The Zen-Journal Origin Story

When the creator of Bullet Journal threatened to sue me...and not for the reason you might think

About a decade ago, I opened my email one morning to find a message from a woman who identified herself as Ryder Carroll’s (the creator of Bullet Journal) intellectual property attorney. She explained that Ryder was allowing me to cease writing about Bullet Journal, stop selling the course I created around it, or he was prepared to sue me.

After a few pleasant and informative emails back and forth explaining how social media had bastardized Bullet Journal, he was having a hard time getting his arms around a blossoming creation. Ryder asked me to stop publishing a course I created to help folks get more out of Bullet Journal.

Since the last thing I needed was a threatened lawsuit, I agreed to stop writing about Bullet Journal (which took to task all those Instagram and Pinterest accounts that blatantly misrepresented his minimalistic and ingenious analog system). I offered several modifications to get even more out of it.

But instead of viewing my efforts through the lens of cooperation, …