This article reads like someone stumbled onto something they liked, then reasoned backwards to why everyone should use it.
Like all productivity things - if it works for you, great. But maybe don't assume your thing is the magic thing that will fix everyone else's problems just like it might have your own. Likewise, there's a pretty big difference between something that feels productive and something that is productive - something that constantly grates the back of my brain whenever I look at some of these over-elaborate bullet journal examples.
The other thing to remember is that these systems change over time. I'm a productivity nerd - I constantly change what I do and what works for me, because at different times in my life (say every ~2 years) I stumble across a system that works better for the next period. There is no magic bullet.
Not parent, but I can chime in with my current system: Simple logs that I can search and copy.
The key for me is that it's not about the format. The format changes with the context: I have a different logging strategy for fitness(Fitnotes app, and since I was just gifted one this past week, a Fitbit) from the logging used for programming notes(repetitive short block comments with date, time, and sometimes title). I have a generic diary text file that contains catch-all musings, but I am increasingly using different logs for different tasks since I don't currently face a lot of time contention that would necessitate a detailed calendar.
My logs are not just what happened but also what I wanted to happen on that date. I'll often copy-paste the same to-do list when I didn't finish it that day, or "redraft" the same thought an hour after I first logged it, with some elaborations. Keeping it around, I learn what is or isn't working at a glance by skimming over these repeats hours to months later.
Having the date and time is essential to this because it makes the log a progression: my recent activity is my most important, most of the time, and so in the case of the programming logs, I can gradually edit and eliminate them as the code changes and the momentary thoughts of "I need to do this next" grow irrelevant, while if it's something like a log of weight/reps/sets, I just want to copy, increment the numbers a little higher, and add a note about anything weird that day that may have made me change plans.
When I really need freeform notes I will turn to paper, and I can see bullet journaling techniques being worth trying in the future for adding some structure to those. As long as I have dates I can usually recreate the context of any particular note, though.
Something I just thought of: is there a browser extension that would automate logging my history when I want to research something? That's a pretty common task that I currently address manually with a lot of right clicks and ctrl+C's.
I use Trello to stay on task, easy to manage daily to-do lists while being able to just push everything to the next day and also managing long-term lists. It lets you comment, add files or links, create internal check-lists for each card, has the option for due dates, even integrations for stuff like Slack. It's great for keeping track of stuff in general. Plus it has a really friendly UI and it's free for the base package.
Asana is what we used at my last company and it's pretty much the same (at least from what I remember) with a different UI.
Another neat productivity thing I use is the Sketchpad app in the Windows Ink Workspace. My laptop has a touch screen that works with an active stylus. The app basically turns my laptop into a whiteboard on the fly (really handy for when I need to work out some complex math) and I can save a snapshot to then stick into Trello or wherever. Only gripe - Microsoft should add two-finger drag support (like in art programs like Krita) so you're not limited by you monitor size when using it.
Ryder Carroll just released his book The Bullet Journal Method in October 2018. Highly recommend giving it a skim; it's a highly opinionated template about where to start with Bullet Journaling (kind of like Ruby on Rails or React for Bullet Journaling).
That said, if you are just getting started, it's way too easy to fall in the trap of setting up the tool instead of actually being productive. You want to fail cheaply and quickly: I'd recommend starting with unstructured paper (loose-leaf paper or a memo pad or whatever is handy) and doing just rapid logging for two or three days to see if you find it helpful. (The list of bullets can be found at https://bulletjournal.com/pages/learn) If you find that helpful, then you can dig deeper with buying the book and/or buying a notebook.
Yeah, that's a problem/trap I fall into a lot with any sort of productivity aid. Omnifocus was a nightmare for me. I never did finish tweaking it to be just "right" because I really didn't know what "right" was.
I tried with OF for a long time, but I never got it quite right - plus, mobile capture seemed needlessly slow and fiddly, and then they rev'd the tool to include WAY more white space and WAY less information density, and that was it for me.
I ended up in OrgMode, of all places, which is kind of funny since I wasn't really an emacs person before. Obviously, I am now.
I trust it in a way I don't think I ever really trusted OF, and I find myself using it much more consistently and religiously. It's been really good for me.
OmniFocus is really productive for me. I am also periodically changing how I use it, but the difference is that I do that while I am using it to get work done so the changes are legitimate optimizations of a working system. I think it defaults to a good outlined task list tool for indecisive people. I think the trap it sets is getting Pro too early; trying to set up custom perspectives before using it enough to understand what perspectives would save time is counter-productive. Setting up a dense thicket of tags is also a mistake, I suppose.
it makes sense. Modular, as in composed of discrete modules that can be combined. Framework, as in it provides a structure and library that you use to assemble your own version. Sure it's a bit software-y but I'm assuming that's the creator's background.
It seems to me that people have trouble with being bored. So they need to fill their time being 'productive'. Instead of drawing fancy headers for 'Wednesday' or 'Spanish' you could also just doodle for the heck of it. No, no, no, you are not allowed to just draw for the sake of drawing, you must be working on your productivity.
That is all fine of course, but I think you'd be a lot happier just drawing for fun and being smart and efficient about handling your todos as many have stated here, through basic lists on any piece of paper.
Consider: drawing a fancy header as a way to clear other things out of your mind and start considering things like "just what the hell do I want and/or need to do today?".
Consider: unique headers and other doodles act as memory aids when you are flipping through old journals looking for a particular thing. "I'm pretty sure it was close to a drawing of a blue cat eating pie."
I won't argue that Western civilization doesn't have a huge problem with wanting to pack every moment full of "useful productivity" though. If one of these gives someone an excuse to get down to some serious doodling then I can't see that as bad.
It is easy to find arguments for anything in hindsight as you did and that doesn't make the 'method' anymore valid or generally useful to everyone and I didn't say it is a bad thing.
I find it a shame that apparently many of us have problems with doing things just for fun without feeling guilty about not being productive. You can do whatever you want with your time though and for any reason. I am not telling anyone what to do here ;)
Frankly, like so many other "productivity" tools, you end up spending more time "using productivity tools" than you actually receive in benefit. Especially journals, since they continue to grow indefinitely, becoming an entire project in themselves.
I prefer a whiteboard, precisely because there is only a certain amount of space. Divide it about 2/3rds between "older generation" and "younger generation", garbage collect aggressively, and you're done with learning the process. Write whatever you like. Stick things to it with magnets, if you have the better magnetic kind, or blue painter's tape, if you do not.
As long as actioning can include writing a ticket in the context of software development, and that the ticket does not necessarily have to be actioned by you, then I'd largely agree.
I eventually moved on to todoist, which I like a lot, but the bullet journal was really valuable for me in the past. Especially all of the addons the community has invented.
I ended up slightly modifying their bulleting system to better meet my needs - I wanted more granularity in rebalancing tasks across days/weeks/months since I have to reschedule the majority of my tasks at least once, but overall it's a really fantastic system, and probably the most resilient I've ever found for my flavor of ADHD.
I recommend planning the journal upfront somewhat. I browsed pinterest and instagram exhaustively for photos of how people structured theirs, and planned mine once I felt I had a good grasp of what ideas were available.
I feel like the act of writing down things on paper is becoming way to buzzwordified. Personally I just write notes, todos, calendars etc down on a college notepad, no need for all sorts of supplies or fancy notebook, and no need to subscribe to any one religion of how to do it.
Find some paper, find a pen, write stuff down. Keep it simple.
I have adopted one convention: If I need to act on something later, I put a box to its left. Once I acted on it, I tick it off with a checkmark.
For example, during I a meeting I realize a problem in our software which is unrelated to the actual meeting agenda. I jot down a box and a few words in my college notepad. Later, when I have a few minutes, the "few words" are expanded into a proper ticket in our issue tracker and the box is ticked off.
I strive to tick off every box in my notepad by the end of the day. Sometimes that just means writing it down elsewhere (Email, electronic todo list, OneNote, Jira, etc).
I do something very similar to this. I put a box to left of action items, but instead of checkmarks I put '/' if it's in progress and then 'X' when it's complete. This allows for quick visual scans of what things still require attention.
For anything I run into that's a problem (gotcha, bug, mistake that requires a task to be re-started), I mark with '*' in left margin. This makes it easy for me to quickly find it later.
For things that are super important, I draw a box around the whole entry.
I'm also very conscious to keep things very brief and intentionally obscure (don't write last names and never write customer names), to avoid potential problems of having any sensitive information leaked. If I'm working with Marty McFly of Acme Inc. on a joint project Time Travel v2.0, I would only write things like 'respond to Marty concerns'.
This also works for me as well. I use a physical logbook at work (some customers don't allow unauthorised electronics). Actions that come my way get marked with a circle. When I get some keyboard time I try to execute the action immediately or add it to an electronic TODO list, and in either case put a big X in the circle.
It is indeed simple and effective and doesn't require any tooling.
I use a pink and green marker. If I put a pink splodge on something it needs attention, a green one next to it means "dealt with". Makes it very quick to skim through documents and see if there's anything I've not looked at yet.
I spend my day at my laptop and on my phone for professional reasons. Any task-list tool needs to live there.
After years of trying different tools, Things 3 has stuck. For reasons I’m not even totally clear on. Maybe it’s the nice clean look. Maybe it’s the sync between laptop and phone. It’s not radically different from any other piece of task-list software. And yet, it seems to work for me.
Admittedly it’s tough to take Instagram-friendly photos of it to brag to everyone how cleverly organized I am...
I personally observed that write down things with pen and paper help memory, I also observed that reading thing on paper instead screen help again and finally mere write down in digital help comprehension like on paper but being able to modify anything "cost-free" reduce a bit the attention you punt in writing. Vocal dictation is awful.
But there is a big but: I'm really disorganized. I try to be organized on regularly basis and it work at first, after start to decline until I reach a point that I came back and focus again on reorganize.
In this scenario my digital world is essentially organized thanks to automation and periodic cleanup, my physical world of sparse note on any peace of paper I may get at hand, left anywhere, forgotten, only the ticket I regularly collect when I refuel my car and I periodically forget to register with only casual look at my on-line bank account... Well make me practically unable of such proper&clean records...
Long story short: a prize, but personally I have to stick with org mode...
I have been doing journaling long before Bullet Journaling was a thing. Started with Moleskine and now I use Leuchtturm1917 that was mentioned in the article. Cycled through many pens, but liked only two: Uni-ball Onyx and Pilot V5 Hi-tecpoint (that I currently use), both in 0.5mm thickness.
I still do a lot of PIM stuff on the computer and iPhone: Google Calendar, Informant got TODOs, lists in Paperless app, because portability of a phone and other niceties like calendar reminders are hard to beat. I use journal mainly for more free-form things and brainstorming that involves drawing doodles, mind maps, and also some reflection.
I used a bulletjournal for one year. It's very nice and has something zen-like to sit down and write on paper with a nice pen, but in the end I spent too much time maintaining the system. I tried to come up with cool spreads for tracking movies I want to watch, money I borrowed to people, credit card balances over time visualized and and and, but most of these spreads became annoying to update and drifted into being not complete, or I started dreading having to update it every month.
I also didn't like creating the monthly spread at the beginning of each month. Yes the point is that you get an overview of what's actually going on, but the more often I did it, the more often I didn't want to do it. It also meant that my bulletjournal monthly spread had to be kept in sync with my digital calendar which I needed for nagging me about events. Actual future planning was another restriction that was very difficult to get around. The yearly view works ok-ish, some other more complex systems were too much for me to try.
After a while, despite me really wanting to use my system, it just wasn't convenient. I spent too much time adding data into it, couldn't immediately jot things down when I was on the go, still had to use an app, and had more weight in my bag. I didn't like the feeling when I knew I forgot to write things down and my daily spread being incomplete. It was also pretty restrictive in what I could actually do given that it's just paper and ink.
I am bouncing between different setups these days but have been with Things 3 and a GTD-ish kind of approach now. I am now and then grabbing my BuJo though and still want to give it another proper go at some point. A completely digital version with a free-form ish text based editor similar to taskpaper or agenda would be very appealing!
Org mode in Emacs... it’s old, but it works. It hyper links. It exports to almost any format. It lets you have complex notes. It can do agendas. It’s awesome at searchable notes. It’s plain text.
And if you have an android phone and termux, it's not too hard to wrangle it into a state usable on the go. Especially with heavy use of org-templates.
Pretty much this. I tried out bulletjournaling for a couple of months at the recommendation of a friend. Then I realized it was essentially a higher maintenance paper and pen org-mode.
Designing cool spreads, adapting others and making cool sketches on the covers was fun and the tactile nature of the tooling was nice but org-mode on a laptop works a lot better and is a lot less work to maintain.
Is there anything equivalent for Vim or other text editors like TextMate, Sublime, TextWrangler or so? Asking because I don't use Emacs but do use Viim and other apps.
Nothing as complete that I know of. It isn’t crazy to use Emacs just for Org Mode. At least check under the hood and see what you think some time. I know some vim users that use Emacs solely for Org :)
What’s crazy is the AUD price, which is higher than current exchange rate would suggest. Should be about $30AUD. But I don’t have to tell you about Aussie prices, eh?
I learned, as part of other neurological investigations, that I may suffer from "dysgraphia", which is actually neurological difficulty with writing that doesn't affect other common tasks (e.g. typing). Turns out it's in the sort of family with dyslexia and dyscalculia, but much less diagnosed since it is less relevant these days.
So maybe it's not about how hard you tried or a failure of learning, but that you're just not meant to write longhand and it's not your fault. I certainly felt better about my abysmal handwriting after learning some of the mechanisms behind it.
Recently I started going to night school to study maths, physics and chemistry and forced my self to take notes b hand. At first I was exhausted after half an hour but now with some practice and perseverance I can take notes for several hours and take exams a whole afternoon without much crap or other issues. Keep at it and if you think you write ugly just go slower. Smooth is fast.
This is easy to dismiss with the wide spread use of digital tools, but something about doing this seems to be deeply beneficial. And the bullet journaling technique specifically is surprisingly flexible and effective. I think some of it’s features could be transferred into our digital tools.
It should translate directly to a Surface and Surface Pen. So you get the slow thought of doing something with a pen and the accessibility of a digital medium.
That would be great. I may ping you in a couple weeks to see what your opinion is. I really like the idea, but I also have a notebook and a camera in my phone.
Agreed. I use a iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. It’s a great writing experience with the benefit of having a digital device. I wish they would make the pencil compatible with the iPad Mini. Then it would feel like I’m using a true digital notebook.
I tried using Bullet Journal for a few months this past year and what I loved most was the modularity in it. It was easy enough to use it month to month and let it evolve versus diving headfirst into the massive world of it. What worked out best was the index piece of it by making it easy to flip back through your notes.
Where it fell apart the most for me was on weekends when I wasn't working, or with a notebook all the time. So I'd just end up opening my phone and then forgetting to move the notes over. And vice versa, if I forgot my notebook I wouldn't have my notes on me.
I've been trying to find a digital solution that lets me keep a notebook at work and easily put those into digital tracking. The closest I found was Agenda (https://agenda.com) but it's kind of over engineered for my needs. I know Notion is well liked, but again it's overly complex for my needs.
I left writing notes by hand since digital alternatives are easier to archive and search. But the remarkable has given me a useful tool that combines both.
Initially the software was lacking, but it seems to be the exception to the rule that electronic devices don't tend to improve over time without upgrading to the next model
I have a coupon code somewhere (that also benefits me) in case anyone is interested
Personal preference: cut out notches or add post-it "flags" or something to pages to mark categories, either as a replacement for an index page or to augment it. You can easily add more than one per page, and it makes it super duper simple to flip through them quickly.
At work, I use elements of bullet journaling but instead of using a paper journal I use my personal DM channel in Slack. This way I can quickly paste useful code / data into my journal and run searches efficiently.
I only use my bullet journal for summarizing things I did yesterday, to capture screenshots/gifs for sysadmin related tasks, to make an ongoing study about something has changed over time (UX/UI of a few sites), to write about challenges I currently face. It's there if I really need it. It only captures past events so it doesn't become a maintenance task
These kinds of systems tend only to work for people who don't need to coordinate their schedule with a significant other. Using online synchronized tools was the only way to prevent our family from constantly being unaware of upcoming events because only one person recorded it on paper somewhere.
This page blocks browsers running an adblocker, so here is the content of the article:
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One notebook could replace all the productivity apps that have failed you
A nerd’s guide to bullet journaling
By Amy Schellenbaum December 30, 2016
bullet journal
Notebook. Pen. That's all you need.
Photo by Estée Janssens via Unsplash
You may have heard of bullet journaling, probably from your sister or your coworker or some other enviably competent person you have the pleasure of knowing. It’s a productivity pocketknife—customizable, indispensable, satisfying to use—that is helping people track and organize anything and everything in their lives.
Its popularity blossomed in spring 2016 and intensified as back-to-school season approached. Now that January 1—a heady day for the latent productivity nerd—is so close, the bullet journaling community is evangelizing in full force. Myself included, I guess.
Intrigued? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is bullet journaling?
First of all, the system is totally analog. By that I mean it is done with a notebook (any notebook!) and a pen (or pencil, if you’re one of those people). It’s so simple it’s stupid. It’s so simple it’s brilliant, too.
The idea first percolated in the brain of a dude named Ryder Carroll, who explains the concept very succinctly in this video. The basic premise is this: you have one book that contains every list, note, and plan in your life. It’s like a planner, except not at all like a planner—because there are no templates and no rules. Because of this, it’s very flexible and low-pressure. It’s nothing more than you can handle; it’s exactly as ambitious or exhaustive as you need at the exact time you are using it.
The concept hinges on just two “requirements” (they’re not really required, honestly): an index and numbered pages. These elements let you see, at a glance, where to find the exact list you want to refer to—goals for the month, plans for your trip to Bermuda, health insurance reminders, etc.
I have a couple of bullet journals that I use occasionally, but I prefer doing all of the typical journaling things in Trello for a number of reasons. One of the big ones, though, is security: I don't have to worry about my journal getting stolen so I can write anything I want and have financial and other personal information included.
Among the downsides: it's not as free-form (no doodling) and I think there are advantages inherent in the physicality of bullet journals.
Because there are no templates, you can also use this notebook for non-list things, too. You can journal or doodle or hand-letter a quote. You can tape in photos or ticket stubs or receipts.
Your bullet journal is a catch-all for everything that itches your brain. It’s your to-do list and your calendar and your junk drawer.
Why do people bullet journal?
There are a lot of reasons, but I will name just a few:
Writing things down can make you feel better, mentally and physically
Decades of studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between writing (particularly journaling) and health. Take, for example, the many studies of psychologist James Pennebaker at the University of Texas. In one, he asked half of his participants to write 20 minutes a day, three days in a row. That's it. Even months later, those who journaled were much happier than those in the control group. As New York Mag once reported, "in the months after the writing sessions, they had lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and fewer visits to the doctor. They also reported better relationships, improved memory, and more success at work."
Research has also suggested that writing things down improves immune cell activity and reduces antibody counts for people with viruses like Epstein-Barr and AIDS. Journaling could also improve memory and help you sleep, according to some studies.
The power of free-association:
Beyond the benefits just mentioned, therapists often use journaling to get their patients to better understand how parts of their lives relate to each other. This helps people triangulate who they are and how they might react to different actions and emotions. Bullet journals, which by nature are collections of tasks and ideas that span the full spectrum of a person's physical, mental, and emotional life, are particularly well-suited for synthesizing information and drawing conclusions from it.
Delicious freedom:
If you like Harry Potter, you can think of a bullet journal kind of like a Pensieve—a place to unload thoughts and reminders, which frees and focuses your mental and emotional efforts. Once you’ve written down all the tiny things you need to get done, you give your brain the capacity and the encouragement to actually do the things.
The manual effort:
It’s easy, particularly (old man voice) these days, to underestimate the swell of satisfaction from making progress on something physical. To-do lists give nerds like me the thrill of checking something off. It’s a genuinely pleasurable experience.
Bullet journaling takes that a step further: By treating task lists like archival records of your life, as precious as letters from a loved one or photos from a vacation, you’re letting yourself feel proud of small accomplishments, and soothing your weary existential soul by recording the things you’ve done with your life—at every scale.
It’s just fun as hell:
Here are some of the things people commonly use when bullet journaling: gel pens, stickers, decorative tape, highlighters, and magazine clippings. Here are some of the things people track: book and movie recommendations, vacation plans and packing lists, moments of gratitude, favorite Prince lyrics, and sex stuff.
How do I start a bullet journal?
The fundamental anatomy of a bullet journal is so blissfully simple you may weep:
Step One: Index
Here you list where to find spreads that you may want to refer back to in the future. (A one-off grocery list? Probably not. German adjective declinations? Add it.)
Some notebooks already have numbered pages and room for an index, but more on that later.
Step Two: Future log
You can refer to this any time you want to make note of a date in the far future. If it’s January, you probably haven’t created a June spread, but you want to note your college roommate’s wedding anyway. That kind of thing.
Step Three: Spreads for planning
These generally fall under three categories: monthlies, weeklies, and dailies.
Bullet journal monthly spread
Your monthly spread (above) is where you write down appointments, pay days, meet-ups, classes, vacations, holidays, due dates, etc. There are a few ways to do this. Personally, I just draw up a calendar on a two-page spread, leaving room for a box that says “next month” to jot down future items, and a tinier version of the following month’s calendar, like this.
Another popular way to get a glance at your month is to use a “calendex,” where one writes down page numbers as opposed to event titles. For example: If you took notes on a meeting you had on the 13th, you could go to the calendex for that month and make a note of the page number by that date. Here’s what it looks like:
Others (including the creator of the concept) use a vertical version, so the month looks more like a list.
To be totally honest: weekly planning (above) doesn’t work for me. The scale is too weird. I either want to dump every tiny task in or nothing at all. My impression is that people who don’t have a lot of tasks to do every day (maybe their jobs are much more straight-forward than mine), use a weekly spread as opposed to the long, convoluted day-by-day pages I prefer.
I do, however, use these stickers from Muji to write down my non-work appointments for the week: German class, drinks with friends, medical appointments, and more.
Daily spreads (above) are the bread and butter of your bullet journal; at its core, a simple to-do list, bracketed (if you want) by journaling, doodles, and tip-ins. (Tip-in, noun, planning lingo meaning ephemera taped in on one side, so it’s like a little flap on the page.)
Step Four: Collections
Collections are lists or charts that fall outside of your planning spreads.
You can have collections that track spending, the status of job applications, your sleeping habits—basically any "collection" of thoughts you'd like to keep on hand. Collections like these are scattered throughout my journal, and have no explicit tie to the daily spreads that surround them. Other collections relate to your dated spreads, like grocery lists, money spending trackers, and monthly gratitude logs.
What are the best supplies?
Again, you can bullet journal in any notebook, using any writing implement. If you insist that you need a whole new set-up, though, there are a few unambiguous fan favorites to consider:
The Notebook: Leuchtturm 1917
If you’re buying a shiny new notebook anyway, don’t mess around with anything but a dot-grid. It keeps your handwriting from drooping, but feels as liberating as a blank page.
The Leuchtturm 1917 is popular because the book already has an index and numbered pages. It’s also a lie-flat hard-cover, which journal nerds know is just the best. The grammage of the paper (80 grams per square meter) is also superior, so if you’re one of those people who can’t stand bleed-through or ghosting—or you use fountain pens or some other particularly inky implement—this is a good buy.
UPDATE Aug. 25, 2017: Leuchtturm 1917 is dead. Long live Scribbles That Matter. It comes in a dot grid. It comes with page numbers. Its paper is even thicker, at 100 g/sqm, which means less bleed-through. You can find it here.
That being said, a Leuchtturm will cost you $20. Personally, I use a $7 dot-grid notebook from Muji. It’s cheaper, I don’t mind numbering the pages myself, and I think everything that comes from that store is imbued in an aspirational, ethereal quality that I should not even try to explain. It’s like Marie Kondo herself has held each product and encouraged it to give me serenity and pleasure. But that’s just me!
There are also many Moleskine die-hards, but the price is steep, the pages aren’t numbered, and the paper is a bit flimsier (70 g/sqm) than that of the Leuchtturm.
The Pens: Pigma Micron, Pilot Juice, and Staedtler Tri-Plus Fineliners
I started my bullet journal with a set of 12 gel pens from Muji I got for $12. I love these pens, but must admit to true aficionados that the ink does occasionally skip, and they smear when used in conjunction with a highlighter.
The very best gel pens, I believe, are the Pilot Juice pens in size 0.38mm. They’re super thin, come in fun colors, and don’t smear—even for lefties and people who are super into highlighting.
The Staedtler Tri-Plus Fineliners are top-notch color pens, too. They don’t bleed through and don’t smear. The difference is that they have metal-encased fiber tips, which (to put it in pen nerd terms) simply aren’t as expressive as bolder, inkier fountain pens or, in my mind, gel pens.
For a high-quality basic black, go for Pigma Micron. They come in a variety of tip sizes (I like 03 size, which is 0.35mm), plus the ink is of archival quality and virtually smudge-proof.
The Pencils:
Get out of here.
The Highlighters: Mildliners
Mildliner highlighters are a favorite of teens with incredible taste and incredible Tumblr followings. They come in soft colors like lavender and gray, so they highlight without being jarring on the page.
Other stuff:
Get a ruler. I like this one or this one, which is also a protractor of sorts. I’d also recommend getting a clipboard, if you don’t already have one, because it means you can journal from the couch. You can also get stencils, stickers, and washi tape, but I have very few opinions there. Follow your bliss.
TL;DR Writing stuff down is cool again—and just might be the key to getting shit done.
The one thing I took away from it was how useful it was to have your own index for a book that can be filled with random stuff from all sorts of topics. All my years of going to school and having different notebooks for each class, and I never once realized this obvious technique for keeping everything in organized in one notebook.
You leave blank space for the index or table of contents and add page numbers as you write the content.
So algebra notes might be on pages 2-10, 20-23,43-47; shopping lists on 11 and 19; Christmas ideas on 17-18.
You can of course leave blank pages after a shopping list for the next one, but with an updated index and page numbers you can easily find the next shopping list page (you can also write "continued on page ..." at the bottom).
Another very different system would be to use binders (or digital notebooks) where you can easily add pages. However, then page numbers become tricky and you lose the chronological information of what was written in which order.
Back when we were programming in BASIC, the 'solution' to the equivalent problem (line numbering) was to start by incrementing in tens rather than ones.
Though I'm relatively new to it, for me the first things that went into my notebook were an index of indices (to allow grouping of common content), a general index for everything else, a page for each month of the year as a simple calendar, then two pages allocated to the current week. New pages are simply allocated as needed, which minimizes wasted pages but increases fragmentation.
I've actually found it quite interesting to think about it all in very software-engineery ways. Indices contain pointers to linked lists of pages, pages are allocated and never freed, and the linked lists are append only. Thinking about it this way makes certain issues obvious. For example, it is a pain for me to keep looking up common items in the index, so I have a small 'floating index' on an index card that lives with my current week's calendar/action items to save time on common lookups (sort of a cache). Similarly, lists that are appended to less frequently than others become highly fragmented, and it can be slow to search for things in those lists, so there is some kind of limit/balance in there regarding the usefulness of these structures depending on the rate that lists are appended to.
Using a standard lined notebook, I just counted out lines and number of pages. So, if I had a notebook with a hundred sheets (200 pages) and 26 lines per page, I need to set aside four pages at the start of the notebook to have a different page entry on each line.
Like all productivity things - if it works for you, great. But maybe don't assume your thing is the magic thing that will fix everyone else's problems just like it might have your own. Likewise, there's a pretty big difference between something that feels productive and something that is productive - something that constantly grates the back of my brain whenever I look at some of these over-elaborate bullet journal examples.