I swear it’s not a diary… no, really!
You know… I’ve run across plenty of those “Be a Better Person / Entrepreneur” books or “professional opinions” that say it’s good to write down your thoughts into a journal or some mechanism to capture said thoughts. However, I never really took it seriously in the past and only had a pocket-journal that didn’t do much of anything other than take up some space.
Well, not too long ago I picked up the Red ‘N Black, 8.25″ by 11.75″ or so, fancy case bound journal – the paper feels real good and is nice to write on. Something about having this fancier method or media to capture my ideas kind of tickled my unconscious fancy, I guess, as I just seemed more… willing… to jot stuff down. A VERY important piece of the puzzle.
But never mind that for now – my nerdiness was really starting to talk to me one day when I had a fancy idea to see if any “hidden gems” could be found in the way I do my journaling. Are you curious?
My Mental Activity Graphed?
Now being the complete and utter nerd/engineering goof that I am, I decided that this would be a prime opportunity to plot out my frequency of journal entries since I started this new journal earlier this year.
So I went to chuggin’ and pluggin’ and threw a whole bunch of junk into an Excel spreadsheet. I finally got to a point where, after my eyes and fingers started bleeding, it looked like it was a good set of ‘digitized’ data. I captured all of my journal entries and removed a couple of the anomalies that didn’t look like they belonged. (like I was just catching up (~60 entries in one day) or whatnot)
Then I did some fancy Excel jiujitsu and came up with his graph:
Graph of: Number of Journal Entries vs. Entry Dates – the black line is the trendline. Getting better!
You know what this tells me? That it took me quite a few months before I started to realize and kick into gear with recording my thoughts. Maybe I was just in some kind of “non-recording” mindset and wasn’t really taking it seriously. Or maybe I just had some mystical shift in consciousness or something? :) Who knows?!
The point is, it seems that the more I pay attention to my thoughts now and capture them down the more and more I really want to keep this thing going. This looks to be directly reflected in the data as my entries from about July there on are growing quite steadily and August has been wonderful! But wait, there’s more!
Roundup: Weekend Warrior or Mind-Slacker?
One of the biggest insights I got from his task was after I rolled all of this data into “frequency per day”. I was a little surprised that all Monday’s combined had about 90 entries, but it made sense that the rest of the work week hovered around 60 or 70 entries total each.
Oh boy… how long did it take me to finally realize that I was missing so much on the weekends?
So what was my big insight? That my journal entries on Saturday and Sunday over this entire period of time were right around 30 to 35… well under half of entries for any other day of the week! Was I turning into a weekend mind-slacker?! Did this mean I just wasn’t nearly as creative or not as many things come up in my head over the weekend?
I don’t think so! It just so happened that I didn’t have any method of recording ideas around me while out and about. I wasn’t serious about keeping up with the constant flow of ideas (talk) from my unconscious mind. So what was I to do? Go back to the little pocket-journal that didn’t work well before or just give up and not capture the stuff?
Well, I stumbled across a little phone app called “Note Everything” and let me tell you that has helped significantly. I’ve tried a few others and was left wanting… this one seems to work well (and you have a choice of drawing, recording, or typing… nice touch!) Now I just make it a point to add “transfer phone notes to journal” as part of my nightly “wrap-up and plan” routine.
You Owe it to Yourself to Keep Tabs on Yourself!
So, all of this jizz-jazz you see in those fancy “Be a Better You” books may not mean much to you until you actually pick up a pen, a fancy book, and really go to town on that bad boy. It’s been a lot of work but it hasn’t really been ‘work’, you know? It’s one of those things that you really enjoy what you put into it… and man when you start looking back over that stuff, it’s just awe-inspiring to see the things that have been flowing through your mind that you’ve been capturing. I cringe to think of the things I missed!
If you really haven’t started some type of idea capturing/journaling method yet, you absolutely must do this now. Do the little 3 x 4″ pocket journals if you have to or just go all out on the Red ‘N Black journals. But I tell you there is something about giving more credence or better facilities for your mind that seems to make it more enjoyable and easier to do.
To summarize the conclusions of my little exercise:
- Get a journal (and some other “throw-down” method while out and about)
- Really make an effort to record the thoughts and ideas that fly through your mind
- Don’t forget about the weekends
- The more you do it, the more it will come
- Review what you’ve done and enjoy the whole process!
I firmly believe that turning the light on this process, and making it easier to do, opens a pathway to increased brain function. My thoughts seem to flow more easily, I find that I can hang on to ideas longer now (enough time to get to the journal or phone! hehe), and I’m just having fun doing it! Anything you can do to make it a wee bit more enjoyable is a key to bringing up more and more thoughts and ideas.
By the way, did you know Sir Richard Branson has over 250 journals with his recorded thoughts and ideas?
Leave your house right now, go to Wal-Mart, buy one of these fancy books (or hit up Amazon!), and start recording everything you can until your hands start to hurt! You and your growing mind deserve as much!