeah, no, we're just looking up on the app store. Plus it's also a nexus for information. I mean, one thing, again, I'm really blessed that Bullet Journal has blown up, but it's gotten so big that people really kind of lose the signal and the noise.

And so the app for me is also a nexus. Like, here are all the articles. Here's how you can begin all that stuff in your pocket. And it's easy for like $3 or something. It's a good place to start being intentional about how the information is surfaced. I'm curious. One question I've been asking a few guests is that let's say you won the lottery and you don't have to worry about money ever again. And you've got to do something with your time.

How different does that look compared to what you're doing now with your time? Does this basically just mean that I don't have to work if I don't want to? Or is it what do I do with my resources? Basically, you don't have to work if you don't want to. Okay. Yeah. I want to make sure that we're playing the right game here. I should refine the question to make that more obvious. Donate to Lizard. Yeah.

I did the same thing. Nice. For sure. Yeah. And that's the biggest change in my life. People are like, how did bullet journaling change your life? It's like, I wake up every day and I know exactly why I do what I do and I believe in it. Does it make it easy? No, not at all. It's really hard. And I have really bad days and have to wear all sorts of hats that don't fit really well. But it's like, I know why. And that's the shift. And like, I want everybody to experience what that's like.

I think it's available to more people than people would imagine, right? Like just being really deliberate about the choices that you're making and taking ownership about those choices of those choices. Nice. I love it. Um,

So how does Bullet Journal evolve from here? I mean, you've got the notebooks, you've got the method, you've got the app, you've got the course, the university. What else is... I'm struggling to see what the future looks like, but presumably you're like, there's so much stuff I want to do, but like... Yeah, education. Education, I think the biggest challenge that I still face is people like, what is it? And the answer that I used to give people, which I have now...

understood to be unhelpful. It's whatever you need it to be. But then you run into the blank page problem, which is you sit down and you want to create something with a blank page and you don't know what to write. So for me, it's about creating...

educational access points where people can see bullet journaling for students, bullet journaling for doctors, that kind of thing, showing them how they can implement this methodology for their circumstances specifically. That's what I'm interested in creating. It's an extension of what I was doing before, which is finding people who show you how they use bullet journal for their specific use case. So there's that. And also, I mean, learning how to live an intentional life is just...

I don't know. It's an infinite topic. There's so many ways of approaching it and it's really exciting to me. So for me, it's... I'm trying to create an infrastructure for me to build the things, to build tools to help people live an intentional life. And there's just so many ways of going about that. And there's some...

Really interesting projects in the works along those lines, but I think it's education. I feel like education as a company is one of our core focuses as both a value and as a goal. Nice. I love it.

Another thing is I don't know where Bullet Journal will go. Like there's so many different ways, but we have a community and they teach me all the time. So they'll ask me questions and they will identify opportunities for us to like really lean into and build systems around and all that kind of thing. So I'm really excited to learn about what people need and see if we can build something to support that. Yeah.

Right. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Where can people, where's the best place for people to learn more about you, about the bullet journal method? Bulletjournal.com. Amazing. Nice and easy. And we'll put links to all of the stuff, including the book and my video on the topic and Matt's video on the topic and your website and bulletjournal.com. All of those links will be in the video description and the show notes, wherever people are listening to this. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode.

So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you want already, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.