I read in a few books that we should write a journal, make some notes about each day, describe our feelings, our ideas, our thoughts. I decided: “challenge accepted” and started writing my own journal at the end of June. The plan was to do that for three months and maybe continue after that. Why three months? Because it’s always a period for my main goals. After two months I decided to stop and it’s a good time to share my experiences.
So, why did I decide to stop that experiment? Well, I observed that I have a real problem with writing such notes. The best time to do this is evening, after all day and with all that “luggage of feelings”, all problems, all dilemmas, all joys and sorrows. But in my case, it was almost i possible. After work I usually go for a workout, sometimes running, sometimes cycling. I get up early to do some important things before work, so in the evenings, I’m often tired, I also do not want to use my phone or computer again before bedtime. In effect, it was difficult to write notes in the evenings.
Ok, so I decided to write it in the morning also before work. It was better, but there is another problem – I didn’t know, what about should I write… after sleep, my mind is clear. Usually if I have some dilemmas, I go sleep and after wake up, I have a answer. It caused a lot of feelings that were… outdated? Yeah, I think it’s a good word to describe that. Because of that, such notes completely lost sense. It should be something to organize before sleep, to help my brain work on all information during night, but it was not possible.
The second problem was I didn’t go back to my notes. After two weeks I realized that with only a date as a topic, they are completely “anonymous” and do not give me any feedback. So I also started to put the most important thing in the title like: “07/14/2021: the longest bike ride”. It was much better, but the problem still existed – when should I check notes and what should I do with them? It looked like writing for.. Someone else, after my death.
Third and last, but very important thing: if I missed a journal in a day, it was important for me and evoked negative emotions – self-blame is very easy to do in such cases, because we do not remember about all other things we had to do. It was just like a non-archived goal… Right now I know, that it’s stupid approach, because goals is a bad idea – better is just system, like “I have system to write daily notes, not specific goal”, but it was for test, to check, what can give me daily diary.
I do not think a journal is a bad idea – because it’s a great idea. The problem is it will not work for anyone in the same way. I decided to use the phone notes app more often – to just write quick notes Immediately after an event that caused feelings / dilemmas / problems. It will be more realistic, it will be something like a “snapshot of present”, like a photograph of an important moment in life. Right now I’m thinking about how to find some time to organize all the information from a whole day before sleep, because I think it can help us a lot.