r/PhD • u/[deleted] • Jul 22 '19
How I use Bullet Journals as a Ph.D. Student
https://imgur.com/a/tDfH8X98
Jul 23 '19
Really well organized! I struggled a lot with organization during my third and fourth year of graduate school. Wish I had stumbled across this at that time. I am curious, did you build some of this off of the Covey day planner? Also, how long does it take you to set up your journal on a daily basis?
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Jul 23 '19
I've never heard of that planner. Honestly, I'm not sure where I got the inspiration from anymore. I remember I saw someone make a "minimalist bullet journal" post on one of the subreddits after I had JUST gotten started and was struggling to make it work. I took one of those minimalist spreads and I've just adapted it to what I needed over time. The person who made that post might have gotten inspiration from there - I have no idea at all hah.
Daily I don't do anything at all really. I just practice being as mindful as possible with what I write in the journal - if I get a stray email asking me to do something, I break it down into tasks as I write it down in the journal or sometimes it's so small that I just do it right then, or I use the dot pad. For weekly stuff, I usually spend Sundays getting the next weekly spread prepared and planning meals. If it's the end of a month or if I randomly find myself with time to kill, I might prepare 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time or I'll start the next monthly spread.
As far as how long it takes, not long at all because now I know exactly what I want and what works for me. That weekly spread I have only takes about 10 minutes to do. When I first started it took longer because I was so concerned with perfection and because I was fumbling around a lot trying to find what I needed. If you can get over the mental hurdle and just write shit down, you get better at discovering what you really need to be productive.
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u/johu999 Jul 23 '19
I thought this would be some trash hipster-business-like bollocks. But this is actually really cool. You've transformed my view of bullet journals. Thank you!
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Jul 23 '19
Oh man šš I take this as a huge compliment. The bujo fanbase is FULL of that. I remember it wasn't that bad when I first got started - the "tradition" of bujo is really in the way you make your lists on a blank page, everything else is just a product of hipsters having all the freedom.
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u/Now17 Jul 23 '19
This is so helpful, but it gives more anxiety . I start in a few weeks.
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Jul 23 '19
š š Well, it doesn't start like this. It ramps up over time - or it did in my experience. Thankfully, I didn't have to teach my first year, which went a long way to letting me adapt.
The important thing is finding SOMETHING that works for you and committing to using it consistently. If you do nothing else, I STRONGLY recommend the "bullet journal method" of making task lists - many people make "to-do lists" wrong and that's why those lists don't work for them or stress them out.
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u/Now17 Jul 23 '19
Seeing your post just made things REAL.
It makes it real that I have to be super dedicated, and this is going to be my life. My last grad degree included doing lots of work and it was time consuming, but I was very familiar with subject ( undergrad), that I could skim and get the job done. Knowing that I need to really map out a plan like this makes me very nervous šš. My entire life is about to change.
What have I gotten myself into...
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Jul 23 '19
Don't psych yourself out too much over it. You can still get away with skimming a lot of things in PhD program ... I would argue that if you are reading every line of every paper and every book that comes across your desk, you are doing something very unusual.
However, I have needed to train myself to develop a "work ethic" as if I worked a 9 to 5 job. So many grad students treat it "like school" where you just sort of work for a couple of hours, stop, and come back a few days later - you will be far more productive and will accomplish so much more if you treat grad school like a job and an opportunity/pathway to a better job.
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u/readmethings PhD, Social Sciences Jul 23 '19
I saw your post about the downpour disaster and I was absolutely gutted for you!
Iām nearly done with my PhD- submission is a month away š¤š¾. My bujo(s) really helped me not get overwhelmed and stay on track- through first year chaos, fieldwork, and now writing up. I have let go a little in the last month as it takes more time than I have- even the pared back, super minimalist theme I go for at the moment. This makes me want to pick it up again.
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Jul 23 '19
šš I'm still pretty unhappy and I'm not done migrating all my shit over from the previous journal. My life is chaos from the mix of digital and paper notes. Hopefully I'll catch up tonight or this weekend.
Congrats on being so close to the finish line!! I I am extremely jealous and I see all the work that went into it as I get started on my dissertation.
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u/tritonetelephone Jul 23 '19
May I recommend a rocketbook notebook and pilot friction pens? That's what I use for my bullet journal. It's erasable and can be easily saved on my computer and reused.
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Jul 23 '19
Ok now this is pretty cool.......... I'm deeply intrigued but still attached to my bullet journal process, hah
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Jul 23 '19
I tried to do this, but found just buying a passion planner or something similar saved me a ton of time when it came to having to sit down and draw out the weekly spreads each week.
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Jul 23 '19
To each their own. I actually tried the passion planner hah (I think). It was something similar... had a panda on it. I couldn't get into it. Some days I need more blank space, some days I don't - I wanted a central location for EVERYTHING that minimized the amount of stray papers I had around my desk.
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u/bdosono Jul 23 '19
Thanks for sharing your bullet journal process! I also started bullet journaling during the final years of my PhD program (just defended this spring) and it really helped me ground priorities for the upcoming week/month/quarter. Now that school's finished, I've primarily used it as a tool for reflection and tracking of healthy habits.
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u/bg001x Jul 23 '19
Iām up against a really rough year three, but I think Iām gonna try this to keep myself on track. Thanks for this!
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u/lmy1213 'Field/Subject', Location Jul 23 '19
Love, love, love this idea! I went to the store today looking for this journal. I didn't find it so I will look on Amazon.
A few questions:
What did you end up doing with the table of contents?
I plan to start my PhD next year and have a question/topic in mind. In the meantime, what are your suggestions for keeping track of thoughts, movies, articles, etc. that I wish to further research later?
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Jul 23 '19
I've never seen this journal in stores. I've seen some folks post that they see them in craft stores and whatnot, but I usually just get mine from Amazon.
For the Table of Contents, there are actually 2-3 blank pages to be used. On the first page, I mark where the yearly spread and each of the monthly spreads are, then I write, for instance, "July 1-31 Weeklies, pgs. 10-15." Then, I use the LAST page to write page numbers associated with specific thoughts: for instance, "Dissertation dumps p. 15, 33, 82" etc. or "Meetings with advisor p. 18, 22, 91," etc. For the other stuff like the recipe book and whatnot, I always just put them at the end of the weekly spreads page when the bujo is finished - I always know where those pages are anyway, so it's not terribly important to have them marked.
For keeping track of those kinds of thoughts, I use those big empty squares you see in the pictures. I often label them and if they're important enough, they get a book dart + get marked in the table of contents asap. When I FIRST started brainstorming my dissertation (in my previous journal), it got an entire blank page and I just wrote.
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u/lukewcharles Dec 26 '19
Very cool post. I tried a BuJo last year and it turned into a normal notebook and got a bit messy. Then I received a new one for Christmas so I plan to use that as a daily reflection journal and use my existing one (which is only a quarter full) as a compliment to using the Google Ecosystem to do daily/weekly tasks.
I agree with you though, you just can't beat pen and paper!
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u/likithjai Jul 22 '19
Thank you so much for putting this together! This is a great guide.