Bullet Journaling: Your Solution for Daily Disorganization

Ryder Carroll is a bike-sharing, glasses-wearing product designer from Brooklyn, N.Y. Early in March, we met in a crowded coffee shop. No one recognized the 35-year-old, even though he’s a cult Internet celebrity: Carroll invented the Bullet Journal system, a method for note-taking and day-planning that people who love paper and pens swear by.

Bullet Journaling is, according to its official slogan, “an analog system for the digital age,” and thousands of young, urban professionals are adopting it as a way to organize their busy lives. Carroll’s How to Bullet Journal instructional videos have been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube. Devotees make their own videos and post journal photos to Instagram, where a search for #bulletjournal returns more than 66,000 results. A handful of fans write offshoot blogs, and a Reddit group formed to discuss and appreciate Carroll’s invention. “This technique is a gold mine,” one commenter posted on YouTube. “I track everything more accurately than my colleagues that don’t use a Bullet Journal. It’s saved my ass time and time again.”