How I stay focused and productive

Well the later is debetable and overestimated in my opinion. :D But anyways, I wanted to share my constellation of journals, notebooks and apps that helps guide my artistic, entrepreneurial and personal journey.

It took me a year and a pandemic to get my system down, but I’m quite happy with what I have going on and it seems to be working for me. So here is my toolkit and how I use it:

Bullet Journal - for habit tracking, daily to-do planning, reflecting, memories/vibe tracker

During a pretty tough period in my life that I was dealing with physical and emotional pain, a sleepless night I randomly started watching bullet journaling videos on YouTube. I found them very soothing and eventually decided to give bullet journaling a go as I was regrouping, making my life better day by day. For those that never heard of bullet journaling, it is a method of personal organization developed by designer Ryder Carroll. It’s a system using a menu of tools like calendar view, trackers, to-do lists for anyone that wants to plan but feels restricted by planners. You can get inspiration from the wider bullet journal community and include in your journal the tools that make sense to you. You can also opt-in for a plain look or go for a more artistic design-heavy approach. I use a more artistic approach as this practice really helped me become more intentional about my art practice. The key when starting out is to start simple using only the essential elements, so you can get into the habit of using it and then build on top of that.

When I started in 2019, I went for a simple notebook thinking I’d reward myself with a proper bullet journal if I stuck with the habit and this actually worked out for me. I used no design apart from the monthly cover, a monthly view calendar, a mood tracker, a reflections paragraph at the end of the month and kept my journal in there too.

As I kept using it more a more I added more planning elements, like to-do lists, weekly logs, goal setting section, affirmations and a cultural log. I also started doing original monthly themes in my design.

The recipe that is now working for me is:

On an annual basis:

Future Log with annual key dates for every month
Mood board
Annual aspirations (big picture - personal improvement)

On a monthly basis:

Monthly cover + keyword for the month (helps set the tone!)
Monthly calendar view (I import any key dates from the future log)
Cultural log (what movies/series I watch, study, music or books, etc)
Affirmations section
Mood tracker
Habit trackers (they need to mirror my goals for the month)
Weekly logs (and weekly to-do list)
Reflections section (reflect on what worked and what didn’t that month and what I’ll try different next month)
Highlights sections (key moments of the month)

Apart from my bullet journal I use a journal to “throw up” thoughts, feelings and de-clutter my brain and a notepad at hand to note down ideas, doodle, take work notes, etc

Notion is the latest addition to my toolkit, so I’m still refining it but for now I use it to keep an editorial calendar for my studio, a kanban board for my tasks, OKRs, pending payments and an online orders tracker. It’s definitely not in its final shape but the things that work, work very well. It also makes me feel like I’m one of the cool kids :D

Would love to hear about your systems @ me on social (maybe not Twitter anymore -crying emoji-).

How I stay focused and productive

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