Bullet Journal has been part of my life for some years now. I started practicing it to cope with all the changes and challenges during the pandemic and this habit is sustained until these days.It is fun to see how my mood improves when I take the time to write my thoughts and feelings down on a regular basis.
In my current work, we use the Scrum Framework, which is part of the Agile Methodology for product management. Reflecting on my BuJo practice, I came to the conclusion that Agile and Bullet Journal have lots in common. Let me explain to you.
In Scrum we have some events that happen during every certain amount of time to ensure that the system is running well and everyone is improving.The same goes for Bullet Journal, which by the way, are called by Ryder Carroll “rituals”. Let’s check one by one:
Planning in Agile x Planning in Bullet Journal
In Scrum we have at the beginning of every sprint a planning meeting. This event, like all the others in Scrum, is time boxed, meaning it has a maximum amount of time allocated to it. In this meeting the Product Owner, the person who manages the product and links developers to business, discusses with developers the priorities for that new sprint so work can begin.
In Bullet Journal, we also have planning rituals. Every time you sit down with your notebook to plan your week or set up the monthly layout, you are doing planning. We look ahead on the activities we need to tackle in the near future and set the priorities for the next period.
Sprint in Agile x Week or Month in Bullet Journal
Sprint is the amount of time developers spend on building an increment that brings value for the product. It can be a maximum of 4 weeks and this is as far as our plan goes on the planning meeting.
With our notebooks it is common to have weekly, monthly and/or daily tasks that we need to tackle. These periods of time would be the ones available for us to work and develop the tasks.
Daily Meeting in Agile x DAily Reflection in Bullet Journal
Every day, for 15 minutes, the scrum team gets together to discuss what was done yesterday, what are the plans for today and if they have any impediments or problems. This is an important check-in to ensure that work is on its course and delivery will be done as planned.
In BuJo we have two rituals that would fall into this category, the morning reflection and evening reflection. Personally I just check in with myself on my BuJo once a day, in the evenings, and I normally don’t use more than 10 minutes. I review my last day and write down what happened today, any problems I faced, emotions I felt or things to celebrate.
Review and Retrospective Meeting in Agile x Weekly/Monthly Review in Bullet Journal
Review Meeting is the moment where the development team shows the work done during the sprint to the stakeholders. In this moment, the development team and product owner gather feedback from others and evaluate what was delivered, if the planning was achieved successfully and valuable increment was made. Retrospective meeting on the other hand is an opportunity for the scrum team to reflect on the way of work, what was good and what can be improved, what should be changed, added or kept in the interactions among the team.
Something similar occurs when we are setting up our new months (or sometimes weeks) in our BuJos. This normally happens together with planning, but it is important to notice that reflection is a great part of the method. We look back into what we have written and notice patterns, and by these we draw conclusions on things that are working for us, things that can be better and things that need to go away.
As we can see above, there are many parallels we can draw from both methods. In the end, both have the same goal: continuous improvement and valuable results, in our professional or private lives.