✏️ Write about everything
How I developed a journaling habit and why writing is
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Journaling is, for me, the single most important of all habits. And one of the easiest to implement as well, if done right.
When I think about journaling, I think about a quote in Sarah Bakewell’s book How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer —
If you fail to grasp life, it will elude you. If you do grasp it, it will elude you anyway. So you must follow it — and “you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.”
The trick is to maintain a kind of naive amazement at each instant of experience — but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window, opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm.
This quote draws our attention to the importance of journaling — the purest act of self-introspection.
Why journaling is important
Journaling has many benefits, and for me the most important, and also most tangible, is the way in which it can help strengthen connections in your brain, and act as a launchpad for improving your life. Let me walk you through it.
First, journaling helps improve memory.
It has been proven that writing things down helps you remember them better. Plus, reflecting on your day allows you to keep a record of your life. Without this record, it can be hard to slow down and appreciate the ways in which we change over time, and as Matthew Dicks says in his book Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling —
There are meaningful, life-changing moments happening in your life all the time. That dander in the wind will blow by you for the rest of your life unless you learn to see it, capture it, hold on to it, and find a way to keep it in your heart forever.
Before I started a consistent journaling habit, I often felt that my days would begin to blend together, especially during the periods when my work or school load was high and I did not have much time for self-reflection. Since starting my daily journaling habit, one of the most fulfilling benefits has been the ability to look back through past entries and re-experience the highlights I recorded for each day — memories that otherwise may have slipped into the ether and been forgotten about.
Second, journaling improves decision-making.
Journaling augments the process of using memories to imagine possible future states and make the best possible decisions.
Improving your decision making can have a real life-or-death importance. It has been discovered that on average we make 35,000 choices per day, which without counting the hours we spend sleeping, would account for roughly 2,000 decisions per hour or one decision every two seconds. Improving your decision making, therefore, has the potential to improve your life 35,000x per day! In short, everything in life is a decision, so it’s important that we’re making the right ones, or at least that we’re learning from the wrong ones.
Now, back to how journaling can help you make better decisions…
I am fascinated by neuroscience. I love reading and watching videos about the human brain. One of the most striking studies I’ve come across is one by neuroscientists Donna Rose Addis, Alana T. Wong and Daniel L. Schacter on Remembering the past and imagining the future, which sets forth the idea that the past and the present are very much linked in the brain.
Here’s what went down: The researchers put people into a scanner and had them remember past experiences and imagine future experiences. When people remembered and imagined, the same identical network lit up.
And it makes sense… you may or may not have noticed this, but whenever you let your mind wander, you switch back and forth between remembering and imagining. That is, we use what we’ve learned in the past to simulate possible future states and inform our decisions. In The Mind, Explained, a Netflix documentary, Donna Rose Addis claims this to be our superpower:
It allows us to troubleshoot upcoming experiences, to think through the way in which events might unfold, potential obstacles that might come up and the ways in which we might deal with those obstacles.
The best way to leverage this superpower is through the act of self-reflection. For some time now, journaling has helped me document some of the decisions I make during the day, and has given me space to think about how I could have done things differently, and how I could apply this to future events. Sound familiar?
My relationship with journaling
My relationship with journaling has been a rocky one. For the longest of times, I tried to develop a habit for journaling and was never able to sustain it. I tried different types of journaling (including short/bullet-point journals and long/free-form journals) as well as different types of mediums (including notebooks and computers), but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I was able to craft my journaling process into a habit that is sustainable.
My journaling setup
- Technology: I use Asana forms to keep track of my journals. The cool thing about Asana forms is that it’s really low lift to write a journal entry (you just open the form and fill it out), and you get to do a bunch of fun stuff with it (like connecting your answers to custom fields, and extracting higher level themes from them). Of course, you don’t have to do it in Asana — you can use another technology (like Google Forms) if you want to follow the form structure, or you could just write down your answers in a blank journal.
- Cadence: I fill out a journal every night. I tried doing a morning and night journal, but found myself putting off the morning journal until the night, and after a few days I realized I needed to combine the two. The journal includes questions about today (remembering) and tomorrow (imagining).
- Prompts: I have gotten mine from many different sources (too many I can’t even track them all down to cite), and have come up with some of these on my own. They are a mix of remembering and imagining. This allows my brain to make better decisions in the future, because I’m better wiring past learnings and as a result imagining future possible states. Here’s my list, but feel free to tweak it to make it your own:
🌟 Most prominent feeling (Which feeling describes my day more accurately?); multiple choice with options including Happy / Excited, Creative / Inspired, Energetic, Tired / Lazy, Sad / Anxious / Stressed, Sick. This field allows me to see the natural cycles that I go through (there’s weeks when I’m not feeling it and other weeks where I’m being really productive and happy).
💭 Mental clarity (When it comes to mental clarity and distractions, today has been…); multiple choice with options including Great — I’ve been clear-headed, Good — I’ve been mostly clear-headed, Meh — I’ve been distracted at times, Bad — I’ve been distracted most of the time, Terrible — I’ve not been able to concentrate. This field also lets me see from a higher level what my mental clarity has been throughout the week/month. For the days when my mental clarity has been poor, I like to check the rest of the journal entry to see what caused that.
🎈 Positivity score (1–10) (How positive am I feeling?); number from 1–10. This field allows me to do some cool analyses. I have a monthly scoring system, to show me my positivity levels throughout the month. It’s a way of getting a gist to how you were feeling throughout the month in aggregate.
🧠 Mind (One thing I’ve done for my mind is…); multiple choice. The options vary from person to person, but mine include: Reading, Coding, Both, None.
🏃♀️ Body (One thing I’ve done for my body is…); multiple choice. The options vary from person to person, but mine include: Exercising, Walking, Both, None.
🧘♀️ Soul (One thing I’ve done for my soul is…); multiple choice. The options vary from person to person, but mine include: Meditating, Journaling, Both, None.
👎 Bad feelings (Did I feel anxious, sad or stressed at some point today?); multiple choice with yes/no answers.
😤 If yes: What caused me the most inner conflict? (It could be something that disappointed me, upset me, or made me angry.); free-form.
🙂 Happy thought (Favorite thing of my day or what gave me the most joy. This can be something that happened to me, happened to someone else, or something random that I thought about.); free-form.
✏️ One thing I learned (About myself or life in general.); free-form.
🎉 Today’s achievements (Write down 2–5 wins for the day.); free-form.
🧐 Tomorrow’s goal (It could be anything from one thing I could have done to make today better to a list of tasks.); free-form.
🙏 What am I grateful for? (This feeds into my gratitude list.); free-form
🖇 Anything I want to attach (A picture from today.); attachment.
🤷♀️ Anything else I want to add; free-form.
Rules
You can change the prompts to be whatever you feel will help you get some closure for the day. However, there’s a few rules that you absolutely must follow…
- Keep it short. I have 15 questions, which at first glance seems like a lot, but you’ll notice that a lot of them are multiple choice so they take me <2 seconds to answer. If you’re only doing free-form, I would keep it down to 5 questions. If it’s too high lift to fill out, the friction will prevent you from forming that habit.
- Use a combination of “remembering” and “imagining” questions. The trick is to leverage your superpower of using past experiences to create future states in a way that allows you to make better decisions.
A parting thought
Don’t wait until you’re “older and wiser” to develop a journaling habit!
A mentor gave me the advice that you shouldn’t wait until you have a lot of money to start a habit of donating to charities, because the more time you let pass, the harder it becomes to develop that habit. I think the same thing applies to journaling. I used to think that I should wait to start a diary or journal until I have more experience or I’m older and wiser. But, I realize now that as you grow older, you’ll have more responsibilities (not only within your job, but as you start a family, etc.). The more responsibility you have, the less time you’ll find to journal and self-reflect. So if there’s a good time to start a journaling habit, it is now.
