Always in a rush whilst your life's falling apart? Try this

Hey again :)

Picture this: It's 3 AM, and I'm surrounded by a graveyard of abandoned productivity apps on my phone. Notion, Todoist, Google Calendar, Things 3 – you name it, I've tried it. Each promised to be the solution to my executive dysfunction, and each eventually joined the digital wasteland of "apps I thought would fix my brain." It wasn't until I found myself doodling task lists in the margins of my notebooks that I realized something profound: maybe the answer wasn't in the cloud, but in my hands.

That's when I stumbled into the world of bullet journaling. Not as another productivity system to fail at, but as a revelation. A paper-based method that doesn't just accommodate my ADHD brain – it celebrates it. And trust me, this isn't going to be another aesthetic planning post with fancy headers and perfect handwriting (though if that's your thing, power to you!). This is about survival, sanity, and finally finding a system that works with my brain instead of against it. Here's the thing: we live in a world where there's an app for everything. Task management? There's an app for that. Calendar? App. Shopping list? App. And yet, despite having a supercomputer in my pocket, I found myself constantly dropping balls, missing appointments, and feeling like my life was held together with digital duct tape and hope. Why? Because here's what nobody tells you about productivity apps: they're designed for neurotypical brains. They're built on someone else's assumption of how your brain should work. But guess what? My ADHD brain doesn't care about their assumptions. It needs something different, something more... real.

Enter the bullet journal (or as the cool kids say, BUJO). The magic of bullet journaling isn't in its simplicity – it's in its infinite customizability. Think about it: every productivity app you've ever used is essentially someone else's interpretation of what's important in your life. Want to track your medication alongside your mood, energy levels, and whether you remembered to water your plants? Good luck finding an app that does exactly that without twelve different subscriptions and seventeen browser extensions. But with a bullet journal? Just draw it. Create it. Make it yours.

Here's a real story that hit home for me last week. A friend asked if I could meet up tomorrow, and I almost did that typical ADHD thing – the enthusiastic "Sure, absolutely!" before checking if I actually could. But instead, I said, "Let me check my bullet journal." Cue the eye roll from them: "That's BS, just tell me now, you don't need to check your journal." Plot twist: I did need to check. Turns out I had a crucial networking event scheduled – one that could lead to my next job opportunity. Without my bullet journal, that would have been another classic double-booking disaster.

And this brings me to a bigger point: in our rush to digitize everything, we've forgotten something fundamental. Computer science, at its core, is just the abstraction and decomposition of real-life problems. But who decides what parts of your life are important enough to be abstracted into an app? Who decides what deserves to be tracked and what doesn't? With a bullet journal, YOU decide. Every page is a blank canvas for your brain to build its own operating system. Need to track your hyperfixations? Create a spread for that. Want to monitor how different foods affect your medication's effectiveness? Draw up a table. The friction of having to write things down manually? That's not a bug – it's a feature. It makes you think about what's truly important enough to track. This isn't just about planning – it's about creating a second brain that actually works the way yours does. It's about having a system that's as unique as your neurodivergent thought patterns. When my digital calendar sends me a notification, it's easy to swipe away and forget. But when I physically write something down, when I create my own symbols and signifiers, it sticks differently. The bullet journal method isn't perfect – nothing is. But it's perfectly imperfect, just like our ADHD brains. It's flexible enough to accommodate our chaos while providing just enough structure to keep us grounded.

So here's my challenge to you: if you're tired of trying to fit your square-peg brain into the round holes of productivity apps, give analog a shot. Start simple. Forget about the fancy spreads you see online. Remember: this isn't about creating art (unless you want it to be) – it's about creating a system that works for YOU. Because at the end of the day, the best productivity system isn't the one that looks the prettiest or has the most features – it's the one you'll actually use.

See you later!