A planning method

Index

The Bullet Journal's index: topics and where they are in the book, so you can find things again.

Bullet Journal, 2013m.

Sketchnote of Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal, October 2013, by Sacha Chua (cropped). CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Index module as it prints, once, at the front of the book. The dots are the page’s quarter-inch grid.

Finding things again

A notebook fills up in the order things happen, not the order you will want them back. The Bullet Journal, Ryder Carroll's method from 2013, solves that the way books always have, with an index at the front. Carroll numbers the pages by hand. In a dated book every day, week and month page has its date at the top, so the date does the same job.

Whenever you start a collection, such as a reading list, the notes for a project or a plan for a trip, write its name in the index with the date of the page it starts on.

How the module works

A two-column table, the topic and where to find it, once at the front of the book. Add to it as you go rather than all at once. A topic that turns up in several places can list them all: Mar 3, Apr 19, May 2.

The sketch above is a note-taker's summary of Carroll's method from October 2013, the year he shared it.

Sources

Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method (Portfolio, 2018).

Put it in your planner

Start your planner

Find Index in the module drawer, under Planning. Free, and no account needed to try it.