When working on putting together a productivity solution we often go looking for a preconstructed application that does everything. Well, we go looking…we don’t often succeed. With that in mind, I decided it was worth trying to use one of the most common tools in our arsenal, Microsoft Word, to implement a version of the Bullet Journal system.
As usual, I placed some strict requirements on my solution:
- The implementation had to work on the desktop as well as the web version of Microsoft Word
- It had to allow for tracking tasks as well as general notes
- It had to support collections
- It needed to be able to be set up on the fly (no pre-downloaded templates required)
- It had to be simple enough for anyone to implement
Based on those requirements, I was able to create a very serviceable version of the Bullet Journal methodology using Word.
Now that the basic structure was in place, could start using the Navigation Pane to move from section to section in the document by just clicking on the title in the Navigation Pane.
TIP – This part works even better on the desktop in Print View because Word scrolls right to the Header making each section look and act as truly separate pages.
Where this started to come into its own is when I used the search box in the Navigation Pane to locate all the tasks in the document by searching for “[]”. You can see what happens below:
The search term not only finds the items in the document, but Word highlights them AND shows them specifically in the Navigation Pane making access to the tasks quick and easy.
This is just the beginning of a Bullet Journal style implementation in Word. I’m going to keep working with this to refine and add features but you can see within a few minutes you can be up and running with your own Word Journal.