A friend told me my bullet journal was 'too messy' to be useful

We were at a coffee shop in Denver, and she flipped through my journal from the last three months. She pointed at a page and said, 'All these scribbles and arrows, how do you find anything?' I explained that the mess is the system for me, it shows my real thinking process. I don't use neat trackers or perfect lettering, but I know where everything is. Has anyone else had to defend their less-than-perfect journal style?

3 comments

3 Comments

michael89527d ago

Totally get that. My own notebook would give some people hives. Half the pages have coffee rings, and my to-do lists are just angry boxes scribbled around key words. But that mess is like a map of my brain. I can look at a page and remember not just the task, but how stressed I was, what I was thinking. A clean page wouldn't mean anything to me.

jamiemiller27d ago

Ever look at a super neat planner and feel like you're doing it wrong? I used to think my notes had to be perfect to be useful, but your coffee ring comment actually makes sense. Those messy pages are proof you were really in it, you know? Now I see my own scribbles as a record of the work getting done, not just a list of what's left.

henry_grant16d ago

So does @jamiemiller's neat planner envy ever actually go away?