Keeping a life journal
19 September 2006No, not a LiveJournal, a life journal.
I started keeping a daily record of my thoughts, general activities, mistakes, and ideas about a year ago. I have been surprised how many times I have gone back and looked for an idea I had, or a persons name. I have also been surprised how often an idea I had more than a month prior has been the inspiration I needed for a project. A few tips for starting and keeping a successful life journal:
Be detailed, be quick. You are writing this for you, not for publication. It doesn’t matter how you say it, it doesn’t matter how poor your grammar is. Don’t go back and repair mistakes, just keep typing. Keep a record of everything that you can remember you thought, or did, during the past day. I have the time to update mine several times throughout the day, and if you can, I highly recommend you do this. Initially I kept mine updated nightly, and there were many things I had forgotten by that time.
I like to use bolded text to emphasize things I feel I will likely need in the future. Things people have said to me, or I have said to them, important ideas, etc.
Keep it secure. Again, you are writing this for you. Do what you have to do to insure this. MS Word has a password protection feature that is sufficient to keep all but the most determined reader from viewing your journal. The more secure your journal is, the more likely you are to…
Be honest. Tell the truth, if you made a huge mistake, or did something awful, write it down. Be sure to include how it made you feel. When you read back over this entry, you want the future-you to remember how upset you were when you wrote the entry, and let it inspire him or her not to make the same mistake again.
Get in shape? If you are trying to lose weight or get in shape, keep a log of your exercises as well. Also write down what you ate and when you ate it. You might be able to come back later and identify a trend that you can tweak to improve your physical results.
Keep it about you. Try not to rant off about other people for more than a few sentences. If you want to remind yourself that Jim is a cheapskate womanizer, just say that, don’t explain why he is. You’ll probably remember. This journal is about self improvement, not venting.
In conclusion. This will likely be a multi-part entry, as even after a year I am still tweaking my journal. This should be enough to get you started, though, and hopefully at some point in the future I can cover my technical ways of keeping the journal (making it easily searchable, etc).
Good luck!
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September 24th, 2006 at 1:18 am
[…] Keeping a Life Journal posted at leahey.org - Journalling is a great way to explore your personal growth. Andrew presents a guide to creating a journal. […]