Today I’m going to rhapsodize about something very, very simple. A single pixel. The simplest thing to draw.
It’s the foundation of what I do here. The “bullet” in Bullet Journal.
Today I want to tell you the gospel of The Bullet Dot.
When I first heard about Bullet Journaling, the first thing that stood out to me as revolutionary was… the index. Obviously.
But the second thing was the task dot.
I’ve grown up my whole life drawing little lopsided task boxes next to everything I ever had to do (exaggeration) but here was such a simple and elegant way to do away with all that! And it was the most simple thing it was possible to draw! I love it.
Now for those of you not up-to-date with your BuJo history, there are actually two distinct sets of BuJo symbols.
Ryder Carroll first published his system with a different lexicon of key symbols, including (gasp!) boxes for tasks. I know! And if you watch that video, you’ll see what I’m talking about: his rapid-logged task boxes look pretty much like what my task boxes look like when I draw them. Sloppy, asymmetrical, broken.
There are still people who prefer the checkbox, and who use it to great practical and aesthetic effect.
What these people (who I admire so much) seem to have that I don’t, is the patience to sit down and carefully draw out their tiny boxes and use their best handwriting on every page.
I’m a big fan of the look of checkboxes filled in completely with black, instead of simply containing a check or an X, but I simply don’t have the patience to maintain that lifestyle.
No, I much prefer the newer set of BuJo symbols, shown in the “updated” BuJo tutorial by Ryder Carroll, which uses the bullet dot for tasks instead.
If you check out this video as well, you’ll probably notice what a drastic difference this simple change makes to the overall look of his journal. There’s less visual noise, a cleaner overall look, which makes it quicker and easier to get to the important information.
He calls his system Rapid Logging, and there’s nothing more rapid than drawing a little dot next to the thing you have to do.
And the brilliance doesn’t end there. It’s the versatility that brings it home for me.
If you complete the task, you draw an X. Well done!
But if you don’t, you transform the dot into another symbol. You use it as the point of an arrow to migrate it forward or backward in your journal for another time.
It’s so elegant I just love it. But you figured that out by now. I’m a little weird.
And don’t worry, I’m going to go into way too much detail someday soon about the difference between “migrating” (>) and “scheduling” (<). Stay tuned for more hard-hitting BuJo content!
But first, tell me, do you use a checkbox or a dot, and why?
I learned from Kristy at Giftie Etcetera that a circle is easier and quicker to draw than a checkbox and I’ve used that method for a long time. However, that conflicts with the bullet journaling key of circles to notate scheduled events. So now I too use the bullet dot and it works out quite well.