My Electronic Bullet Journal 2021 Edition
By: Mary Ann
Tags: Life Hacking, Productivity, Gtd, Bulletjournal

Last year around this time I wrote a blog post about my 2020 electronic journal riffing on Shaunta Grimes post about having a “spectacularly productive 2020”. Shaunta talked about preferring a completely analog system but, as I said then, I’m an all-in digital gal. Using ideas from Shaunta’s post, the Getting-Things-Done productivity system, and Ryder Carroll’s bullet journal method, I put together a system I thought would serve me well.

Then 2020 blew up. A little over three months into the year, we learned we were on the cusp of a worldwide pandemic and were encouraged to shelter in place for a while. My Unitarian Universalist congregation had their 2020 annual Congregational dinner the first weekend in March, even though there were some concerns about gathering together. Not long afterward the building was shut down, and they moved to online services, meetings and other events. At my cohousing community, our last community dinner was the second Thursday in March. Then we shut down group activities and moved many of our events online.

Suddenly, everything we as individuals and groups planned for the near term was on hold. Then, as time passed oh-so-slowly, the near term became the long term. As the year draws to a close, my UU congregation will meet electronically way into 2021, as will my community. In the last several weeks, two different vaccines were announced and rolled out across the nation. But I’m not sure if our small rural county has received any doses yet. Regardless, it’s going to take months before enough people have been vaccinated to begin a return to anything like our pre-COVID activities.

But life continues. Personally, I’m still doing much of the volunteer work I was doing before I began hunkering down. The congregation continues to meet electronically. We had our regular fall fund raiser completely on-line and raised much more than expected. The community continues to meet sometimes online and sometimes as small groups, outside masked and socially distanced. My personal calendar is as full as ever — maybe fuller as each event has to contain an electronic link.

So, it looks like a good time to review my 2020 productivity plans and revise them for 2021.

In my original post I highlighted three essential apps: my Apple calendar, my productivity system Toodledo, and my electronic bullet journal using Evernote. Those three continue to be the foundations of my system.

Flagging Zoom Meetings

Since almost everything I do now is online, I’ve added a message flag in my email for upcoming meetings. That way I can just display my flagged emails in order to find the link I need. In addition, I try to faithfully post the Zoomlink for each electronic event into the calendar entry.

One welcome addition is a small Mac app called Meeter. It monitors my calendar and pulls all my electronic meetings into a single location on my menu bar. Almost all of my meetings are on Zoom but Meeter also supports Google Hangouts, Webex, MS Teams, Google Meet, Jitsi, Ring Central, Amazon Chime, and GoToMeeting. As I write this, it seems strange to have two or three different ways to find electronic meeting information, but flagging an email is a single click and once I set up Meeter, it hasn’t require any additional maintenance. So, the only hassle is putting the meeting information into the calendar event. Many groups I’m involved with that have regular meetings have also set their Zoom meeting up as “recurring.” So once the information is in my calendar, it automatically cycles forward.

Evernote Bullet Journal

My 2020 Evernote bullet journal has worked so well I am looking at ways to expand it in 2021. I’ve already renamed my Bullet Journal notebook from “2020 Bullet Journal” to just “Bullet Journal” as I see this continuing for a long time. I’m expanding the index page to work even harder in 2021. I had links not only to other Evernote pages and notebooks, but also folders and files outside the software. (Getting the link for a folder or file on my computer is a hassle, but it’s doable and once I have it, the process doesn’t have to be repeated. Matthew Cassinelli’s process requires the use of an iPhone, but works well. I still think there must be a better way, but I haven’t found it yet 😢)

I’ve added a couple new items to my Bullet Journal Index, including a theme for the year, some of my personal commandments, and links to committee folders and files. I’ve found this index page very useful as I have set it up as an Evernote shortcut, so it only requires a single click to load. Then it’s easy to use the links to jump to whatever I’m looking for.

When I set this page up last year, I was debating whether to make each month’s TaDa calendar its own document or put them all into a single file. Making each month a stand-alone document has worked well, and I’ll probably continue that format in 2021. However, I may merge all of my 2020 calendar pages into a single document for archiving.

I would never expand all the time many people do on making their bullet journals artistic (search Pinterest for “bullet journal” if you’re interested in what other people are doing). However, I’ve been having fun adding emojis to my entries. I had a list in last year’s post and have added a few more, most notably this one 🦠 for information about the virus.

Using Asana for Blog Post Tracking

Last January, I committed to doing these blog posts at least twice a month. When quarantine hit, I found I was doing a lot of reading and added to additional posts for book reviews. Managing the posts along with the social media linked to them became ungainly, so I set up a second to do program, Asana just for managing my blogging. The thing I like about Asana is its kanban-style boards for project management. I can set up each post as a project and keep it together until it is posted and archived. When I took over the position as Adult Faith Development (Sunday School for adults) coordinator, I added each session as a project to my Asana list. It seems counterintuitive to maintain two distinct To Do systems, but it works for me to keep my regular work separated from my blog posts.

So, that’s my system for 2021. Like I said last year, it sounds complex, but it is actually pretty straightforward, doesn’t require much maintenance, and seems to be working for me.

What about you? Did you change how you got your work done in 2020? Are you still using the system you set up? Will you continue to use it in 2021? Let us know in the comments.