3 App Alternatives To Bullet Journaling If You’ve Tried It And Failed Miserably

Fun, simple tools for taking beautiful notes (without spending hours on templates)

Rebecca Pendleton
6 min readJun 22, 2022
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

Ah, the bullet journal. Aspiration of every stationery addict and control freak. The pinnacle of organisation. Or is it?

It’s hard not to be drawn into the concept. Those beautiful templates on Pinterest, made by people with gorgeous handwriting and a steady hand. The washi tape. The cute banners and endless layouts. Lush.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone who, like me, has tried and failed to create a consistent bullet journal practice.

We’ve all been there — buying yourself a Leuchturm 1918 and a 0.7 black uniball pen, then spending hours crafting monthly, weekly and daily templates. You become an evangelist — “oh, it’s so much better than a regular diary, it’s so flexible!” You non-ironically start calling it your BuJo (no affiliation with BoJo, a.k.a Boris Johnson — who may or may not be into bullet journaling, I do not know).

Here’s the thing. Flexibility is great. Having to spend 8 hours painstakingly crafting a weekly template — not so great.

Good things about Bullet Journalling 👍

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Rebecca Pendleton

Product Manager & Aspiring Writer / Coach. I love self-development, service design & stationery. Sober but not preachy.