I'm going to disagree with this, at least in part.

Yes, there are systems that don't work. And yes, the dynamic by which they don't work tends to resemble the scorched-earth dynamic mentioned.

I've been keeping a Bullet Journal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Journal) for several years now.

I'll be the first to admit that I maintain it inconsistently, skipping days, weeks, even months. Much as I have with other paper-based planning systems.

But, and this is critical: the bullet-journal method facilitates for me at least returning to the system. That is, if I take a hiatus, I'm not confronted with pages-on-end of blank, unfilled dates as with a pre-printed planner.

I've seen some people suggest omitting the index, and can only say from my experience DON'T DO THAT!!! It's the most critical part of the journal, as it lets you find things. That's what distinguishes the bullet journal from a simple sequential notebook without an index. Everything else -- bullet notation, brief-vs-long notes, spreads, etc., builds off the index IMO.

The flexibility of the system is fantastic as it suits my highly ideosyncratic needs. Sometimes a day needs a dozen pages. Sometimes I really need to make a spread. Sometimes I'll just have a few notes, or none, for days on end. There's no pre-printed form I'm fitting into, I just make what I need (or skip what I don't).

And again: if time goes by and I don't use it, I can re-start.

I've been looking at other systems, some covered in Getting Things Done (which ... took me nine years to read, just sayin'), including the notion of 43 folders, a tickler file. Not yet implemented, but after looking at ring / circular buffers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer), I totally grok the concept.

I've recently started a journal-based research/reading journal based on a similar concept of "BOTI" -- best of the interval -- pages.

Rather than Starting a List and Simply Letting It Grow, the BOTI is either time- or space-constrained. You add to it, and when completed, open a new page, later in the journal.

Individual items on the BOTI aren't

You can also skim the top items from individual BOTI lists and create a next-higher-aggregation BOTI, the best of the best. And so forth. So you might have BOTW, BOTM, BOTY for week, month, and year. Yes, rolling weeks into months is inexact, this is not a precise system.

(Dev-Ops and sysadmin types will recognise this as similar to an RRD aggregation, and the idea borrows from this.)

And "best" can be multiple categories. I'm thinking of books, articles, authors, and ideas, but you might include, say, wines, beers, films, components, devices, or anything else that has a wide range of properties and quality levels that are otherwise hard to track with time.

The handy thing is that at the end of a year, you have a way to easily list out the top items of a year, or decade. Or should the Singularity arrive any time soon[1], centuries and millennia.[2]

I've also been accumulating a collection of index cards related to research interests, now approaching a decade old. That's also proved an interesting journey.

One thing I'll point out is that recordkeeping and planning tools require both time and space. Your journal, your files, your index cards, need a place to live. If you're living a highly disrupted or mobile life, that can be very hard to arrange. I tend to find physical systems far superior to digital ones, for numerous reasons.[3]

And no, I'm not expecting any one system to solve All My Personal Organisational Failings. But there are systems which have been used and evolved over time, there's a certain amount of sheer technique and practice to many of them, and operating within a loose but supportive structure really can help.

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Notes:

1. I'm not especially convinced it will.

2. Or, rather than travelling through time, you might dig back through past history and identify notable exemplars of whatever classes you're interested in tracking from the past. Or, converting time to space, a BOTP -- best of the place -- tracking faves associated with location. The concept is readily extensible.

3. Distractions (or freedom from), format durability, media stability, and privacy are key among these. But just the psychology of having tangible physical media, as well as the freedom from Someone Else's Notion of How to Arrange Your Brain seems also to matter a lot.