Keywords: reflection, Bullet Journal (BuJo), Distributed Collections, symbols, tasks, events, notes, emotions.

Bullet Journal is an exceptional tool to develop one’s thinking and communicative abilities. It was invented by Ryder Carroll and introduced as a methodology to help people with ADHD and other mental disorders organise their lives. However, few issues are omitted or even not mentioned in the original methodology of running such type of journals, including unwillingness of some people, who don’t want to have a Collection for each tiniest project, to devote a couple of pages for each of them. A BuJo full of unfinished two-pages Collections, left frozen behind somewhere in a couple (if even any) of lines? No, thanks. The aim of this article is to suggest a way of writing routine that saves pages by omitting traditional ‘Collections' for the sake of ‘Distributed' ones.

One the one hand I keep in mind all those adults who suffer from various cognitive (like ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, etc.) and communicative (eg. Listening—Reading and/or Speaking—Writing) issues, all of us need some means to express ourselves and keep track of our lives. Those people (like me) can be successfully helped with methods based on Lev Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Psychology. Personal reflection is one of them. Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy is another one aimed to help people with strong mental health issues. Also, self-analysis of thoughts and feelings using the patterns of formal (Piaget, 1956) and dialectical (Basseches, 1984) thinking can help people understand their lives and find way out for problems they face in their everyday lives.

On the other hand I support the ideas found in Antique History translated wildly from the Stoic’s propaganda (Ryan Holiday). There are things people can (unfortunately) control and there are things people can not (fortunately). Assuming it’s true, why put that much resource into projects we actually cannot control? In highly overcrowded with information personal and especially professional environments we can neither think about it—nor we can afford it.

I held content-analysis of original methodology (Carroll, 2018) and numerous available BuJo samples of other people who shared them in articles (not scientific, though), Reels on Instagram, Videos on YouTube etc. I’ve been testing the hypothesis—that not all projects should have two pages for each of them, a few lines in Everyday log is enough for them, but no one knows wether the project would run, stop or even cancelled by forces not in our control—during more than a year to finally make a decision to share my humble suggestion to the community of people who bullet.

The idea is to jot down all those tasks (they certainly can be yet incomplete, transferred, planned, cancelled, completed, or even delegated), notes, emotions, as usual in Everyday Log. But how to find them during a year? Using a symbol denoted to that very project. You simply put that symbol next to the bullet. But how to remember which pages you have been writing on each of those projects? Also simple as a piece of cake: under that symbol you put two numbers divided by a short line (in Math it’s analogous to fractions). In the numerator you should write the page where you left the previous part of your collection. And in the denumerator, obviously, you should write the page for the following part of the collection.

While writing your Everyday Log you can temporarily leave the denominator part blank until a new Task, Event, Note, or Emotion relevant to a project is added. For sure, including all those symbols for each of your project, is highly welcomed in the Index Collection, that one of them which you are in charge of. Finally, when the project is finally over you can put a cross in the denominator to make a sign that no more items are left on the following pages. Should you like to resume writing on a project, you can consider your previous cross to be a numerator adding one more line under it, and again put the number of a subsequent page in the denominator.

Personally I successfully limited space in my BuJo for every project that is not in my control (I'm not an effective Project Manager to held tons of them, few to delegate) and cut notebooks from two (48 sheets in each) to one (80 pages) per year having some spare pages for keeping something more pleasant as souvenirs (eg. boarding passes, some stickers, sticky-notes, etc.) than contemplating irrelevant notes, dead emotions and unfinished tasks, not mentioning too many pages left blank unintentionally.

The original idea, suggested by Ryder Carroll in 2018, the respectful author of Bullet Journal Method, is to devote two pages in a journal for each project. Those pages are called a ‘Collection’. All those collections should be mentioned in the Index of the journal (to make them findable later). Also if you integrated a Calendar and Index into one Calendex (I personally love this idea of dialectical combining two concepts into one, it was suggested by one of the community members), you can feel liberally free to put those symbols into your Calendex to show that on those days you invested some time into projects, attending meetings connected to those projects, or doing something else.

The Stoicism philosophy teaches that we only can control our minds, and nothing else: even our bodies we cannot control. Moreover, it’s good for us; else how we would have too much to control in our lives. Thus, how one can anticipate two pages for a collection that can be devoted for a project on its beginning without knowing when it would end? Some projects are personal (and can be absolutely lead by each of us who live in different conditions and situations of personal development), some of them are not (other people can be in charge of them and decide to run them or would rather freeze them for good).

In the original concept suggested by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who actually made it possible to implement dialectics into psychologists’ agenda, we can find the ideas of thinking and speech as two specific types of human activities. Many years after N.E.Veraksa was the first to dare experimenting with preschool children in late 1980s in USSR. Nowadays his scientific school based in Moscow State University and Moscow City University continue to produce high quality research on the subject of human cognitive development. Those works are united in one simple idea: writing is an effective way to develop thinking.

Expressive writing reduces perceived stress and depressive symptoms (Danoff-Burg, S. et. al. 2010). Journaling provides further analysis of the content, facilitating the gathering of relevant information for self-care or for informing professionals to support the therapeutic process, and the practice of gratitude is an effective complementary intervention as it has been shown to accumulate benefits over time (Wong et al., 2016).

Research papers’ authors conclude journaling to be an effective practice for people struggling with mental issues. Four BuJo usage trends have been observed: “self-regulation resources, self-regulation exercises, trackers for psychological aspects, and psychoeducation” (Naira Almeida da Silva et al., 2025). This paper shows vivid users’ examples of BuJos’ pages devoted by their authors to track their mood, habits, gratitude and triggers. Despite these ‘Collections’ (obviously, all those trackers are placed on one page, which is actually a ‘collection’ using the original terminology), one practice (journaling pages as means of self regulation resources “for personal reflection and/or further therapeutic sessions”) lacks a ‘glue’ that would connect pieces of journaling together.

I share the assumption that information design solutions must be adaptable to specific contexts (Pettersson, 2009). I failed to find a good method to collect somewhere not in a ‘Collection’ all those Tasks, Events, Notes, Feelings (four types of Bullets), etc. (people can invent their own types of bullets they include in their journals) which belong to the same projects, that had been suggested in the original methodology.

Gratefully had I a unique chance to suggest a sub-system for tracking Tasks, Events, Notes, Feelings. Yet haven’t I invented a new type of bullet (four are enough for me), but made organisation of my journal a little better. I hope those who are interested in analysing, planning, publishing, and reflecting on their lives would find my ‘Distributed Collections’ useful. Fancy trying if you dare: does it make your life easier being absolutely calm when others control their projects? Let them go; and safe pages for those precious moments in your heartfelt lives.

The paper covers that journaling is an effective way to develop cognitive and communicative skills and to help people cope with different mental health and communicative issues of expressing themselves. To some extent analysis (including self-analysis) of these pieces of data from personal journals could provide a better understanding of how people think and feel. Schemes of formal (eg. induction, deduction, analogy) or dialectical thinking could be applied as well to make problem solving easier (or even possible for those who have developed only formal logic skills). Further reflection on journal items and professional advice can also aid. Looking forward to crunching the numbers to learn more about the effects this suggestion of distributed collections makes on journals of diverse and inclusive authors.