Carlos's Blog

My Obsidian-Based Bullet Journal Productivity System

Inspired by this blog, I wanted to talk through my current Obsidian-based bullet journal productivity system.

I've spent several years trying out, and eventually abandoning, various productivity and journaling systems. I've watched countless YouTube videos from all of the productivity gurus showing off how they get things done.

I've gone through a number of specific task managing apps including Todoist, Things 3, Apple Reminders and Notion. I've experimented with journaling in all sorts of ways as well—the bullet journal method, daily pages and using apps like Day One or Apple Notes or even just throwing journal entries into Google Calendar.

Ultimately what's worked best for me is a hodge-podge, Frankenstein-esque mashup of a number of these systems. At some point I learned to just take what's useful to me and throw out the rest.

Here's how it works:

The Software

I use Obsidian for all of my note taking, journaling, task management and a developing zettelkasten (We'll save the zettelkasten conversation for another day).

It's quickly become one of my favorite pieces of software, and I strongly prefer a digital system over an analog system.

I've always found that I don't get much use out of analog journaling and task managing systems. I don't like writing by hand. I don't like the fact that searching previous journals is much more time-consuming. And I don't like having to carry around a bunch of different physical journals or notebooks and pens.

By using Obsidian I need one of two things at any time: my laptop or my phone. I've always got one of those—and like 90% of the time I have both—so I can always hop into my digital bullet journal to tick off a task, add a note, add a thought or do whatever I need.

The Structure & System

Inside my Obsidian vault, I have four folders that house everything I care about:

  1. Bullet Journal
  2. Notebook
  3. Writing
  4. Zettelkasten

I'm going to focus on just the first folder—the bullet journal—today.

Within this subfolder I organize all of my files by year, then by month. Within each month's folder I have daily notes, weekly notes and a monthly note.

I try to avoid plugin creep with my Obsidian vault because I want to keep things as simple and lightweight as possible, but I do use the Calendar and Periodic Notes community plugins to run this system. I have templates for Daily, Weekly and Monthly notes which allows me to quickly get the exact note setup I need instantly.

The system I use here is basically a fusion of bullet journaling and Cal Newport's multi-scale planning system.

Each month I create a digital version of a bujo monthly spread. For me this includes three things: a calendar with notes for key dates and deadlines; a section for my goals for the month; and a future log section where I will move or add things that don't need to be done this month, but will need to be handled in the future.

Each week I have a weekly note. This includes my work goals and personal goals for each week, plus a section where I review the week. I review this note each Sunday to see how well I executed throughout the week, and then plan my weekly note for the upcoming week.

Each day I use an extremely simply daily note. I have a "Log" section and a "Day" section. Today's daily note would look like this:

September 5, 2025

Log

Day

The log serves as my daily to-do list. Each morning I add my tasks (by using the monthly and weekly notes if needed) to the log and check them off, migrate them to another day or delete them as necessary. What unlocked this system for me was realizing that Obsidian supports task lists, which allowed me to replicate the bullet journal syntax for managing tasks, ideas and lists.

The day section is simply where I can add thoughts about the day, jot down ideas or throw random meeting notes. It's basically a daily journal. Some days I write a lot in this space, and some days I write nothing at all.

The Results

I've used this setup for more than a year now, and I think it's led to a lot more focus, clarity and organization. I don't anticipate changing it any time soon.

It's extremely simple, it requires little to no overhead and because I'm using markdown files in Obsidian, I don't need to worry about losing support for an app or losing my data to some cloud service. Years from now I'll be able to pull up a random date and see what I was thinking about or working on at the time.

So, this is how I stay organized and productive. What about you?

#productivity