Personal Organization

Last updated: Oct 01, 2025

There are 2 core parts to my personal organization: a Bullet Journal and a calendar.

Bullet Journal

I make heavy use of “BuJo”. For a brief overview of what it is, see the How to Bullet Journal video.

Mine has a few modifications though:

• I use a pocket notebook for “Daily Logs” and a digital version for “Monthly Logs” and “Collections” insead of a regular sized notebook for everything for the following reasons:
  • Harder to carry around a regular sized notebook everywhere. I always have my pocket notebook and pen with me.
  • Writing down URLs. You really need copy paste for these. So I put these in my digital “Monthly Log”.
  • Searching. My “Monthly Logs” tend to have a lot of reference material, so quickly finding things became a real hassle.
  • Expanding previous bullets. I managed to embrace the lack of bullet rearranging, but I often found myself preferring to expand existing tasks or notes with sub-bullets in the digital version to keep information centralized a bit more.
• I use the “Monthly Log” to add URL-based entries (like a link to an article and relevant quotes).
• I don’t use the “Index” collection.
• I don’t use the “Calendar Page” in the “Monthly Log” collection.
  • I use a proper calendar for this instead (see “Calendar” section below).
• I don’t use “event” bullets (o).
  • I never quite understood how they’re supposed to be used, so instead I treat past unscheduled events as “notes” (-) and use a proper calendar for future scheduled events.
• I don’t use “signifiers”.
• For “task” bullets, I use the original 5, plus 2 of my own:
  • “Task incomplete” (*).
  • “Task complete” (x).
  • “Task migrated forward to the next month” (>).
  • “Task migrated back from the Monthly Log to the Future Log” (<).
  • “Task migrated back from the Daily Log to the Monthly Log” (<).
  • “Task canceled” (~).
  • “Task migrated down to a newer Daily log” (v).
  • “Task migrated up to the Monthly Log” (^).

I try to capture any task in my pocket notebook “Daily Log” first (no matter how small it is and as soon as possible). Example:

* replace sofa
        

If it's a task large enough that it needs breaking down, I then proceed to migrate it to my digital “Monthly Log” and break it down into multiple sub-tasks as indented bullets and with additional context as nested notes. Example:

* Replace sofa.
  x Order new sofa online.
    - https://some-website.com/sofa777
  ~ Dump old sofa.
  * Give old sofa to Alice and Bob.
    - Tel: (123) 456-7890
        

I also migrate tasks from my pocket notebook in 2 other situations. When I do the digital monthly migration, I go over my pocket notebook tasks and migrate ones that are starting to become old (2+ weeks). When I fill up the pocket notebook and going to start a new one, I migrate all of the tasks.

I also try to capture as a note any meaninful thought (funny, emotional, contextual, etc.), event, article (with sub-notes with my thoughts), information, etc.

When it comes to emotional thoughts, it’s pretty useful to capture them so I can “get it off my chest” without having to vent with someone and avoid doing something stupid or reckless. In a few cases I can also come back later and decide whether I want to add a task or a note with my final/cooler thought(s).

Pocket Notebook Set-Up

I use Field Notes pocket notebooks and Sakura Pigma Micron 01s pens.

Digital Set-Up

I use my computer, a text editor (vim) and .txt files, and a cloud file storage service to synchronize across computers (GitHub).

The directory and file structure I follow the following example:

BuJo/
├── 2020
│   ├── 00-FutureLog.txt
│   ├── 01-January.txt
│   ├── ...
│   └── 12-December.txt
├── 2021
│   ├── 00-FutureLog.txt
│   ├── 01-January.txt
│   ├── ...
│   └── 12-December.txt
└── Collections
    ├── Books.txt
    ├── Golf.txt
    └── Wine.txt
        

Calendar

I use a proper calendar (Google Calendar) since—for me—BuJo fell short on calendaring and reminders, specifically:

• Harder to open up the event’s address in the map app (Google Maps). This is specially needed when driving to avoid typing in the address.
• Harder to visualize time slots.
• Lack of notifications minutes prior to the event.
• Harder to share the event with someone.
• Not practical for rescheduling often, which tends to happen much more nowadays.

I try to capture all significant events in my calendar (appointments, social events and outings, haircuts, flights, birthdays, meetings, etc.).