If the rings and dings of mobile reminders have you dreaming of a better, more organised life, maybe it’s time to ditch the apps in favour of the Bullet Journal: a lo-fi way of keeping your schedule in check.The Bullet Journal is a DIY planner of sorts that­ supposedly turns any notebook into a master to do list and calendar. Blank pages are filled with daily, weekly and monthly tasks, schedules, journal entries and whatever else your particular life requires.It's like the planner equivalent of the KonMari cleaning method: both promise that anyone can organise their lives and both approach tasks with mindfulness. But rather than looking for a spark, the Bullet Journal is about getting the stuff that’s worth your time done.Brooklyn-based product designer Ryder Carroll started to create the Bullet Journal system when he was a struggling schoolboy in Vienna, Austria. Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder at a young age, he ended up creating a way of note taking that helped him focus on multiple things during a shorter period of time. This became ‘rapid logging’ – a core technique and what Carroll calls the "language" of the Bullet Journal. He officially launched bulletjournal.com in 2013 and since then, the analogue system has gained massive popularity in the digital world.The appeal of the Bullet Journal is the opportunity to create a planner that reflects a person’s unique needs, life and ways of thinking and many users claim it’s the reason behind increased productivity.From habit trackers to Gratitude Logs and the seemingly complex Calendex (a calendar-index hybrid yo), Bullet Journal devotees have come up with different ways to record their lives. Many share photos of their pages, or ‘spreads’ as they’re called, with a community obsessed by the system on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and the like.At the time of writing, there are over 250,000 imagestagged with #bulletjournal on Instagram alone. Time Out London and Buzzfeed have curated spreads that are from “people way more organised than you” that they promise will “soothe the soul.”List making is a way to act upon the pre-occupation with unfinished tasks (known as ‘ Zeigarnik Effect ’). As such, writing tasks down frees up mental real estate for “other, more immediate needs” according to a Science of Us interview with behavioural neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. Furthermore, a 2014 study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that taking notes by hand – as opposed to typing on a laptop – boosts memory and aides in the ability to understand concepts.But with all the beautiful Bullet Journals and spreads out there, starting your own can be pretty intimidating. Much like planning a wedding after looking at Pinterest for fives minutes. To soothe your soul, we reached out to Carroll and two popular Bullet Journallers, Boho Berry blogger Kara Benz and Tiny Ray of Sunshine blogger Kim Alvarez, for tips on how to get started and how to keep going.