My friend called my bullet journal 'just a fancy to-do list' and it actually made me rethink everything

I was at a coffee shop downtown last Tuesday showing my weekly spread to my buddy Mike and he laughed saying it's basically a color coded shopping list. At first I got defensive but then I looked at my last 3 months and realized I was just tracking tasks I already knew I had to do. It made me ask myself when did my bujo stop being a brain dump and turn into a chore chart? Has anyone else had a friend call out something in your system that made you swap your whole approach?

3 comments

3 Comments

victorh811mo ago

Wait actually your friend Mike might be kinda onto something but in a good way. Bujos can be whatever you need them to be man, to-do lists aren't automatically bad if they keep you organized.

cora5181mo ago

Right Mike out here catching strays for no reason lol. The real issue is that some people turn their bujos into a full time job with a dress code. If your system needs a key legend and three different highlighters just to tell you what day it is, you've gone too far. A to-do list that actually gets done beats a gorgeous spread that stares at you from the grave every week. At the end of the day the trash can doesn't care if your habit tracker was color coordinated.

the_simon1mo ago

Honestly I had a buddy named Dave who went through the exact same thing. He had this crazy detailed system with color coded tabs and all these trackers for water intake and mood and whatever. Then his girlfriend just looked at it one day and asked why he was logging stuff he could remember without writing down. It hit him hard. He told me later that he realized his bujo had become a performance instead of a tool. So he stripped everything back to just a weekly layout and a brain dump page. @victorh81 said it right they can be whatever works for you, but sometimes you gotta let someone else point out when you've lost the plot.