DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
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Ryder Carroll09 February 2023

The Ultimate Method To Take Control Of Your Life in 2023 - Ryder Carroll

3Frameworks
12Insights

Episode overview

Ali Abdaal speaks with Ryder Carroll about how learning disabilities, a design career, and repeated experiments with pen and paper led Carroll to create the Bullet Journal Method. Carroll presents it as “a mindfulness practice that's disguised as a productivity system,” explaining rapid logging, collections, reflection rituals, and monthly migration. They explore how written records can reveal personal patterns, align actions with values, and turn goals into adaptable experiments rather than fixed destinations. Carroll also recounts sharing the method online, funding its expansion through Kickstarter, partnering on dedicated notebooks, writing The Bullet Journal Method, and building education around intentional living.

Key ideas

  • The Bullet Journal Method combines a system for organizing information with a reflective practice for deciding what that information means and how to respond.
  • Rapid logging captures tasks, events, and notes in concise language, helping users offload thoughts while remaining present.
  • Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rituals create different time scales for reviewing lived experience and recognizing patterns.
  • Migration is intentional curation: unfinished tasks are tested for vitality, meaning, and consequences before being rewritten or abandoned.
  • A notebook can act as a “paper mirror,” reflecting choices and emotions so users can align actions with changing values and circumstances.
  • The method is deliberately modular and should evolve through experimentation rather than require artistic layouts or rigid adherence.
  • Goals work like lighthouses: they provide direction, but new information may justify changing course before reaching the original destination.
  • Carroll turned a freely shared four-minute explanation into a community, Kickstarter-backed business, book, companion app, and educational platform.

Transcript available · source text is retained privately and is not published

Frameworks in this episode

Mindset4 steps

Goals as Lighthouses

Treat goals as navigational markers you steer by, not destinations you must reach

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Productivity5 steps

The Bullet Journal Method

Rapid-log your life by hand, then reflect to clarify why you do what you do

Read →
Productivity5 steps

The Filter (Monthly Migration)

Rewrite your open tasks each month and keep only what passes three questions

Read →

People & resources mentioned

Attributed to the moment in the episode. Timestamps are approximate.

People · 11

  • Ali AbdaalUsesthe ongoing podcast where every week I get the chance to sit down with inspiring authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people.

    “I started bullet journaling about a month ago”

    ▶ Watch at ~2:00approx.
  • Ryder CarrollCoinedI guess you could say that I was a ux designer for most of my career

    “I invented the bullet Journal method as you know it now because I needed it”

    ▶ Watch at ~3:00approx.
  • David AllenMentionsmentioned

    “people are like oh have you heard of David Allen”

    ▶ Watch at ~20:30approx.
  • Matt D'AvellaMentionsmentioned

    “my friend Matt diabella did a video recently where he tried bullet journaling”

    ▶ Watch at ~23:30approx.
  • Matthew DicksCoinedmentioned

    “there's a book called story worthy by Matthew Dixon”

    ▶ Watch at ~32:30approx.
  • David AllenMentionsmentioned

    “David Allen talks about capture”

    ▶ Watch at ~54:30approx.
  • Cal NewportMentionskind of like C newort around you know technology and addiction

    “I was chatting to Cal Newport on the Pod a few weeks ago”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:27:30approx.
  • Austin KleonMentionsmentioned

    “I actually got this from Austin Cleon”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:28:00approx.
  • Seth GodinMentionshe's still connected energized like seems Fully Alive with like what he's doing

    “Seth God and Ryan holiday those kind of things”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:29:00approx.
  • Ryan HolidayMentionsfor me that's writing like writing the books is the main thing

    “Seth God and Ryan holiday those kind of things”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:29:00approx.
  • Anne LamottMentionsmentioned

    “it's like Anne Lamont you know it's like I just write a terrible first draft”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:30:30approx.

Resources · 39

  • YouTubeUseswebsite · Google

    “81 of you who are watching this on YouTube”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:30approx.
  • LondonMentionsplace

    “here we are in London like a few weeks later”

    ▶ Watch at ~2:00approx.
  • Bullet Journal MethodUsestool · Ryder Carroll

    “I started bullet journaling about a month ago”

    ▶ Watch at ~2:00approx.
  • Bullet Journal MethodCoinedtool · Ryder Carroll

    “I invented the bullet Journal method as you know it now because I needed it”

    ▶ Watch at ~3:00approx.
  • LifehackerMentionswebsite

    “I first read it about read about it on Life Hacker or something”

    ▶ Watch at ~4:00approx.
  • PinterestMentionssoftware

    “when you encounter something on Instagram or Pinterest generally speaking that audience is much more visual”

    ▶ Watch at ~4:30approx.
  • InstagramMentionssoftware · Meta Platforms

    “when you encounter something on Instagram or Pinterest generally speaking that audience is much more visual”

    ▶ Watch at ~4:30approx.
  • Google CalendarMentionssoftware · Google

    “the problem with Google Calendar is that like it's forces you to think very zoomed in”

    ▶ Watch at ~23:30approx.
  • AudibleUsesproduct · Amazon

    “I came across the book and I listened to the book on Audible”

    ▶ Watch at ~24:30approx.
  • KindleRecommendsproduct · Amazon

    “you get it on Kindle or in real life it really helps to see what's being talked about”

    ▶ Watch at ~25:00approx.
  • The Bullet Journal MethodRecommendsbook · Ryder Carroll

    “we'll put links to the the book which I recommend not getting on Audible”

    ▶ Watch at ~25:00approx.
  • HuelUsesproduct · Julian Hearn

    “I have been a paying customer of huel since 2017”

    ▶ Watch at ~28:00approx.
  • NutriBulletUsesproduct · Capital Brands

    “I put them into my NutriBullet blender type thing”

    ▶ Watch at ~29:00approx.
  • HuelRecommendsproduct · Julian Hearn

    “if you like the idea of getting these cheap and healthy and nutritionally complete meals in your diet then head over”

    ▶ Watch at ~29:30approx.
  • Trading 212Recommendssoftware · Trading 212

    “you can do completely for free with trading 212”

    ▶ Watch at ~30:00approx.
  • Trading 212Usessoftware · Trading 212

    “you can use Apple pay like I do initially”

    ▶ Watch at ~30:30approx.
  • Apple PayUsessoftware · Apple

    “you can use Apple pay like I do initially”

    ▶ Watch at ~30:30approx.
  • StoryworthyRecommendsbook · Matthew Dicks

    “there's a book called story worthy by Matthew Dixon best one of the best books I've ever read”

    ▶ Watch at ~32:30approx.
  • Google SheetsMentionssoftware · Google

    “he does it unlike a Google sheet or something”

    ▶ Watch at ~33:00approx.
  • Homework for LifeUsestool · Matthew Dicks

    “homework for Life thing where I I write down something story worthy that happened”

    ▶ Watch at ~46:00approx.
  • NotionUsessoftware · Notion Labs

    “it goes into the motion and all that crap”

    ▶ Watch at ~57:00approx.
  • Roam ResearchUsessoftware

    “in my case Rome so like I'm a huge Rome guy”

    ▶ Watch at ~58:30approx.
  • LifehackerMentionswebsite

    “soon it got covered by this Lifehacker website”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:05:00approx.
  • KickstarterUseswebsite

    “I created a Kickstarter to finance a new site”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:06:30approx.
  • Leuchtturm1917Usescompany

    “partner with it was an notebook that I was using at the time”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:08:00approx.
  • WeWorkUsescompany

    “I have been a painful pain customer of wework for the last two years”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:08:30approx.
  • CambridgeMentionsplace

    “we were members of the wework in Cambridge”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:09:00approx.
  • WeWorkRecommendscompany

    “I'd 100 recommend we work”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:10:00approx.
  • Leuchtturm1917Mentionscompany

    “their 1917a5 notebooks with thicker paper”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:10:30approx.
  • SharpieUsesproduct · Newell Brands

    “Sharpie was bleeding through the paper”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:16:30approx.
  • New York CityMentionsplace

    “New York I made way more money”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:21:00approx.
  • Penguin Random HouseMentionscompany

    “hanging around the house”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:28:30approx.
  • PortfolioMentionscompany · Penguin Random House

    “the imprint that I went with was portfolio”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:29:00approx.
  • The Bullet Journal MethodCoinedbook · Ryder Carroll

    “it's like the bullet Journal method”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:32:30approx.
  • Bullet Journal CompanionCoinedsoftware · Ryder Carroll

    “the app does that kind of thing”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:50:00approx.
  • Bullet Journal CompanionMentionssoftware · Ryder Carroll

    “it's called the companion app”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:50:30approx.
  • Bullet Journal UniversityMentionscourse · Ryder Carroll

    “you've got the app you've got the course the university”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:52:30approx.
  • BulletJournal.comRecommendswebsite · Ryder Carroll

    “bullet journal.com”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:54:30approx.
  • Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalCoinedpodcast · Ali Abdaal

    “that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:55:00approx.

Spot an error or want something removed? Request a correction or removal.

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster59:30

You don't need to be an artist to bullet journal

The most common concern Carroll hears is 'I'm not an artist, I can't bullet journal.' He insists you don't need to draw a straight line — the core is writing your thoughts in a line or two. Elaborate decorated spreads are optional; treating them as required is why many people try it, produce something ugly, and quit before finding what's underneath.

  • The core is writing thoughts in a line or two, not art
  • Decoration is optional expression, not the method
  • Believing you must decorate makes people quit early
  • Start with the basics, develop a style over time

“you don't need to be able to draw a straight line in order to Bullet Journal”

Ryder Carroll · 59:30
#myths#beginners#creativity

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take38:00

Why Ryder Carroll uses rituals instead of habits

Carroll rejects habit language for his method. Habits are behaviors you try to make automatic, so you stop thinking about them; a ritual is a set of behaviors that serves something meaningful and therefore demands attention. Bullet journaling uses daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rituals to help you think about your life at different time scales.

  • Habits aim to become automatic and unconscious
  • Rituals serve something meaningful and require attention
  • Different time scales contextualize your days and future
  • Rituals are how you recommit and reorganize

“a ritual is a set of behaviors that serves something meaningful and actually doing those things requires a lot of attention”

Ryder Carroll · 38:30
#rituals#habits#reflection

Explainer· 3

Explainer03:30

Why the Bullet Journal is really a mindfulness practice, not a planner

Carroll reframes bullet journaling as a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system. It helps you organize what you're doing, but its deeper job is to clarify why you're doing it, revolving around purpose rather than process. Most people first meet it on Instagram or Pinterest and mistake the decorative spreads for the point.

  • It organizes your tasks but, more importantly, clarifies your purpose
  • It revolves around why more than how
  • Social media makes people think it's just an artistic notebook
  • The essence is building a tool around a specific intention

“it helps you organize what you're doing but more importantly it helps you clarify why you're doing what you're doing”

Ryder Carroll · 03:30
#mindfulness#productivity#purpose
Explainer1:29:30

Carroll's sculptural, terrible-first-draft writing process

Writing his book wasn't one uniform act; Carroll compares it to raising a child through stages that each need a different approach, moving from creative generation to editorial sculpting. His method is to put down far too much content — a deliberately terrible first draft — then scrape everything away until only what's necessary remains, handing off sections in cycles.

  • The work changed stages, from creative to editorial
  • Write way too much, then carve it down
  • A terrible first draft is expected and fine
  • He handed off thirds of the book in overlapping cycles

“I just write a terrible first draft and I'm okay with that”

Ryder Carroll · 1:30:30
#writing#process#editing
Explainer1:33:30

How to actually figure out your values

Instead of picking from a list of 50 abstract values, Carroll says values reveal themselves through your lived experience. Study which moments felt meaningful and what behavior or value supported them, and which felt draining or shameful and what anti-value they embodied. Values differ by domain — work versus home — and change over time as an ongoing process.

  • Skip the generic list; study your actual experiences
  • Ask what made a meaningful moment feel meaningful
  • Use bad feelings to reveal violated or anti-values
  • Values differ by life domain and keep evolving

“by studying our lived experience they can reveal themselves”

Ryder Carroll · 1:34:30
#values#self-discovery#reflection

Story· 4

Story06:30

Growing up with ADD felt like trying to catch the rain

Carroll describes his childhood ADD as trying to catch the rain — everything seemed important, so he couldn't decide what to focus on and everything fell through the cracks. Solving that directly was impossible; the breakthrough was understanding why he was standing in the rain at all, and organizing around a core principle before finding any system.

  • Everything felt equally important, so nothing got focused on
  • Trying to catch everything meant everything slipped away
  • The shift was to a core organizing principle before a system
  • Understanding the 'why' preceded any productivity tool

“the best way I can describe it is like trying to catch the rain”

Ryder Carroll · 06:30
#adhd#focus#origin
Story08:30

He hit every career goal and still felt empty

Carroll climbed the corporate ladder, got the raises and the senior art director title, then launched a successful startup while sleeping under the desk. None of it made him feel better. He realized he'd been accomplishing other people's goals — the defaults of what a designer is supposed to want — and turned his productivity tools inward on his own self-awareness.

  • Each accomplished goal was never enough
  • A successful product launch left him feeling nothing
  • He'd been chasing other people's definitions of success
  • He then aimed the same tools at his inner life and patterns

“I realized that I was accomplishing other people's goals”

Ryder Carroll · 09:30
#meaning#career#self-awareness
Story15:30

Volunteering taught him the meaning of work at scale

Doing paid fashion web work felt unfulfilling, but volunteering for tech non-profits shifted everything: one shipped feature could serve twenty thousand people or open housing for ten thousand. That leverage felt profoundly meaningful, and it foreshadowed how his private notebook system would eventually help the most people of anything he built.

  • An hour of skilled work could serve tens of thousands
  • Impact at scale felt far more meaningful than his day job
  • Design is ultimately about removing friction from people's lives
  • The tool he built for himself became the one that helped most

“the tech that I'm working on can serve 20 000 people and that was a really interesting concept”

Ryder Carroll · 15:30
#meaning#impact#design
Story1:04:30

How a private notebook became a global method and a business

Carroll never intended to share his system. Colleagues kept asking about his notebook, so in 2013 he spent a few weeks inventing the vocabulary and launched a simple teaching blog that Lifehacker picked up. Strangers — veterans with PTSD, stay-at-home parents, students — used it for problems he'd never had, which inspired a 2014 Kickstarter that sold out its notebooks in a day and became the business.

  • The method was a private tool for 20 years first
  • A 2013 blog, framed as a thank-you letter, went viral
  • Strangers solved unfamiliar problems with the same tool
  • A 2014 Kickstarter turned it into a real business

“people started using the bullet Journal method to solve challenges that are completely unknown and unfamiliar to me”

Ryder Carroll · 1:06:00
#origin#kickstarter#business

Tool· 1

Tool1:49:00

The Bullet Journal companion app — bridging analog and digital

Carroll is agnostic about analog versus digital and treats his products as accessories to the methodology. The companion app fills the notebook's gaps: it sets reminders to reflect, tracks how often you check in to keep you honest, serves prompts and quotes, and lets you photograph pages for a digital backup — a fix he wanted after losing notebooks in a flood.

  • He's agnostic: pick the best tool for the job
  • The app reminds you to reflect, which paper can't
  • It tracks check-ins to keep you honest
  • Photo backups guard against losing physical notebooks

“I see all of the products that I make as accessories to the methodology”

Ryder Carroll · 1:50:00
#app#tools#analog-vs-digital

Takeaway· 2

Takeaway1:02:30

You can't make time — you can only take it

Carroll pushes back on the phrase 'making time.' Time can't be made; it can only be taken, either from you or by you. Bullet journaling is about taking the time to study your life so that how, what, and why you're doing things stays deliberate — which is why practitioners often report that time subjectively slows down.

  • Time can't be made, only taken
  • It's taken from you unless you take it back
  • Studying your life makes time feel slower
  • Without the practice, time speeds up and things fray

“time can't be made time can only be taken it can be taken from you or it can be taken by you”

Ryder Carroll · 1:02:30
#time#intentionality#presence
Takeaway1:26:30

Lower the bar: 'without hope, without despair'

Carroll argues that chasing a bestseller — something outside your control — is dangerous, and that setting the bar low enough to actually finish is more powerful. He cites a writer's mantra, 'without hope without despair, every day,' and Ali adds Cal Newport's line that each book just needs to be 'reasonable.' The point: aim to do a good job and make progress, not to win.

  • Focusing on outcomes outside your control is dangerous
  • Set the bar low enough that you can actually do it
  • 'Without hope, without despair' — just show up and write
  • Progress and pride beat chasing bestseller status

“without hope without despair every day and like that was the writing process for me”

Ryder Carroll · 1:28:00
#writing#motivation#mindset