The Art Of Not Asking Why

I’ve talked about journaling and its importance many times in this blog, but after not journaling for a while I have even more justification for it. At its core, journaling is where my brain grows and gets nourished. Without it, I’m just a dot in time, floating between past and future.

I don’t mean to sound depressing, but think about it. Experiencing life is important, but if you don’t reflect on it, you can’t fully grasp its meaning to you. You can be happy or sad, you can even learn a thing or two, but without having these experiences in front of you for a second pass, where you sit and connect the dots, how much of it can you really retain? If you’re new to journaling or considering it, I suggest you also look into one of my posts explaining its importance.

But let’s drop the philosophical coffee rant for a minute. What I want to get to is my process, after I realized I hadn’t journaled for a while, and the guides I set for myself to help with it.

My tools and techniques may be different from yours, so treat those with the personal flexibility you need. OK, here we go:

1. Aim to create a journal entry every day. Even if it’s just a list of events in bullet points.
2. Expand on past events:
   1. Reflect on each bullet point with a few comments of importance. If you feel you’re starting to ramble, be aware of the rest of the list — you can always come back later¹ and keep going.
   2. As you go through those comments, try to add the times you did certain things. I use Emacs, so there’s a timestamp structure (a timestamp is a date, followed by a time). It’s a good habit to keep, and it will become useful later.
   3. As your comments expand (or if you revisit later), create additional headings for them when you feel they are detailed enough to merit their own cognitive block.
3. Look back at your day and even your week, if you wrote it down. Your quick bullet points² should give you an idea of what you did each day. Is there something you remember now? Is there an additional meaning to something that happened a couple of days ago? Write it down. Reflecting on events like this is exactly what we’re doing here.

A bit of a ramble for Emacs folks (feel free to skip if you’re not one of those):

In Emacs, I also create past events I missed so they show up in my agenda. For example, let’s say I went grocery shopping and made a quick note about it in Journelly. In the evening, when I reflect and write my bullet points and pull my Journelly entries into the main journal (I might expand on this again), I also go to my events org file and write something like “grocery shopping @ Dan’s Fresh Market” along with an approximate time range I was there. The event file is included in the agenda (journal entries are not), and the timestamp shows me when I was there. That’s my quick reflection on what I did and where, when I want it in the future. Since I have the date in front of me, it’s also easy to find the journal entry for that day, since it’s reflected in the file name.

What should be included?

The above is a nice guide on how to write, but it doesn’t tell you what to write. Here is the other part of my quick self-guide. This is more a list of hints that should trigger the “hey, you might want to write about this” bulb in my head, so once again, change it so it fits your brain bulbs:

• If it’s happening somewhere else (location-based)
• If it’s happening with someone else (person-based)
• If it’s something you want to remember (could be developed into a note or a blog post)

In general, this works well. If I leave home and go somewhere, it usually means I want to note it — the same goes when I do something with someone else, even if it’s a dinner at home. The idea to keep in mind is how unusual it is, or whether something different or important happened. As you can see, I left myself a comment that if it’s something I want to remember, I should note it (denote in my case) or turn it into a blog post, as I’m doing right now. Yep, this post is also a journal entry.

Emacs and org-mode are my essential tools when it comes to writing, and this blog is full of posts explaining how I write down things, but I wanted to make this post valuable for other folks as well. Still, I want to emphasize one final note: because Emacs is the best writing tool I have ever encountered, it also means I write more than I ever did before, which in turn means the benefits I mentioned at the start happen on a level that wouldn’t be possible with another tool (at least, not the way I see it). The point is, use something that works for you. Your baseline should be something you don’t think about much, like a reflex. Whether it’s a pocket notebook, quick self-recordings on your phone, or a text file saved somewhere, whatever it is: use it well. Use it often.