I hope you had a great weekend. I had for sure. We didn’t really celebrate Easter but we spent a lot of time together, enjoying the weather and resting. Just before the holiday I promised I was going to talk about journaling and how I do it. So, let’s do that today!
I have in periods of my life journaled. Most often it has been when there is a lot going on. Now I do it often mainly to clean my head and as a tool to think deeply on things.
Currently I have not made my self a commitment to journal regularly. I do it when I feel I need to. In the past I took a decision that I was going to journal everyday or 5 days a week. Sometimes that worked for a while but sometimes life come in the way and I wasn’t able to do it. Then I started to feel bad about the broken agreement with my self and got even more distant from journaling.
I have also used a lot off different tools to journal. I have done it digitally – and there is as many applications to journal as there is days in the year. And I tried a bunch of them. DayOne is probably the one I liked the best. But I’ve used others too like Bear (that I do love, but mainly for writing texts – articles and scripts), Emacs with Org Mode, Dropbox paper to mention just a few. Just a simple text editor and a file has also been an approach I’ve used. But for various different reasons I always stop using them.
Often I’ve also journaled by hand. What doesn’t sound and feel as good as the tactile feedback from a fountain pen writing on high quality paper? I just love that. Currently however I am journaling on my Remarkable – it is by hand but ends up digital anyway. I probably write 4-5 times faster when writing on a keyboard compared to by hand and for journaling this is really good.
The slower pace gives me the opportunity to think through the topics in a completely different way than I may be used to do. I may see other parts of my thinking or the or the project of focus. It has happened many times that this opens up new ideas and approaches to do something. If I where writing digitally, and then faster, I don’t think all these ideas or views would show up.
I’ve seen a lot of description of how other people or journaling. It is quite common that different prompts or trigger lists are used to come up with ideas to write about. I don’t use this. I journal when there is something specific I need to think about or to find a solution to. I don’t use it to keep track of my projects or my mood – projects have their own place in the product support material. It could be that there is something about a specific project I will journal about or a feel that I want to investigate. But it is always very deliberate.
I seldom go back and read my writings. When they ink has hit the paper it has done what it should. It happens however that I read section from periods of my life where there was extra much I needed to handle – and that can be quite interesting. If not for any other reason than being nostalgic.
So do you journal? And if so, how do you do it? Let me know by going to martinhaagen.se/about to find out how you can contact me, and let me know.