Bullet Journaling VS Rough Journaling

In the previous post on bullet journaling, I showed how I write my daily tasks, weekly goals, and organise my life. That’s my well-presented and organised journal. Alternatively, I have a second journal – my rough journal – which we’ll be looking at in this post.

The special thing about this journal is I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care if it’s written in scribbles, or if the pages are upside down or even back to front. In fact, most of that notebook is upside down or scribbles. And that’s fine.

The Journals

In my bullet journal, I keep all my daily tasks. My MITs and To-Do list exist in that journal. My weekly goals and longer-term goals also exist here. As well, any written life organisation or lists exist in my bullet journal. This is all nicely formatted, following lines, spacing, and layouts.

In this rough journal, I keep anything and everything. Random inspiration, useful thoughts, and business and content ideas. With the rough journal, nothing intentionally looks good; I don’t follow lines or pages. It doesn’t contain any sense of a pattern.

The Benefits Of A Rough Journal

The power behind this rough journal is that it’s a place to quickly write things down. To write in a bullet journal takes time. You have to write slowly to follow lines and formatting; you have to think about spacing and write consciously. The opposite is true with a rough notebook. That’s all about writing things down fast, while they’re fresh in your mind.

Better Brain Functioning

The primary purpose of this journal is getting stuff out of my head and onto paper. This serves a few purposes for my brain. Firstly, it means I’m less likely to forget the stuff I write down. Not only is the information ‘immortalised’ but it’s also solidified in my brain as I write.

Another benefit of this is that it allows my brain to do what it’s supposed to do. That is, to think. Your brain is an idea generation machine. It is designed to create, to think of new ideas and new concepts, and to find connections between things.

What your brain isn’t designed for is retaining information long-term. That’s where having a rough journal comes in. This journal is a place to write your thoughts down quickly, so you can allow your brain to do what it’s supposed to do.

Writing things down and freeing up storage in your brain means you allow more space for your brain to think. It can generate more ideas, more concepts, and find more connections.

Access From Anywhere

Because you (I) don’t care what this journal looks like, you can take it anywhere. Having no expectations for the design frees up the worry of caring what the journal looks like to others.

You don’t need a hard surface to write on, as you might with a bullet journal. Scribbles are natural with this journal, so it’s easy to take it anywhere. Get it out whenever something important comes to you and get that information on paper.

Inspiration can come from the most random of places. Having a rough journal on you at all times means you can make the most of this.

Wrapping Up

If you don’t already have a rough journal, I’d highly recommend getting one. A5 is probably the best size since A4 is too large and A6 too small. Try it out for a few days and let me know what you think!

Want to learn more? I share my thoughts on both in a video on my YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/7_ws7c6YArw

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