Bullet Journal Quotes

Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.

Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.

[Burnout] isn’t a personal problem. It’s a societal one—and it will not be cured by productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight fucking oats.

Inevitably we find ourselves tackling too many things at the same time, spreading our focus so thin that nothing gets the attention it deserves. This is commonly referred to as "being busy." Being busy, however, is not the same thing as being productive.

In the most connected time in history, we're quickly losing touch with ourselves.

Like building muscle, we need to train our intentions to make them resilient and strong.

Cultivating this self-awareness is a lifelong process, but it starts by simply checking in with yourself.

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

It's part organization, part soul-searching, part dream-weaving.

I was so caught up in my own misery that I forgot a simple truth: As long as our hearts are beating, there is always opportunity.

Everything had its place. He was a bullet journal guy, and I was a sticky note kind of girl.

The more content you try to capture during a lecture or a meeting, the less you're thinking about what's being said. You burn through most of your attention parroting the source.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the painter who dares and who has broken the spell of “you can’t” once and for all. —VINCENT VAN GOGH

For most of us, “being busy” is code for being functionally overwhelmed.

We burn through a lot of resources obsessing over possible outcomes and forming contingency plans, but in reality we’re just fueling our anxiety.

I’ve become obsessed. I carry her notebook with me everywhere I go, spending all my free moments trying to decipher the words she’s scribbled in the margins, developing stories to go along with the numbers she’s written down. I’ve also noticed that the last page is missing. Ripped out. I can’t help but wonder why. I’ve searched through the book a hundred times, looking for other sections where pages might be gone, but I’ve found none. And somehow I feel cheated, knowing there’s a piece I might’ve missed. It’s not even my journal; it’s none of my business at all, but I’ve read her words so many times now that they feel like my own. I can practically recite them from memory. It’s strange being in her head without being able to see her. I feel like she’s here, right in front of me. I feel like I now know her so intimately, so privately. I’m safe in the company of her thoughts; I feel welcome, somehow. Understood. So much so that some days I manage to forget that she’s the one who put this bullet hole in my arm. I almost forget that she still hates me, despite how hard I’ve fallen for her. And I’ve fallen. So hard. I’ve hit the ground. Gone right through it.

I bet she put it in her bullet journal. Saturday, six P.M. A special gold star sticker indicating sexual intercourse completed.” Truly drifts half-asleep again, emitting the occasional cackle.

No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not enitrely own us. It can't take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.

We rewrite things until we get them done or they become irrelevant.

Worry baits us with the promise of a solution but usually offers none.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. —REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Prioritize the items you feel strongest about or are the most time sensitive, and strike off the items you feel “meh” about. We’re not here to design a lukewarm life.

I believe in schedules, routines, washi-tape-covered calendars, bulleted lists in graph-paper journals, and best-laid plans.

If happiness is the result of our actions, then we need to stop asking ourselves how to be happy. Rather, we should be asking ourselves how to be.

Though it can be helpful to set an intention for the day, like Today I will not complain, it's important to remember not to set an expectation for your day, because that's out of your control.

Mark Twain once wrote, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”49 Worry has a way of holding our attention hostage. This is especially true for things we can’t control due to the elevated level of uncertainty. We burn through a lot of resources obsessing over possible outcomes and forming contingency plans, but in reality we’re just fueling our anxiety. Trying to think our way out of situations beyond our control may feel productive, but it’s nothing more than a powerful distraction. Worry baits us with the promise of a solution but usually offers none.

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert likens our memories to painted portraits instead of photographs, where our mind artistically interprets memory.20

Robert Bresson once said, “Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all. —PETER DRUCKER

Transform any guilt into curiosity by asking yourself why each Task might still be incomplete. Does it matter? Is it vital? What would happen if you didn’t do it?

I’m not suggesting that you force yourself to become a chirpy Disney character with rainbows of perpetual optimism blasting out your nose.

In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them.

Overwhelmed by a never-ending flood of information, we’re left feeling overstimulated yet restless, overworked yet discontented, tuned in yet burned out.

Big goals therefore must be fueled by an authentic need that will help you weather the days, months, or even years it takes to fulfill them.

We need to reduce the number of decisions we burden ourselves with so we can focus on what matters.

Productivity is about getting more done by working on fewer things.

Writing down Tasks serves a dual purpose. First, having a record of an open task makes it easier to remember even when you’re away from your journal, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect.

Productivity is in large part a matter of consistency. Once you get it out of your head that you have to work at breakneck speed, you can focus on the process. Short of superhuman willpower, that’s the only way you’ll keep at it.

If the journey is the destination, then we must learn how to become better travelers. To become better travelers, we must first learn to orient ourselves. Where are you now? Do you want to be here? If not, why do you want to move

We must take it upon ourselves to grow. We grow by learning, and we learn by daring to take action. There will always be risk, because we can’t control the outcome. This is the way of life, and it’s unavoidable. What is avoidable, however, is being perpetually haunted by all the things that could have been if you had only dared. Begin by giving yourself permission to believe you’re worth the risk.

Of all the challenges you’ll face along the way, endurance often proves to be the most cunning and lethal adversary. Big goals therefore must be fueled by an authentic need that will help you weather the days, months, or even years it takes to fulfill them. That need must be strong enough to fortify you against the siren songs of distraction, excuses, and doubt that will beckon you toward the rocks.

It's not about living a perfect life, an easy life, or getting things right all the time. It's not even about being happy, though joy often greets you along this path. Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs. It's about penning a story that you believe in and that you can be proud of.

There never has been, nor will there ever be, another like you. Your singular perspective may patch some small hole in the vast tattered fabric of humanity. Uniqueness alone, however, does not make you valuable. If you don’t do, if you don’t dare, then you rob the world—and yourself—of the chance to contribute something meaningful.

use your Daily Reflection as your daily digital detox window. After your PM Reflection, implement a “screens off” policy that lasts until you’ve completed your AM Reflection the following morning. It’s a simple way to get yourself into the habit of unplugging.

we’re pretty lousy at guessing how something will make us feel, thanks to a phenomenon known as impact bias: “the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states.”28 In essence, we chronically underestimate our ability to adapt.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

The palest ink is better than the best memory. —CHINESE PROVERB

If you know the why, you can live any how. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I believe that modern life is moving too fast. A bullet travels quickly, but it usually comes to an abrupt and fatal end.

Journalism must have been very different before people resolved so many of their conflicts with bullets.

The act of writing by hand draws our mind into the present moment on a neurological level unlike any other capturing mechanism.

Few things are more distracting than the cruel stories we tell ourselves.

Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. —WILLIAM MORRIS

Knowing where you are begins with knowing who you are.

Mindfulness is the process of waking up to see what’s right in front of us. It helps you become more aware of where you are, who you are, and what you want.

The rush of our busy lives can quietly carve out a gulf separating our actions from our beliefs.

By externalizing our thoughts, we begin to declutter our minds.

The Bullet Journal is designed to be your "source of truth.

The mercy bullet I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. . . . It is a good idea, then, to keep

[B]e mindful about the people you surround yourself with, because they will shape you. Their strengths and weaknesses can have a tremendous influence on your own trajectory. ... Ask yourself: What can I learn from them? Is the world a bit of a better place because they’re in my life? Do they make me want to be a better person?

LONDON, March 16 Ed telephoned from Vienna. He said Major Emil Fey has committed suicide after putting bullets through his wife and nineteen-year-old son. He was a sinister man. Undoubtedly he feared the Nazis would murder him for having double-crossed them in 1934 when Dollfuss was shot. I return to Vienna day after tomorrow. The crisis is over. I think we’ve found something, though, for radio with these round-ups.

Our lives are lived in season of more, seasons of less, seasons of triumph, seasons of loss. Each season sees our needs change. We live, learn, and adapt. So, too, must our definition of meaning. Things that grow in one season rot in another. If we blindly hold on to the past, we'll be forced to sustain ourselves with the expiring beliefs from seasons gone by. No wonder we're often left feeling unsatisfied, empty, starving for substance. In order to live fulfilling lives, we have to embrace the shifting nature of our experience by making our search for meaning an ongoing practice.

Don’t let fear, pride, or impatience deprive you of the opportunity to ask. As Carl Sagan once said, “There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.

The complex tactile movement of writing by hand stimulates our mind more effectively than typing. It activates multiple regions of the brain simultaneously, thereby imprinting what we learn on a deeper level. As a result, we retain information longer than we would by tapping it into an app.18 In one study, college students who were asked to take lecture notes by hand tested better on average than those who had typed out their notes. They were also able to better retain this information long after the exam.

How do we best harness our curiosity while reducing the risk of failure? We set goals. When set with intention, goals can provide structure, direction, focus, and purpose.

If intentionality means acting according to your beliefs, then the opposite would be operating on autopilot. In other words, do you know why you’re doing what you’re doing?

Often all it takes to live intentionally is to pause before you proceed.

Intentionality is the power of the mind to direct itself toward that which it finds meaningful and take action toward that end.

Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us. —RICHIE NORTON

If the journey is the destination, then we must learn how to become better travelers.

Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning. —DAVID STEINDL-RAST

To dare in life is to make yourself vulnerable to the possibility of failure.

Reflection helps identify what nourishes you so you can make better decisions as you seed the next season of your life.

this feeling is the result of the mind being so consumed with a task that it cannot consciously process the experience of self.44 We enter flow when we’re fully engaged.

Embracing our imperfection puts the emphasis back where it should be: continual improvement.

Your ikigai is at the intersection of what you are good at and what you love doing,

Perfection is an unnatural and damaging concept.

As Daniel Levitin writes in The Organized Mind, information overload is worse for our focus than exhaustion or smoking marijuana.3

That’s right: The fact that it takes longer to write things out by hand gives handwriting its cognitive edge.

you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue

It is in the present moment that we begin to know ourselves

unchecked, decision fatigue can lead to decision avoidance.

By weaving together productivity, mindfulness, and intentionality into a framework that is flexible, forgiving, and, most importantly, practical.

for everything you say yes to, you’re also saying no to something else. Yes means work, it means sacrifice, it means investing time into one thing that you can no longer invest into another.

Should we type, text, call, email, swipe, pin, tweet, Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, Message, or yell at our digital assistant to get it done, whatever it is? And in what order should all of that happen? (Oh, and before we can get started, we’ll have to upgrade, update, reboot, log in, authenticate, reset our password, clear cookies, empty our cache, and sacrifice our firstborn before we can get where we’re going . . . where was that again?)

You can track the decisions you've made, and the actions you've taken that led you to where you are. It encourages you to learn from your experiences. What worked, what did not, how did it make you feel, what's the next move?

No longer satisfied with what we already have, we treat our withdrawal pains by incrementally upping the dosage. More shoes, more booze, more sex, more food, more "likes," just more. This phenomenon is known as hedonic adaptation>

If the journey is the destination, then we must learn how to become better travelers. To become better travelers, we must first learn to orient ourselves. Where are you now? Do you want to be here? If not, why do you want to move on?

As Carl Sagan once said, “There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse and author who spent several years working in palliative care with patients in the last weeks of their lives, recorded her patients’ top five regrets. The number one regret was that people wished they had stayed true to themselves.

Let’s step back. Every year between 1950 and 2000, Americans increased their productivity about 1 to 4 percent.1 Since 2005, however, this growth has slowed in advanced economies, with a productivity decrease recorded in the United States in 2016.2 Maybe our rapidly evolving technology that promises us near-limitless options to keep us busy is not, in fact, making us more productive? One possible explanation for our productivity slowdown is that we’re paralyzed by information overload. As Daniel Levitin writes in The Organized Mind, information overload is worse for our focus than exhaustion or smoking marijuana.3 It stands to reason, then, that to be more productive we need a way to stem the tide of digital distractions. Enter the Bullet Journal, an analog solution that provides the offline space needed to process, to think, and to focus. When you open your notebook, you automatically unplug. It momentarily pauses the influx of information so your mind can catch up. Things become less of a blur, and you can finally examine your life with greater clarity.

One side is not braver than the other. Bullets fly, and men get swept away. They rush into the thick of fighting, and ‘kill’ is written on every face. In a battle the commander who has more men—not afraid to die–drives his opponent off the field and declares a victory.

Writing down this mission statement is also a great way to "wake the page". That's the term I use to describe the act of marking the page for the first time. It's the moment when thought transcends the distance between our inner and outer world, and we breathe life into our ideas.

live on a spectrum. In an “all-or-nothing” world, we tend to forget the power of something. The mightiest tree sprouts from a vulnerable seed. The seed of passion is curiosity. The seed of perseverance is patience. By designing your goals strategically, you can begin to cultivate your opportunities by seeding both your patience and curiosity.

Choices come in all flavors: the good, the bad, the big, the small, the happy, and the hard choices to name but a few. We can make these choices carelessly, or we can make them with intention. But what does that mean? What does it mean to live an intentional life? The philosopher David Bentley Hart defines intentionality as “the fundamental power of the mind to direct itself toward something . . . a specific object, purpose, or end.”7 The term hails from medieval scholastic philosophy, so I’d like to adapt and update it a bit for our purposes: Intentionality is the power of the mind to direct itself toward that which it finds meaningful and take action toward that end.

This new marketplace for drugs proved profitable for all involved. Drug industry revenues topped $1 billion in 1957, the pharmaceutical companies enjoying earnings that made them “the darlings of Wall Street,” one writer observed.19 Now that physicians controlled access to antibiotics and all other prescription drugs, their incomes began to climb rapidly, doubling from 1950 to 1970 (after adjusting for inflation). The AMA’s revenues from drug advertisements in its journals rose from $2.5 million in 1950 to $10 million in 1960, and not surprisingly, these advertisements painted a rosy picture. A 1959 review of drugs in six major medical journals found that 89 percent of the ads provided no information about the drugs’ side effects.20

stories involving the troubles in Northern Ireland, Morocco’s war for the Spanish Sahara, and a ring of traders violating the sanctions against Rhodesia. He was exhilarated by danger. Once in Belfast he insisted that we go cover a demonstration, when I was quite content to stay at the bar of the Europa Hotel. He showed me that even though the street clashes might seem violent and bloody on television, just a half block away things were calm and safe. Journalism required an eagerness to get up and go places. While we were out, a bomb went off at the Europa Hotel. Blundy insisted that this should serve as a lesson for me. I agreed. But when he was killed a few years later by a sniper’s bullet in El Salvador, I gave up trying to fathom the meaning of the lesson he wanted me to learn.

WILL NEVER BE AN OPTION Why do you think I should be an option Or the side piece for any man? My deepest sympathy For your illusions. Assumptions are worse than demons; Bombs and bullets get more respect Than your disrespect. You are used to women Who have no problem Being an option or fighting with the Next woman for your attention. Reality check: I am not the one. I will create my kingdom Until the right man comes along. I will never be an option Or make him one. Hate me, slander me... Have your whole army of community Rise up against me... Grounded, I stand. I fear no man. I PROMISE YOU I will never share a man Or entertain a woman’s man. A woman who tears another woman down Needs to go within and heal her demons. I walk with queens Who fix another woman’s crown. Ironically, my self-respect started a war To tear me down on the internet. Your tongue became so poisonous, It reeks of death. For the attack I received, My Healing Journal ~ From Once Broken to I AM No remorse has come from you yet. I do not expect it. You will never acknowledge your wrongs. If you confront me, Expect the silence of resilience. My confidence is not cocky, Nor is it a red flag. I do not share. Never will. Never had.

Plants have long been, and still are, humanity’s primary medicines. They possess certain attributes that pharmaceuticals never will: 1) their chemistry is highly complex, too complex for resistance to occur — instead of a silver bullet (a single chemical), plants often contain hundreds to thousands of compounds; 2) plants have developed sophisticated responses to bacterial invasion over millions of years — the complex compounds within plants work in complex synergy with each other and are designed to deactivate and destroy invading pathogens through multiple mechanisms, many of which I discuss in this book; 3) plants are free; that is, for those who learn how to identify them where they grow, harvest them, and make medicine from them (even if you buy or grow them yourself, they are remarkably inexpensive); 4) anyone can use them for healing — it doesn’t take 14 years of schooling to learn how to use plants for your healing; 5) they are very safe — in spite of the unending hysteria in the media, properly used herbal medicines cause very few side effects of any sort in the people who use them, especially when compared to the millions who are harmed every year by pharmaceuticals (adverse drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association); and 6) they are ecologically sound. Plant medicines are a naturally renewable resource, and they don’t cause the severe kinds of environmental pollution that pharmaceuticals do — one of the factors that leads to resistance in microorganisms and severe diseases in people.