Many bulletjournal entries are of meetings, many of which are recurring entities, so some context to previous meetings can be quite helpful. Minutes from the meeting can be added into the bulletjournal, using the standard bulletjournal signifiers; the dot for personal action points, and the dash, for notes. These minutes/notes may come in handy, during the subsequent meeting, particularly if it’s a few days or weeks apart.

There was a requirement at work, to setup a personal cloud software, for file-sharing, and possibly enable shared document editing. A solution called owncloud came recommended, but I decided to do some more looking around. A few years ago, opensource content management systems, and even blogs were really clunky things, held together with a lot of duct-tape and warning signs saying ‘Here be dragons’. Now, however, things are quite different. Instead of building monolithic behemoth apps which would prove to be extremely hard to maintain, developers are focusing on minimalist code, to allow one to get services up and running, and depending on what additional features or quality of service that’s required, one can add applications, or even buy the premium version of the software, with additional features and support thrown in.

Exception handling in programming is a means to ensure our code handles exceptional circumstances, such as error conditions, gracefully, instead of dying in a horrible manner. However, computer programming is as much of an art as it is a skill, and over the years, people have come to use programming constructs in a highly effective way, albeit in a manner it was not originally intended to be used. The effectiveness of this innovative method of usage of a tool/construct/product often determines whether the technique becomes mainstream or not, and this is by no means restricted to the world of computer programming; for instance, it’s well known that Coke makes an excellent toilet and sink cleaner :)

I’m going to use the tag ‘bulletjournal-hacks’ henceforth, for additional notations/conventions I come up with, to enhance/improve upon the basic bullet journal. Today’s addition is ‘Email Reference’, or EMR. What is it used for?
If your task/note is related to an email you’ve received or sent, it would be handy to make a note of the email in the journal, to allow you to easily lookup the email later, should you want to do so.

I started maintaining a bullet journal today, in a bid to improve productivity and get better organized. A friend observed the diary and enquired with some curiosity when I’d started, and seemed to find it a tad funny that I was going old-school. I’ve always been minimalist, the bullet journal is a perfect example of something extremely minimalist, but still very effective. What I liked best about the idea is the ease with which it can be created and maintained, while still being in a standard template. I don’t have to try and setup my own conventions or experiment till I find something I can use, and instead dive right in.