Week 40: Custom Collections (The Bullet Journal Method Book Club)

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Hello Sunshine!

Custom Collections are probably what I’m most well-known for, so I’m excited about this section!

Resources:

This week’s behind the scenes:

I am enjoying making the lettering on these images less ‘perfect’ and a little messier. It’s neat enough to be legible and I’m not stressing out too much about them. It’s done, it’s a little quirky - it works.

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The Collections

Pages 237 - 243

Welcome to week 40 of The Bullet Journal Method Book Club!

Collections such as tv trackers, restaurants, and so on are what Ryder calls “junk drawer” Collections because “they have limited longevity because they don’t provide insight. If there’s nothing to be learned from the information in a Collection, it provides little value, and chances are you’ll lack the incentive needed to maintain it. Don’t waste your time tending Collections that won’t add value to your life.” This is something you learn over time as well.

Three Key Sources for Custom Collections:

  1. Goals. You can deconstruct it into Tasks.

  2. Challenges. “Is there some part of your life that’s consistently making you feel angry, anxious, overwhelmed, or self-critical?” Use this space to clarify your thoughts, develop a solution, and track progress.

  3. Tasks. Tasks that are actually comprised of many other Tasks, such as planning a vacation.

Creating Custom Collections

1. Brainstorm. Capture initial thoughts in whatever form they take.

2. Examine your Motivations. “Motivation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It results from our pain, frustration, or desire. Whatever the case may be, we need to surface it before we can assure that our efforts aren’t misdirected. By identifying our true motivations, we increase the potential impact of our actions. In other words, understanding why you feel compelled to do something will help you better define how to do something.” The first chance to do this is by writing down the Topic.

To add detail, a brief mission statement can be helpful “to define why we’re doing something, what we hope to get out of the experience, and how we will go about doing it. You can even use this script if it’s helpful: I want to ___(what) so that I can ___(why) by ___(how).” Dig deeper and examine this mission statement with the Five Whys (213) to identify the pain points and emotions. Once you’ve identified them, choose the positive emotions you’d like to feel and add them to the mission statement. “Writing out this mission statement is also a great way to “wake the page” by stating what you want.” This can be applied to any project.

Discussion:

  • If you already started creating Custom Collections, what is your process?

  • Do you have any “junk drawer” Collections?

  • Do you have mission statements for your projects?

Action List:

  • As per page 240, create a “Hawaii Vacation” (or place of your choosing) Collection.

  • Brainstorm in the first few pages for this Collection.

  • Write out a mission statement using the above script.

  • Examine your mission statement by asking why five times.

  • Identify the emotions in your mission statement, and rephrase your mission statement to address your true desires.

  • Write out your new mission statement to “wake the page.”

Your thoughts:

Share your thoughts about this week’s topic in the comments below. Feel free to respond to this week’s discussion points.

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