That friend who told me to skip the index key was so wrong

A guy from my local bullet journal meetup in Austin said I didn't need an index key, that it just slows you down. I went 3 months without one and my notebook became a total mess, I couldn't find anything I wrote down about my workouts or my budget tracking. Had to flip through 40 pages just to find my doctor appointment from July, what a waste of time. Has anyone else had a bad habit they picked up from someone's advice that just didn't work for them?

2 comments

2 Comments

adamgreen21d ago

Okay, I'm gonna push back on this one. You said "that friend who told me to skip the index key was so wrong" but honestly, in my experience, ditching the index was the best thing I ever did for my bujo. Forcing myself to flip through pages forced me to actually look at what I'd written before, not just treat my notebook like a filing cabinet. It made me remember stuff better and see patterns I'd have missed if I just looked up a page number. Your mile may vary, but maybe it wasn't the friend's advice that was the problem, it was how you tried to go without a structure at all. I think some people swear by indexes, some don't, and neither way is the "right" way.

oliviagrant21d ago

Wait hold on, you're saying ditching the index helped you remember stuff better by forcing you to flip through? But didn't that just waste your time hunting for stuff you already wrote down? I feel like the whole point of a bujo is to be efficient, not to make yourself do extra work on purpose. Like, if I have to flip through 50 pages just to find my grocery list, that's not helping me remember patterns, that's just annoying. What were you actually tracking that made flipping through worth it versus just looking up a page number? Because I tried no index for a month and I just ended up not using half my spreads cause I forgot they existed.