To me, daily note taking is kind of the core of Bullet Journaling. That’s when you are documenting what you do, writing up your task lists, checking off completed tasks or marking those that need to be carried forward. It’s what the index and the month setups and so on are there to organize. Of course your mileage may vary – everyone can and should decide for themselves what your journal is for.
On the day to day level, it is helpful if you have a set of symbols to serve as a visual shorthand around your notes. Here’s an adapted page from my journal (specifics and names removed)
Ryder Carroll has a set of symbols that he uses and details in his book, The Bullet Journal Method. And I do use some of those symbols. But like a lot of things from the book, I do my own simplified version. I use a * to remind myself that something is important, a – to indicate to do, a check to mark a task accomplished, and and > to show that I did not finish something and it needs to be moved on to tomorrow.
Those marks may or may not be useful for you. You may want to go simpler or more complicated. But for me, I found it was important to use symbols that make sense to me.
At the end of the day, I like to take a few minutes to sort of finalize journaling for the day. I mark up my habit tracker with what I managed for the day, stamp in the next day’s date, and migrate any outstanding tasks forward. That’s also a good time to think about all I got done that day. Or conversely, how very lazy I was 🙂 But either way, It’s helpful for getting a good start the next day.
If you journal, do you anything specific with your journal every day?
Quite A Yarn 
I do a daily task list also. Many days I need to add things I did that were not planned on. I like your idea of using symbols for tasks. I do my thoughts in the journal theo morning after. It give me time to reflect a bit more. Some days my thoughts just say ‘lazy day’ cause I didn’t really do anything productive. I try to always be 100% honest.
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Good thought on journaling the next morning – it’s true that gives you time to think about stuff a bit more. I like “lazy day”!!
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I keep a daily log of my to-dos and also of things that I got done. I love your daily stamp of the date! I do one page for each date as I also add in things like notes from phone calls, bank balances, and other into that I need to keep track of. I used to keep a table of contents at the front of my journal so I could track down things like knitting pattern notes, but now I’m too lazy to do that any more…
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I have thought about doing a page a day and keeping track of more stuff. That is a good idea! Yes, I really like my date stamp too 🙂
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I started the journal when I was still working, and it was so helpful in my job. When asked if I had completed a certain task, or if I had contacted someone, or while preparing for a workshop, I could just flip back to my notes from that day. I tried documenting lots of things using OneNote on the computer, but the journal was actually easier for me to use.
I need to paste in some calendar pages into my notebook to track my meds. 🙂
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It’s always so great to have a reference! Yes, it is good for tracking medications too for sure!
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Thank you for this. I ordered a Bullet Journal to set me off on the right foot.
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I’m so glad it was helpful!!
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