Finding Focus in the Digital Age
Ryder Carroll on Mindfulness and Productivity
For well over a decade, the Bullet Journal method has revolutionized the way countless individuals capture and organize their thoughts and ideas. Its creator, Ryder Carroll, has inadvertently sparked a global movement towards intentional and mindful productivity.
Today, we had the privilege of speaking with Ryder, delving deeper into the philosophy behind the Bullet Journal and exploring its impact on the ever-evolving landscape of personal organization.
This interview promises to be an insightful exploration of the Bullet Journal's core principles, its practical applications, and its enduring influence on how we manage our most valuable asset: our minds.
Ryder Carroll: The Bullet Journal method is a mindfulness practice that's designed to work like a productivity system. On the one hand, it will help you organize what you have to do. On the other hand, it keeps you mindful of why you're doing what you're doing—and we do all this using pen and paper.
Yorba: We listened to many interviews you've done in the past. You talked about your ADHD, how it's like trying to catch the rain, and how everything holds the same level of importance. It seems like you flipped things around by finding that core organizing principle. Has this tactic supported you in other ways outside of work?
Ryder Carroll: It started with work. So work is the thing that we spend most of our time doing, and you can use work as an excellent mirror for your experience.
How do you feel about what you're working on?
How do you feel about interacting with your colleagues?
How do you feel about going to work on Mondays?
How do Fridays feel?
These are excellent things to start paying attention to.
Why are you doing this job?
What are you getting out of it? All these kinds of things.
How do I feel about this relationship?
How do I feel about this neighborhood?
How do I feel about Sundays?
All of this, for me, takes place inside my notebook. It's a place for me to gather my questions and observe my life. That's what the Bullet Journal method is—you're recording your lived experience with this notation that I call rapid logging.
And then you are reading that record. If there are two things you do in Bullet Journal, it's write and read, write and read.
Yorba: It sounds like you tapped into this thing that doesn't need gimmicks and doesn't need a major life overhaul, and we think that’s quite interesting in the industry.
Ryder Carroll: As long as you have pen and paper, all you need is a few moments of your time to write down what you're thinking and feeling and experiencing. That's really what it breaks down to.
And then going back to it and making sure you read those things. A lot of times, we can start to accumulate an experience unconsciously.
So one day, you just decide you hate your job, or you hate your relationship, or something’s just not working. It's one of those things that is happening very slowly until it happens very quickly.
And in my own life, I've definitely run into this, especially with work. I might think, “I hate this job,” but when I started slowing down and started tracking, I discovered there are parts about my job that make the whole thing really difficult.
I don't necessarily hate my job.
Do I hate my colleagues? No.
Do I hate my boss? No.
Okay, interesting. So I don't hate my job.
What I hate is meetings.
What can I do about that?
That's when things change because you correlate your schedule with your experience.
Yorba: How long do you monitor and measure before you take action?
Ryder Carroll: I caution people from taking action when they're really activated. So when something appears and you feel really strongly about something in that moment, I tend to advise to wait until that clears a little bit. And that can take 10 minutes; it can take 10 days…
But you want to take action from a place of intention and not reactivity.
Yorba: How do you continue to find equilibrium and make space for more in your life, especially when it comes to the digital experience?
Ryder Carroll: By developing the skill of observing your life and by paying attention to what's happening regularly. That's all there is. I don't think there is a fixed solution to this problem because the conditions in our lives continue to change constantly.
So a lot of systems will work for a very limited period of time because the conditions and the solutions are equal. But in my experience, the conditions are always changing. So solutions don't necessarily work all the time.
The way that you continue to make things work is by continuing to observe your life, observe the conditions in your life, and see if you can find solutions on an ongoing basis that address those needs at that time.
And that's why a big thing about Bullet Journals is rituals. We have daily, weekly, and monthly rituals where we continue to read this record of our experience to see if what we're doing lines up with what we need, with how we're feeling, and what we're thinking.
Yorba: How has your leadership style changed with this method?
Ryder Carroll: Early on, my model for leadership was about getting things to the finish line.
But now, I feel like the job of a leader is to embody what I want to see created. I try to lead by example and support my team in any way I possibly can. Now, it's not about getting to the finish line; it's about helping other people be able to embody the same values.
How can I get them to fully step into their potential?
How can I help them do that?
Yorba: A lot of us can get caught up in the idea of self-improvement and the idea that we need more apps or more books, and we put pressure on ourselves to hit personal deadlines. What are some products and programs that you may have consumed before that you realized just didn’t work for you?
Ryder Carroll: I tend to not be able to work well with rigid systems. So, for example, I don't like planners, because if I miss a day, I feel like I did something wrong. Within a month, I might miss two or three days. And then there's these blank pages.
I know it seems like a small thing, but over a year, it makes me feel bad. So I've never really liked fixed systems, and I don't like systems that are infinitely complex, where everything is available.
I prefer systems that encourage the person to be more self-directed.
Yorba: What apps do you use and love?
Ryder Carroll: I try to be very careful about the technology I use, but I do use Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, and Notion. I try to stay out of Slack as much as possible because I’m easily distracted.
Yorba: What advice do you have for people who are interested in becoming more mindful about the way they're interacting with their thoughts online, particularly in the digital world?
Ryder Carroll: First of all, when I tell people about Bullet Journal, they are like, “Yeah, but what about doing the dishes? That doesn't fill me with purpose.”
And that's true. I have a puppy right now, and she's a real handful.
I don't like getting up at four o'clock in the morning to walk her, but if I hadn’t adopted her, she would have been euthanized. So for me, it's about staying aware of why I'm doing this.
Does it make me enjoy cleaning up after her? No. But the response to it is very different because I know why I'm doing it.
When you lose track of why you're doing something, it's downhill from there because it feels like a chore. Then you start to resent it, and resentment is a really hard thing to come back from. So just keeping track of why you're doing what you're doing is a really important part of this.
And then the second part is to simply allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. So if you’re upset about having to wake up at four in the morning, there’s no way of spinning it—that’s just the way it is. It’s important to simply allow yourself to feel that because if you don’t, you’ll get stuck.
I don't like doing the dishes, but I like being a good partner. I want the relationship to work, so I will do the dishes for the third time in a row. Keeping the larger picture in mind can be really hard, which is why journaling can be so important—it helps us to take a step back out of our lives to make sure we just keep an eye on why we're doing what we're doing.
Yorba: We know you recently tried the Yorba app, and we’re curious to hear what Yorba made you consider in terms of your digital experience.
Ryder Carroll: Yorba made me aware of just how much garbage was in my inbox. We all know there's a difference between physical minimalism and digital minimalism. With digital minimalism, there's no weight to things except for an emotional weight.
In my case, I unsubscribed from everything. In fact, I don’t even use my personal email account anymore. I had to have my family move over to a professional email because I can’t fix it right now.
With Yorba, I could start to see why I feel this way about my inbox. It gives me a tool where I can quickly start removing those things and hopefully have a personal channel for communication that's actually useful.
Yorba: Is there anything we didn't ask that you want to talk about?
Ryder Carroll: You brought something up earlier that is really common, which is this endless need to optimize, optimize, optimize. While that can be really helpful, it can be its own form of distraction.
You want to optimize for something specific. For example: spend more time with your children, or have more time to sleep. These are specific containers; windows of time that you can track. Without that container, optimization of any kind can become a shapeless endeavor and ultimately a massive form of distraction. It's about getting clear on what productivity unlocks for you, before you start the process of optimization.
Learn more about Ryder Carroll’s journey here.
Support him by signing up for Yorba with his referral link.
Check out the Bullet Journal method here.
