rknight-me-oemhtz.txt (13354B)
1 [1]Mastodon [2]github.com/rknightuk [3]proven.lol/aaecd5 Robb Knight's avatar 2 Robb Knight's logo [4]Robb Knight Maker of web things, blogger, podcaster, and 3 pizzaiolo. Cat dad and human dad. [5]Permalink 4 [6] 5 6 Robb. Knight. 7 8 [7] Mastodon [8] Subscribe 9 [9]Blog [10]Notes [11]Links [12]Projects [13]/now [14]Explore 10 11 Five Months of Journalling 12 13 3rd June 2025 14 [15]#Analogue 15 [16] Robb Knight's avatar 16 17 Style Guide Notice 18 19 Journalling can be spelt with one "L" or two, the latter being the British 20 English way so that's what I've gone for. 21 22 I [17]started doing bullet journalling in January and amazingly, I've kept it 23 up. I [18]read the book, watched a bunch of the videos, and spoke about it [19] 24 on Ruminate. I'll start off with some questions, starting with [20]Marco: 25 26 How do you carry your Journal? Do you use it on the go as well or only at 27 home and work? 28 29 I'm using an [21]Ottergami A5 dotted notebook along with an elastic pen holder 30 that slots over the cover - the pen loop on this notebook broke off pretty 31 quickly^[22][1]. If I'm at home it's either on my desk or on the counter in the 32 kitchen. [23]My Lihit case is always with it as well. I throw it in my bag when 33 I go to the office. For my next book, which is coming up in the next few weeks, 34 I'll be using a [24]Scribbles that Matter notebook - the paper is thicker and 35 it has page numbers. 36 37 A notebook and pencil case on a wooden tabletop. The notebook has stickers on 38 it and a pen attached in a leather holder. 39 40 41 Do you use it for private and work related stuff or only for one? 42 43 Both. For the first few weeks I was mixing in work notes with my personal ones 44 but I found this a bit too confusing so I switched to using a single page 45 layout for work which I do at the start of the week, then I do rapid logging 46 for personal things on the subsequent pages. 47 48 Did you stop using digital PKM tools completely? 49 50 No. I'm still using Obsidian and I'm still updating [25]the Intersect. I still 51 use Reminders for things that are more time sensitive than just "today at some 52 point". My journal is, usually, the starting point for ideas - the [26]sticker 53 shop (which are available to order again right now) started life as a todo in 54 the journal but expanded to a note in Obsidian. 55 56 [27]Caroline asked: 57 58 What do adults who are not self absorbed adolescents write in a journal??? 59 60 Below I go into a bit more detail but to be clear: I'm not writing down my 61 hopes and dreams^[28][2]. I do write down funny things my kids do, or when 62 something else noteworthy(!) happens but this isn't the kind of thing you'd 63 find when someone dies and sit down to find out what their life was like, blown 64 away by their way with words. This is much closer to the indecipherable 65 ramblings of a lunatic. 66 67 Finally, [29]Neblib asked: 68 69 how do you manage "refile" tasks bringing knowledge out of daily journals 70 into easier reference stores / calendars / notebooks? 71 72 Mostly if I write something down and it needs moving to say, a calendar, I'll 73 add it when I get a chance then mark it as migrated > or done × in my journal. 74 Notes that become a bit more involved like planning a new project will 75 eventually get moved to a note in Obsidian. 76 77 Capital B Capital J Bullet Journalling 78 79 The Bullet Journal method suggests a lot of reflection, looking over your 80 notes, thinking about your life, your goals, your feelings, reviewing 81 everything you've done all the time. I'm not into all that. 82 83 I did try a lot of the ideas when I started but I didn't get any value from a 84 lot of it. I don't feel the need to write down my goals or aims for the week. I 85 don't need to reflect on what I've achieved the previous week. I have two young 86 children and a full-time job, my goal is usually just "get everyone through the 87 week without major injury". If that kind of thing works for you that's 88 wonderful but it's not for me. 89 90 There's some other things that haven't really clicked with me starting with the 91 future log. This is supposed to keep "all of your future events in one place". 92 That sounds like a job for a calendar. I won't be doing this spread in any new 93 notebooks. The monthly log has similar issues for me although I do enjoy the 94 act of writing down what the month is going to look like. I think the 95 date-based spreads would work better if I always had my journal to hand but I 96 don't. 97 98 Collections, which is bullet journals way of saying "lists", have been handy to 99 collect^[30][3] ideas or similar notes about a single topic. I have some 100 collections for this website, [31]EchoFeed, and some house projects. What I 101 wish I'd done is put these all in one place at the back of my journal. Having 102 them wherever I started them in the journal is not helpful and makes it a pain 103 to jump quickly to them. And I'm definitely not using [32]the index. 104 105 The bullet system itself (todo, done, migrated, event, note) I do find useful. 106 Putting every thought I have in there I find useful. Just physically writing a 107 thing down is so much better than dumping it into an endless stream of notes in 108 a todo app. 109 110 Now I've written it out like this it's pretty clear: I'm not doing the Bullet 111 Journal method, I'm just journalling. [33]The purpose of a system is what it 112 does and a quick glance at the [34]BuJo website (which has changed 113 significantly even in the past 4 months), tells you what the system does: it 114 sells courses and notebooks. That's not a necessarily a bad thing but it's a 115 big jump from "do journalling". 116 117 One thing I've had to contend with is not having access to my journal while I'm 118 with my kids because they like to grab everything with their grubby little 119 hands. So I have to use something on my phone to dump notes at those times. I 120 started with [35]Godspeed and I'm currently using [36]Tot. When I do sit down 121 with my journal, I'll open Tot and transfer anything in there over to the daily 122 log. 123 124 For the start of a month I do a small monthly spread along with a section to 125 add any general notes I think of for that month. I don't use this spread that 126 much so I'm considering dropping it completely. 127 128 An open notebook on a wooden tabletop showing a layout for work on the left and 129 dates on the right. There are stickers and doodles in it. 130 131 Typically, I will start the week either Sunday night or Monday morning by 132 picking a pair of highlighters to make my headings pretty and any pens I want 133 to use that week. I usually pick a new fountain pen then rotate in some random 134 standard pens. I'll setup my work spread, usually on a left hand page, and then 135 Monday's heading ready for logging on the right hand page. 136 137 I take a quick glance over the previous week to see if there's anything that 138 wasn't done and move them over to the new week. If there's some idea there that 139 needs expanding, I'll add it to Obsidian to expand on later. If I get any fun 140 stickers, packaging with pens, little notes with things I order, or someone 141 gives me something, I'll stick it into the journal as well, sometimes with a 142 note of what it's related to. 143 144 An open notebook on a wooden tabletop showing dates on the left with notes, 145 some stickers at the bottom, and sketches for a website on the right 146 147 Depending on the week, I might make a note with a sample of the pens and inks 148 I'm using or add a tracker to note down how many hours I've worked on a 149 specific project. The biggest thing I've realised is there's no wrong way to 150 use a notebook. Some weeks, I might only use a single page for the whole week. 151 Other times a week can span over multiple pages with brainstorms for new ideas, 152 flowcharts to understand a concept, notes on a video I've watch, or just a 153 sketch of something I thought of. 154 155 I am going to continue with this, tweaking things as needed. As long as I'm 156 keeping up with the things I want to get done, whatever that ends up looking 157 like in my journal, I'm happy. 158 159 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 160 161 1. They refunded me the whole cost of the notebook to make up for it [37]⤾ 162 163 2. I mostly want a nap [38]⤾ 164 165 3. Okay fine I get it now [39]⤾ 166 167 If you like this post or one of my projects you can [40]buy me a coffee 💖 168 169 [41] Follow me on Mastodon [42] Subscribe with RSS 170 171 Next: [43]Weeknote #1951 172 173 Previously: [44]Don't @ Me Stickers 174 175 [45]Discuss on the 'don 2025-06-03 176 177 Five Months of Journalling [46]https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of 178 -journalling/ 179 180 I've been doing something akin to bullet journalling for the best part of five 181 months and have some thoughts 182 183 [47] 7 184 [48] 2 185 [49] 29 186 [50]Discuss on Stephen Gower's Blog 2025-06-03 187 188 Popular Posts 189 190 • [51]Using the 8BitDo Keyboard on MacOS 191 • [52]Convert a Spotify Account From Facebook to Email Login 192 • [53]Blocking Bots with Nginx 193 • [54]Perplexity AI Is Lying about Their User Agent 194 • [55]Now (November 2025) 195 196 Analytics powered by [56]Fathom 197 198 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 199 200 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https://social.lol/@robb 241 [8] https://rknight.me/subscribe 242 [9] https://rknight.me/blog 243 [10] https://rknight.me/notes 244 [11] https://rknight.me/links 245 [12] https://rknight.me/projects 246 [13] https://rknight.me/now 247 [14] https://rknight.me/explore 248 [15] https://rknight.me/blog/tags/analogue 249 [16] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/ 250 [17] https://rknight.me/blog/biting-the-bullet/ 251 [18] https://rknight.me/almanac/books/2025-01-20-the-bullet-journal-method/ 252 [19] https://ruminatepodcast.com/ 253 [20] https://social.lol/@esamecar/113992147299808545 254 [21] https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/EF2037D3-B740-4CEC-B6B0-413832C08D2A 255 [22] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn1 256 [23] https://rknight.me/blog/lihit-labs-compact-pen-case-review/ 257 [24] https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/3479760F-89A6-4BCD-BA51-E0982AA4748A 258 [25] https://rknight.me/intersect 259 [26] https://rknight.me/shop 260 [27] https://www.penaddict.com/?category=Meet+Your+Maker 261 [28] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn2 262 [29] https://mastodo.neoliber.al/@Neblib/114597997777651516 263 [30] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn3 264 [31] https://echofeed.app/ 265 [32] https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq/the-index 266 [33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does 267 [34] https://bulletjournal.com/ 268 [35] https://rknight.me/save/godspeed 269 [36] https://tot.rocks/ 270 [37] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref1 271 [38] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref2 272 [39] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref3 273 [40] https://rknight.me/coffee 274 [41] https://social.lol/@robb 275 [42] https://rknight.me/subscribe 276 [43] https://rknight.me/blog/weeknote-1951/ 277 [44] https://rknight.me/blog/dont-at-me-stickers/ 278 [45] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988 279 [46] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/ 280 [47] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988 281 [48] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988/reblogs 282 [49] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988/favourites 283 [50] https://lwgrs.bearblog.dev/re-five-months-of-journalling/ 284 [51] https://rknight.me/blog/using-the-8bitdo-keyboard-on-macos/ 285 [52] https://rknight.me/blog/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login/ 286 [53] https://rknight.me/blog/blocking-bots-with-nginx/ 287 [54] https://rknight.me/blog/perplexity-ai-is-lying-about-its-user-agent/ 288 [55] https://rknight.me/blog/now-november-2025/ 289 [56] https://usefathom.com/ref/IXCLSF 290 [57] https://rknight.me/about/colophon 291 [58] https://rknight.me/contact 292 [59] https://rknight.me/subscribe 293 [60] https://rknight.me/save 294 [61] https://11ty.dev/ 295 [62] https://home.omg.lol/referred-by/robb 296 [63] https://echofeed.app/ 297 [64] https://buymeacoffee.com/rknightuk 298 [65] https://ko-fi.com/s/4662b19f61 299 [66] https://internetphonebook.net/?call=531&issue=1#dial-a-site 300 [67] https://social.lol/@robb 301 [68] https://people.pledge.party/ 302 [69] https://rknight.me/blog/tags/recipes 303 [70] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_machine_kills_fascists 304 [71] https://url.town/@robb 305 [72] https://tiltify.com/@marlies/domain-name-relief-2024 306 [73] https://matti.omg.lol/ 307 [74] https://32bit.cafe/ 308 [75] https://hillhouse.neocities.org/cliques/library/ 309 [76] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/atom.xml 310 [77] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/rss.xml 311 [78] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/feed.json