8 reasons for starting a digital bullet journal
Initially, a bullet journal was supposed to offer an efficient analog organization system for note-taking, sketches, to-dos, diary entries and more. However, with the uprise of note-taking apps, people have started to apply the same system on digital devices like the iPad. But what are the reasons for that?
Nicole, who is on Instagram as @plan.paperless, started bullet journaling as a way to fill an empty notebook. She quickly realized how much clearer her mind was once she put her thoughts on a piece of paper. Her bullet journal is now her one-stop for anything she wants to reference and is adapted to her life and needs. In this guest post, she argues why it is better to keep a digital bullet journal than having only an analog version:
1. It’s a never-ending journal
Analog notebooks are finite. At some point, you will need to purchase a new one and decide what to do with the old version. But that doesn’t apply to a digital bullet journal, where you will never run out of pages. You can create as many collections, trackers, and logs as you want, without having to worry about saving space because you’re at the end of your notebook. In GoodNotes — the app I use for my digital bullet journal — it is as easy as swiping right to get a fresh new page.
2. You’ll save money on stationery
This is the main reason of why I switched to digital bullet journaling. I personally used excessive amounts of pens and notebooks, and they had to be good quality, thus they were expensive. Eventually, I just didn’t want to spend the money on them anymore, and a way to do this was to get rid of the need for them altogether.
3. Mistakes can be fixed with a tap of a button
I’m one of those people that could be labelled as a ‘perfectionist’ so I love the fact that the undo button makes it as though all of the mistakes I’ve made disappear, and I can make as many mistakes as I need to before the final product is perfect!
4. It is way more flexible than real paper
I love being able to move pages where I want them, have a pen/highlighter in any colour of the rainbow and have so much more artistic freedom in my bullet journal. I use the copy and paste features of GoodNotes very often, as well as the Lasso tool that lets me move things around.
5. It syncs across devices and can be backed up
Arguably the best feature about digital bullet journaling is the ability to backup your bullet journal and sync it across devices. My digital bullet journal will be saved in the cloud, so that I never need to worry about losing it. Also, if I want to look up a to-do, I can just pull out my phone because my bullet journal already synced across my devices. I can definitely say that it has come in useful for me on many occasions.
6. It is easy to share with others
I am a student, so sometimes sharing my study summary sheets is a necessity and with GoodNotes I can actually do that right from the app. My friends and peers all appreciate the PDF export option and I can see myself using this for sharing wish-lists around my birthday and other occasions. I’ve also saved pages as high-quality images for other uses.
7. Saving the environment
This benefit is pretty self-explanatory but I’ve dedicated a whole blog post on my website to, where I calculated how many pages of paper are wasted only by students of my university. If every student at my university would have gone paperless in the last two years, we would have been able to save over 5000 trees.
8. It is much faster to create new spreads
As I’ve mentioned I am a student with a busy schedule, so I often don’t have time to create new spreads for the week or month ahead. I’ve created some templates which I use when I’m pressed for time and I’ve actually made them available for purchase in my Etsy shop. With GoodNotes it is really easy to import and use these templates!
As you can see there are MANY benefits to bullet journaling digitally and I’ve only listed a few. New benefits are constantly being revealed to me, so this list keeps on growing!
