
Are You Wasting Time On A Bullet Journal?
by Chris Kyle
Search ‘BuJo’ on Instagram and you’ll find an army of Bullet Journal fans.
Photo after photo of beautiful Moleskines and Leuchtturms. All lovingly adorned with washi tape, and the kind of handwriting that would make your old English teacher weep tears of joy.
Bullet Journaling is a phenomenon.
It has lead the paper revolution during the analog purge and subsequent rebirth. And it’s still growing in popularity. Maybe you’ve tried it? If you have, here’s a serious question if you don’t mind me asking…are you getting stuff done?
Is Bullet Journaling really still an effective productivity tool?
Instagram is a favorite hangout for thousands for Bullet Journalists because Bullet Journaling has gradually morphed into an art form.
And the problem with art, is that it’s for display rather than utility. Fun over function.

Slightly ironic that Ryder Carroll’s system was designed to help people get productive. Instead, many Bullet Journalists are now happily killing time sketching glitter unicorns, under a page entitled ‘To-Do Maybe On Rainy Days Yay’.
I’m not saying this is you.
And I’m not saying you’re wasting your time keeping a bullet journal. Many people swear Bujo has helped them get their life in order. And that’s a beautiful thing. But what if Bullet Journaling just isn’t right for you? What if it’s not making you as productive as you could be?
When I tried keeping a Bullet Journal I discovered something about myself.
I’m lazy. I’m impatient. But I’m also wildly efficient. I don’t want to waste time on things that won’t feed my momentum.
I want maximum return for my effort. I want bang for my buck. And Bullet Journaling just doesn’t give me that return.
You might not feel the same. If it’s working for you that’s great. Just make sure ‘working for you’ means getting things done and not getting lots of likes for a list you made about your favorite pastel colors.

I decided it wasn’t for me.
I needed something that just helped me get shit done….lots of shit…no fanfare, no sharing on Instagram…just get shit done and keep getting shit done until all the shit was done. That was my prerequisite for finding a productivity system.
And it had to be paper based.
I couldn’t trust myself with anything digital. It needed to be tangible so I could take a thick black marker and cross out completed tasks with all the poise and power of a horny teenage rhino.
I couldn’t find a suitable system, so I made my own. It’s called Strikethru…it's not pretty.
Even the names for the sections in Strikethru sound cold and a tad masculine (The Dump and The Vault?).
But I won’t apologize for that. I can’t because it’s changed my life. It’s helped me focus on what’s important right now.

Strikethru is a tool. A weapon of task destruction.
It’s designed for utility. It’s not an escape from your daily grind. If anything, it’s the opposite.
It’s having the courage to face the truth. And the truth is you’re not getting as much done as you want.
You’re not as productive as you could be. You’re missing out on that promotion in work; you’re not ready to launch that business you always wanted to run; or you’re not making memories with your children because you’re mismanaging your time.
Strikethru will force you to take an honest look at what you’ve done, what you’re doing and what you’ve still got to do. It’s a reality check. An uncomfortable kick in the crotch, that somehow makes you feel better and more in control of your life, once you start using it.
Here’s how Strikethru works in one sentence:
Brainstorm all your to-dos in The Dump section, Sort them into lists in The Vault Section, Plan any date specific tasks in The Calendar Section, Filter what you need to work on right now into The Live List, and finally strikethrough any task you’ve completed.

You’re creating task flow here.
From the moment you touch paper with pen, you’re building a structure for your workload. It’s an efficient production line that will take you from capturing and grouping your tasks, to prioritising and executing them…in minutes.
Professional and personal tasks will stand shoulder to shoulder in your notebook. And they’ll receive the same treatment. They’ll face the same firing squad. You’re basing everything on priority here, not what feels good or is easy to do. Strikethru bypasses your emotions. It ignores your groans at having to get up at 6am. It pins you to your desk at 10pm, because you now know this work is important. It’s the professor you hated because he was always tough on you…but you also loved him because he got the best out of you.
Set it up on any notebook
You can use the Strikethru system with pretty much any old notebook you have lying around. Here’s how:
Step 1: Get a notebook.
If this is your first time trying Strikethru, grab whatever is lying around. Even an half used exercise book will work to give you a taste of the system.
Step 2: Start at the back.
Strikethru should create a flow of tasks from the back of your notebook to the front. Think of it like a Kanban board, but in reverse direction. Capture tasks in the back, sort them into lists in the middle, execute them in the front. So to capture tasks, you’re going to brainstorm using a section we call The Dump. Use the last 20–3o pages of your notebook and start thinking of what needs done in your life. Don’t overthink it and don’t try to be neat, you're just harvesting brain-farts here. Take 10 minutes and then stop. You’ll come back to The Dump again and again. Use it when an idea comes into your head. Remember: THINK IN INK.
Step 3: Make lists.
One of the neat things about Strikethru is that you can use it for any type of task. You can add work to-dos, travel itineraries and grocery lists to the same notebook. To do this you’re going to create curated lists with relevant titles in a section we call The Vault. Start on the next page after your innermost Dump page, and work inwards. Write a title at the head of the page like ‘Work To-Dos’. Then draw 12 circles down the left side and 12 corresponding circles down the right. Number the left-hand circles 1–12. The right-hand circles are for adding an optional priority rating.

Once you’ve added all your relevant tasks to a particular list, you’re done. Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed the page numbers in my amazing sketch above. We’ll use these in a minute, but worth noting if your chosen notebook doesn’t have page numbers you’ll need to add them.
Step 4: What needs done right now?
Now we get down to brass tacks. Everything you’ve done up to now is inactive. It’s storage. Dead tasks. But it’s time to breathe some life into a chosen few. This is where The Live List comes into play. The Live List and The Vault have exactly the same layout, so start on the first page of your notebook and draw out the same layout as above. Next, flick through your Vault lists and see what you need to work on right now. This is where the page numbers become relevant. It’s another perk of Strikethru that you don’t need to duplicate task entries when you move them around your notebook. Every task in your Vault has a unique identifier, made up from the page number and the task number in the left-hand circle.

So the task of emailing Chuck is 201.3 and you can add this as a to-do in your Live List, instead of writing out ‘Email Chuck’. Now it might not seem like much of a time saver, but if your task is longer than a few words, you’ll really notice the saving and it adds up over multiple tasks. Once you’ve gone through your Vault and added task ids you want to work on, it’s time to add any ad-hoc tasks to your Live List. These are tasks that aren’t in your notebook but need done today. You can just write these straight into The Live List.
Step 5: Strikethru
This is the fun part. When you complete a task in your Live List, you put a line through it. Alternatively, you could check the tasks off your list, but where’s the fun in that? Getting lines through your to-dos is cathartic. It’s a celebration…a tiny win for the day…be happy…because now you’re getting shit done.
Note: I haven’t added The Calendar section to the mix here. It’s slightly more advanced for this initial walk through, and requires more setup time to draw it out and use effectively. I’ll cover the use of the calendar in a separate post to follow.
There are no rules
Strikethru is flexible. You can use all of the sections, a combination of sections, or no sections. You can just take a page each day, add the 12 circles to each side and try to strikethrough as much as you can before sundown. It’s completely up to you.
The Rules
Erm…ok I lied. There are some rules to using Strikethru.
Rule #1: Only Work Tasks From The Live List. In Strikethru you should only ever work your tasks off the one list, the Live List. Yes you may have 100 other lists chocked full of tasks in your Vault, but if you want to work any of them, you must bring them into the Live List. Why? Clarity. When you panic and ask yourself what now, you simply go to the one place and all your todo nows are there.
Rule #2: You Must Do A Regular Review. Reviewing your system is like oiling a great machine. It’s essential and the more often you do it, the better the system becomes. That means tidying up your Live List each night and bringing in anything new that you want to work on the next day.
Rule #3: No Clingers. A task that keeps getting carried forward every time you start a new Live List should set off alarm bells. Ask yourself why you are not completing it? Do you really need it? Can it be broken down into smaller easier to do tasks?
And Finally…
That’s pretty much it folks. Strikethru is free. Anyone with pen, paper and the drive to start getting productive can use it. So go try it today and start your own mini revolution.
Or you know, you could go back to drawing glitter hearts exploding over a magical rainbow instead…yay!
If you’d like to find out more or you’re interested in getting one of our brand spanking new Strikethru notebooks, check us out on Kickstarter, or go to www.striketh.ru or drop a mail to chris@striketh.ru
