Bullet Journaling: Unlock Success in Assisted Living Investing
Apr 24, 2026
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your chaotic to-do lists or need help managing tasks and events? You’re not alone. Bullet journaling provides a simple yet effective solution to help organize your life and boost productivity.
Created by Ryder Carroll, bullet journaling is a versatile system that combines a planner, diary, and to-do list into one customizable framework. Its foundational principles include rapid logging, using symbols for task management, and focusing on mindfulness through reflection.
In this blog, we’ll explore the origins of bullet journaling and its key components, such as the index, future log, and daily log. By the end, you’ll be equipped to start your bullet journal, helping you take control of your time and transform your daily routine.
Check out the video, too👇
What is Bullet Journaling?
Bullet journaling, or BuJo, is a flexible analog system created by Ryder Carroll to help track the past, organize the present, and plan for the future. Designed to assist individuals, especially those with ADHD, it uses a simple notebook and pen to streamline tasks and notes. Its popularity soared after Carroll published The Bullet Journal Method, leading to countless adaptations worldwide.
Getting Started: Tools You’ll Need
One of the greatest aspects of bullet journaling is its simplicity. To begin, all you need is:
- A Notebook: Any notebook can work, but a dotted notebook offers flexibility and a clean appearance.
- A Pen: No fancy pens are necessary—whatever you have on hand will work.
A basic notebook from your local store is enough to start bullet journaling. Its beauty is in its adaptability, allowing you to customize it to your preferences and budget.
The Core Symbols of Bullet Journaling
Ryder Carroll developed a simple set of symbols to categorize and track information. Here’s a breakdown of the basics:
- Dash (-): Represents a note. Use this for thoughts, insights, or observations you want to remember.
- Circle (â—‹): Denotes an event. Add the name and details of the event, such as "Lunch with Dad at 12 PM."
- Bullet (•): Signifies a task. This is the foundation of the bullet journal, marking items that need to be completed.
- X: Marks a completed task. Satisfyingly cross off items once they’re done.
- > (Migration): Indicates a task moved to a future date. Use this when something can’t be completed immediately but remains relevant.
- < (Schedule): Represents a task moved to a long-term future log. Use this for items you’ll revisit later, such as a quarterly goal.
- Strikethrough: This means the task or note is no longer relevant and won’t be pursued.
While these symbols are fundamental, you can adapt or enhance them to suit your needs. The objective is to establish a system that feels intuitive and beneficial.
Essential Logs in a Bullet Journal
To maximize the effectiveness of bullet journaling, it’s helpful to understand its three primary logs:
1. The Future Log
This section is a master task list for long-term goals, appointments, or events. Record any tasks or events here that aren’t for the current month.
2. The Monthly Log
The monthly log offers a summary of your activities for the current month. It typically includes:
- A calendar-style list of dates and significant events.
- A task list for goals and priorities specific to that month.
3. The Daily Log
This log highlights daily tasks, events, and notes, tailored to include either detailed to-do lists or inspiring ideas.
How Bullet Journaling Boosts Organization
Bullet journaling is known for its adaptability, making it a versatile tool for various individuals. Unlike standard planners with rigid structures, this method allows you to customize entries to fit your needs. It’s especially useful for small business owners managing multiple tasks and those seeking a creative outlet.
Handwriting tasks and events engage your brain, fostering mindfulness and intention behind what you record. This practice helps clarify priorities and serves as a visual reminder of your progress. As you fill your journal with completed tasks, you can easily track accomplishments and stay motivated. Bullet journaling offers a balanced mix of structure and freedom, catering to anyone looking to boost productivity while expressing creativity.
Why You Should Try It
Bullet journaling might be the answer if you’re looking for a system that merges creativity with practicality. Here’s why:
- Customizable: You can make it as simple or intricate as you want.
- Cost-Effective: No need for expensive tools—just a notebook and pen.
- Effective: Helps declutter your mind and prioritize what matters most.
Ready to Start Your Bullet Journaling Journey?
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Transcript
00:00:00
have you ever heard of bullet journaling and wondered what it is have you ever wanted to learn the basics of bullet journaling and just needed a little bit of help to understand exactly what it was in today's video we're going to get into an overview and the history of bullet journaling hi everybody i'm brandon gustafston i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted
00:00:27
living investing [Music] in our last video we talked about how i stay organized as a small business owner go ahead and watch that video and learn a little bit about my process how i stay organized the tools that i use today we're going to get into what is bullet journaling so you probably have heard about it and certainly if you watched my last video i i talked a little bit about it let me get into some of the basics of it today so number one uh who invented bullet journaling his name is ryder carroll he
00:01:06
literally wrote the book on bullet journaling it's called the bullet journal method you can see there um that's what it looks like i will link that down below uh so that you can go and and find that on amazon and and purchase it um and uh you know go ahead and do your own research and things like that but it's a great read he actually does a really good job of kind of telling the story behind it it's not dry at all i highly recommend reading the book a little bit of background on ryder
00:01:34
he suffered from abd and the bullet journal the pull up journal method is something that just helped him find a way to organize his thoughts and helped him to be productive on the tasks and the different things that he had to get done dealing with his add and you know after all of his friends and his family saw how productive productive this method allowed him to be especially given his add they wanted to try it out for themselves and they also encouraged him to start sharing this method with the world and hence the the
00:02:06
book was written and if you get on youtube if you get on just do an internet search you get on pinterest you will find thousands of different iterations of bullet journaling there's a lot out there but ryder is the inventor of bullet journaling and i don't know him but he did a great job and really the last several years i've implemented bullet journaling and it has had a huge positive impact in my life and so i would highly suggest that you look at it as well as an option for you as you work
00:02:38
on trying to improve and stay organized in your life next how does it work the great thing about bullet journaling is it is extremely flexible basically if you have a notebook and the preferred type of notebook is what is called a dotted notebook which is a notebook that has dots um in it that kind of create a blank grid uh rather than using lines or being do you wanna just a blank page um i'll link i'll link something down below so you can get a feel for exactly what it looks like but basically if you have
00:03:12
that notebook and a pen you're ready to go that's all you need um those dots in that dotted notebook are they help you do things like keeping things looking neat and organized and still having it look kind of plain and looking like it's a clean notebook without lines in there and things like that you don't have to have that dotted notebook though you can use any notebook that you have lying around just to get started so if you don't have the 10 20 bucks to buy a nice new bullet journal
00:03:45
grab a notebook go down to walmart and buy a brand new you know 30 cent notebook or whatever go to the dollar store uh just get something it doesn't need to be fancy you just need something to work through and kind of plan things out in a notebook once you have a notebook then you just start kind of writing things down and there are a bunch of symbols that writer has created that allow you to kind of go through and and start doing tasks and events and different things like that you can use whatever uh symbols that you want to do
00:04:18
whatever makes sense for you and your brain you can do whatever you want nobody's going to be sitting there watching over your shoulder and saying ah no you got to do a dot there that's incorrect um this is up to you and what makes sense in your mind so um yeah you just wanna find a system that works for you i'm gonna go over an overview of some of those symbols though that writer suggested in his book the bullet journaling method so you can kind of get a feel for what types of symbols he suggests you use
00:04:46
what ones he uses and the ones that i also use actually and just kind of get an overview of what it is so the first symbol is a dash a dash signifies a note so if you let's say you're listening to a talk or a podcast or you're listening to a book or reading a book or something like that and you have a thought and you want to grab that note you want to make sure you are taking note of that information you would grab your bullet journal you put a dash and uh then you would indicate that
00:05:16
note and then you would just write your note i really liked how this person talked about this it was really insightful i think i need to act on it by doing xyz whatever your note needs to be that's how you use that in the bullet journal next is the circle so a circle is just a small circle kind of like a bullet point but hollowed out just a little circle there and it signifies an event if you are talking to your friend on the phone or you set up a lunch appointment or just have a meeting or something like
00:05:47
that what you would do is just draw a circle and then after that you would write name of the event so circle um lunch with dad um and you would put it in there for me i personally like to do my circle and then i will write the time of the event so circle 12 12 o'clock lunch with dad and that lets me know that this is what i have this is the time that it's at for me it works well you can do whatever you want you could put in the day of the week you could put in the day of the month you can put the
00:06:18
time whatever you want to do you can kind of be flexible there or if you just don't want to put a time in at all then you can do that do that that works next is the bullet now the bullet is obviously what the uh the the method gets its name from but a bullet is is basically you know just a a bullet right there just like a bullet point that you would see when you're working in in word or a word processing document or something like that it's just a dot that works there and it signifies a task this is
00:06:50
the thing that you need to get done so when you're looking at your bullet journal and you see all these dots in there those are all the things that you need to get done that's next is the x so an x what these ones actually you do the next three including this one the x you take your your bullet point that you did for your task and you're going to give it a marker that signifies what happened with that task so the first one is an x and x signifies that that task has been complete so after you have
00:07:22
completed one of your tasks you go to that bullet and you put an x through it and turn that bullet now into an x um and you know after you've x out that task it is now complete and you can move on from it the next symbol is what he calls migration so migration signifies that you are migrating your task into the future to work on it again at some point the migration symbol is the exact same symbol as a greater than symbol that you used uh when you're doing math um so that's what it looks like
00:07:56
just that little alligator mouth what it means is uh you you can't get that task done right now and so you need to move it on to the next day or at some point in the future so you use that migration symbol to signify to your brain that i'm going to work on this again in the future and then you will physically write to that task onto the the day that you're going to work on it um in the future um so that you can work on it there and it would be boom a bullet again now once you've migrated that task um
00:08:27
you just need to make sure you are properly migrating it to the future day so that you can actually get it done if you don't do that you just put the little marker in there to migrate it and you don't actually migrate it you're not going to get it done with the bullet journaling method is designed is um once your day is done you've either exited out or you you've created an action on any of those tasks and moved it appropriately or crossed it off and and then you move on to the next day and
00:08:55
if you are forgetting to do those things then things are going to fall off your plate so you want to make sure that you are actually migrating those tasks the next symbol is the the schedule the schedule signifies that you still want to work on a task but you just need to move it back to something like a master task list in the book writer calls it to the future log and you just want to put it back there so you can maintain it and keep your eye on it but you just you're not going to be able to get to work on it for another
00:09:20
month or three weeks or whatever so you move it back to that future log to that master task list and the schedule symbol is what allows you to do that the schedule symbol is the same as the less than symbol that you used in math now when something is important but it's just not going to be able to work on it right now that's when you use that schedule symbol and again when you use that schedule symbol you want to make sure you actually move back to the future log to that master task list so that it exists
00:09:50
there and then you can revisit it and then work on it um in the future when you have time so you just want to make sure that if you're using symbols um using the symbols that i'm outlining for you right here or any other ones that you're actually doing the thing that that you say it is so you can stay on top of things and the last um symbol i'll call it a symbol though it's it's not truly a symbol is just the cross through what that means is uh you've determined that you're just not gonna do the task
00:10:19
anymore um it's not that you're gonna move it on to the future you're not gonna move it back to that future log um you're just not gonna do it anymore just strike it through um and that signifies it's done uh you know it's not done you're just not gonna work on it anymore um you simply put a line through the task indicating that you didn't get it done and you're just not gonna work on it anymore and it's a project a task that it's just not gonna happen or an
00:10:44
event that just didn't happen you know when when you have that task written down and it's no longer relevant that's when you put that cross through line in there to indicate that you're just not going to work on it anymore now these symbols they make it easy to go back and review what you wrote down in your bullet journal and help you distinguish between things quickly and at a glance was this a task was it an event did i get it done did i migrate it and very easily go back in and say yep
00:11:11
that's what i did and i worked on it there and but remember there really are no real rules for bullet journaling so you can use different symbols things that are more meaningful to you you could use a star you could use a check mark whatever is going to work for you to implement things and you can add ones to the ones that i've reviewed for you here but these are just kind of the basic ones that he goes through in the bullet journaling method book so just make sure you do that if though
00:11:40
if that outline was helpful to you make sure you smash that like button make sure you let other people know that this was helpful to you so they can also get an overview of what bullet journaling is a few other key concepts that i wanted to review um in this video is really there's three different concepts that kind of alluded to them as i was going through this initially but i think i mean there's there's a lot more to it but these are the three that i think are are crucial for you to
00:12:06
understand about bullet journaling and there are more in the books if you go in and read that um you'll be able to get a lot more information but having done this now for several years these are the three that i have found to be extremely useful number one is the future log so the future log is essentially a master task list uh if if you have something that you need to remember for the future you would put it in that future log and then as you migrate the task to your monthly or your daily logs you would
00:12:37
then remove it from the future log using one of those symbols that i just talked about the monthly log so the monthly log is intended to give you a quick overview of the current month that you're in oftentimes if you're looking on these what people have done online you're going to see a list of the days of the month like the 1st 2nd 3rd 4th etc and then you would list out any big calendar events happening on those days so for that you're thinking birthdays or conferences or parties
00:13:08
big things that are happening on those days big events and then you also have what kind of amounts is a master task list for the month so basically that future log but kind of a monthly one that is your master task list for the things that you want to do in that month and the last one is the daily log and so this is the one where just on a daily basis you're going in and you're saying this these are the you know the three events that i have these are the meetings that i have these are the five tasks that i want to
00:13:38
get done these are the notes that i had on that day and you're putting that in there and it goes essentially you would have a page that's dedicated to your daily log and this is the information that has happened on that day you can also take notes there in that daily log to help you keep track of when you had a conversation with somebody what you learned at the meeting or or whatever it is and you can kind of organize it that way so when you go back and you're looking at your notes you're
00:14:03
like oh yeah i was talking to jim about that that's where i had that thought or i was in this meeting and that's where that thought came from that's kind of how you can use the daily log there now as you can see i went through this system and you know this is a 15 20 minute video but that's really the entire system it doesn't take a lot for you to implement things it's really not that complex it's very flexible lets you meet your needs all you have to do is buy yourself a notebook and again
00:14:34
i'll link that down below and just give it a shot and and see if it works for you in our next video we're going to get into how you can do use bullet journaling to be an effective small business owner that's why you're here right you're either an assisted living facility owner or operator or you're a small business owner that just found this video and and you're wondering how can i implement this i'm going to get into that in the next video so make sure you watch that
00:15:01
bullet journaling for the small business owner and how you can improve your productivity using the bullet journaling method and to learn more about investing in assisted living just make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net i've got other content up there a blog you can set up consulting calls with me and we can have a chat about how i can help you in your process and then follow me on my other social media platforms and remember it doesn't take a lot just just a little bit keep making progress
00:15:28
step by step by step if you are consistent in making your progress i promise you that you will be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music] you
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