first of all this is not supposed to be a controversial video i don't want to get
any hate mail i think bullet journaling is really cool i really admire the people who
have basically turned it into an art form i admire the people who just use the basic
foundations of bullet journaling i just admire anyone who has been able to find
a planning system that works for them like more power to you but in this video i wanted
to share some of the reasons why i hate bullet journaling i'm just kidding i'm just kidding
hello wonderful humans and welcome back to the bliss bean so okay this video is just gonna be
me talking about why bullet journaling doesn't work for me personally i actually used to be a
paper planner i was a person who preferred paper planning i was not a paper planner myself i just
really liked creative things like journaling and making collages so i really liked the
personal touch of paper planning it was fun it was tangible and i felt like i could make it my own so
usually i would just buy a simple store-bought agenda to keep track of my calendar and my tasks
i think it was junior year that i actually created my own planner so i bought the happy planner rings
i bought this fancy and expensive disk sponge i printed out my own dotted paper i hole punched
two sheets of plastic and i put together my own planner every month i would sketch out my
weekly layouts make my habit tracker write out my goals for the month etc so i'm not sure if
this qualifies as a bullet journal i had different types of bullets like what was migrated what was
canceled what were notes what were appointments i had a habit tracker but i didn't have some other
features of a bullet journal like a future log or one of those pages where you write down all
the days of the month down the side and then you write the events next to that a lot of my friends
called it a bullet journal i just refer to it as my planner so then less than two years ago which
actually blows my mind because i really thought i'd been doing digital planning for much longer
than two years but just less than two years ago in 2018 i just started to get kind of frustrated with
my planning system sophomore and junior year were really really busy and that just tested the limits
of my little old paper planner so for example one of the most challenging projects that i remember
working on was organizing this day of volunteering in junior year and i actually took a photo of my
planner during that week and even just looking at it now stresses me out so i was periodically
looking at and testing out different digital planning tools i would get really excited about
something that had a ton of great features a ton of great reviews i would download it i would find
that it was just too complicated it didn't fit my life and then i'd go right back to paper planning
finally one day it was like fate i watched rowena tsai's video called productivity
how i plan and organize my life to get things done in it she mentioned a tool that i had never heard
of before called to do and i noticed that it bore a striking resemblance to what i already was doing
on paper just on a screen so i tried that out in august of 2018 before starting my senior year
and the rest is history i actually did take a brief little venture back into paper planning
when i was traveling i thought it would be a fun way to do my travel planning get creative and then
have like a tangible souvenir of my entire trip and it was okay but after that i was like okay
next time i'm just gonna plan my trip digitally i think so now that i've been on both sides
of the debate i've used paper for a long time i've used digital for a long time i wanted to
talk about the reasons why digital continues to hold my heart and i think it forever will
so first of all as you saw in that photo that i showed you my paper planner got very
visually cluttered and if you've seen my most watched video on this channel you know that i
don't like clutter whether it is in my room or in my planner things get rescheduled edited and
so my planner was full of white out eraser marks scribbles cramped handwriting when my list got too
long with digital planning it's just always neat and beautiful it's so easy on the eyes
and that just makes me feel more organized and more capable of accomplishing my to-do list
so i now use google calendar for scheduling events and time blocking my day
but back when i used a paper planner for tasks i also used it to keep track of appointments
now the problem is a paper planner isn't that portable so like at school
my planner usually would be in my backpack not necessarily within reach if someone asked me
about my availability sometimes i didn't have my planner anywhere near me or i'd have to
pull it out flip through all the pages to find the correct date whereas with my phone it's
pretty much always on me and it's super easy to just scroll to the date that we're talking about
speaking of time blocking my day that is something i've only started doing this year
but i can't imagine doing it with a paper system like i'm sure you could sketch out
a daily agenda in your journal but then with your to-do list with your schedule all in the
same place i feel like that just takes up a lot of space with my digital planning system
i use google calendar so i can very easily just click and drag to create a time block
type in the name of whatever i plan to be doing during that block of time as the day progresses
if i need to adjust i can move those around and then within my to-do list i can create
headers to organize all of my tasks under and those are just as easy to edit and rearrange
so one of the most important features of a digital planner for me is the ability to rearrange
my tasks in the order that i plan to do them i actually tried doing this with my paper planner
i would take a pencil and i would write in teeny tiny little numbers to indicate the order that
i plan to do the tasks in as you can imagine this got pretty messy and a lot of times if i needed to
reorder stuff i would end up with numbers like 2.5 and 2.75 and then throughout the day you have to
be scanning throughout your entire list to figure out what is the next number and it might not
necessarily be three it might be 2.75 with digital planning at the start of each day i put everything
in order i create headers as checkpoints throughout my day and as the day goes by if
something changes which it inevitably will then it's super easy to just drag and drop to adjust
aside from moving things around within my day i also move things around a lot within my week so at
the start of each week i pretty much plan all of my tasks in advance i have a general idea of what
i'm going to be doing on each day but again things always change and so in that case i just drag
tasks to different columns to schedule them to different days like maybe i had a couple
of errands on my to-do list for a certain day and it turns out i don't have access to a car that day
so then i can just take all those errands drag them to a different day
and that's it i don't have to draw arrows cross things out use whiteout
anything like that this feature also really comes in handy for me when for example
i might think of something that i need to do next week but i don't know which day i'm gonna do it so
what i do is i will schedule that task for the monday of that next week when i sit down to do
my sunday planning i'll look at all the things i put in the monday column and then i'll do my real
actual planning process and decide what day of the week i'm going to do those things on
one of my least favorite things about the bullet journaling system is that it's kind
of hard to schedule things far in advance because you're making all of these weekly layouts by hand
so maybe you haven't gotten to creating that spread yet and i know you can always
come up with some work around like you can have a page where you write down
all the tasks for which you don't have a weekly spread yet but for me i just think it's so much
easier to be able to literally click ahead to that day schedule that task for that specific day and
not have to worry about it until it comes up so for example if you have some sort of a meeting
next month and you need to prepare a handout the night before with a digital planner you can
schedule that task for exactly that day and not worry about it until it's time for the meeting
so luckily i never lost my paper planner but it definitely was a fear of mine one weekend i did
leave it at school and i remember just feeling so lost that weekend i had no idea what to work on
i tried to reconstruct my to-do list for memory that did not go super well it was not a great
weekend with a digital planner unless like the company's servers are destroyed or something
i don't know how computers work but in general i don't really have to worry about losing my planner
i can even sign into my to-do list from different devices and it'll always be there it'll always be
synchronized by the way there's a link in the description if you guys want to try to do whether
you're switching over from paper planning or just over from a different digital planning tool
it's super simple and effective and i've been using it for almost two years so
let me know what you guys think of it if you try it finally the final reason that i prefer digital
planning is just the fact that you can have like unlimited tasks i am someone who likes to write
out very specific to-do list items it makes me feel more clear about what i have to get done
and it's also just really satisfying to be able to check off more to-do's so with my digital
planner i have the freedom to do that sometimes my to-do list literally looks like send email to this
person send email to that person eat a snack do this workout video then this workout video shower
so yeah those are all the reasons why i have switched from paper planning to digital planning
and why i have continued to use it for almost two years now and aside from my planner there have
been other parts of my life that i've moved over from paper to digital like for example
my content calendar used to be this stack of papers where i printed grids and then tried to
write in what i planned to post on instagram that day it was an absolute mess now i do that all on
trello and it has been amazing i have recently transitioned more of my weekly planning process
from paper over to digital and i just feel like any time i take a step like that anytime i move
something from paper to digital in my life it just makes me feel more productive and more organized
so digital planning has worked very well for me but everyone needs a different planning system so
this is by no means a video trying to convince you to join the other side my only wish is that
everyone can find a planning system that helps them to stay organized and productive and so
maybe these points that i have brought up in this video will help you to decide
what would work best for you let me know what you think of my reasons feel free to disagree with me
let us know in the comments what your planning system looks like
be sure to give this video a like and subscribe to my channel and i will see you next week bye you