I started noticing this discomfort on my morning routine when I sit down to journal. I would open my app, to immediately get distracted with everything else on the screen, or just with the possibilities that the digital world offers me. It’s right there in front of me. I could just do a quick email check, look at my calendar or easily search for something online and get pulled in. So, I would have less time to journal before heading to work, and typing started to feel unsatisfying. It felt mechanical and disconnected from my thoughts. I wasn’t getting much out of it.

The irony is that I started to question my digital tools use while I was at work, of all places. We’re closing a major tender project in a month, and I was given paper copies of the architectural and structural drawings. Because this is a complex project, I realized how beneficial the paper copies were to understand the design and its complexities. I started taking notes and highlighting directly on the pages. This time, I really used the paper copy to annotate everything and used various Post-its to bookmark sections. I’m familiar with using paper drawings, but usually just as a reference for a quick flip-through.

My manager only reviews drawings on paper, and this time I understood why. I was able to focus for hours without interruptions or screen distractions. Walking into review meetings with just my paper copy, notebook, and pen felt refreshing. Not having my laptop made the meetings more focused and calm.

So, long story short: I’m leaning into writing, annotating, planning, and journaling on paper.

I’m testing drafting this blog post in a paper notebook. I don’t want blinking cursors, grammar suggestions, or any AI tweaking my words. I’m craving a blank page with nothing else to distract me.

I’ve started a dedicated notebook just for blog post drafts. I used some of the Bullet Journal Method recommendations to set up an Index, a Future Log, and a Collection for Blog Post ideas. This is my first draft!

I also begun a personal Bullet Journal for my daily logging and journaling. The goal is to replace the Time Block Planner and the Happy Planner. It’s only been a few days, but I’m already enjoying the spaciousness of a paper notebook. My daily journaling feels more in tune with my actual day. I like the space to unload my thoughts and log things.

This was the missing piece in my productivity system. Analog journaling gives me PERSPECTIVE, while my digital GTD lists and calendar give me CONTROL.

With a paper notebook, it’s easier to plan my day and make decisions about what truly matters.

This is just the beginning: more thoughts to come!

P.S.: I took about 30 minutes to draft this post by hand, then about 15 minutes to type it out and adjust some wording on the fly and adding the image.

—-

Post 97/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Productivity #notes #journaling

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I’ve used Evernote, the Journey app, 750 Words and Standard Notes before. For the past year or so I’ve been using Standard Notes: I have 478 entries so far. But most of those entries are quick logs of what I’ve done for the day, with 1 or 2 paragraphs. I want to get back to free writing and writing for longer periods of time. One service that I love is 750 Words because it gives me incentive to keep on writing. The service is online, it’s paid, it has cool badges and stats. All the entries can be exported to .txt. It has a simple and beautiful interface. It is maintained by 2 people, Buster Benson and his wife Kellianne. They create cute badges and there are also monthly challenges. It’s distraction free and it’s only text, no images.

So, I got back to 750 Words this week. The goal is to write at least 750 words a day, and I can see how many words I’m typing and then check some stats like: how long to write 750 words, total time, total number of words written, my badges, etc.

I was surprised that I can actually write 750 words in under 30 minutes if I just keep on typing whatever comes to mind with no filter, no editing. That’s the idea I’m going for here: throwing it all out, unfiltered. It’s basically what Julia Cameron calls “Morning Pages” or the writing practice Natalie Goldberg describes in her book “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”. Only after these brain dump sessions I’m able to open myself to write for my blog for example.

This practice nourishes my creativity, and I feel less afraid to publish words out in the open. If fits perfectly in my morning routine and it gives an extra boost of incentive to write every day.

—

Post 36/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Blaugust2024 #Blaugust #journal #journaling

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

For some time, I was doing shorter entries, like “The 5 Minute Journal” style, where I would have a template to write daily on Evernote. That was 2017.

It was also the year I moved to Canada and lots of things changed in my life. I stopped using Evernote and moved to other tools. And when I moved away from that initial template, I wanted to write more freely. So, I started writing longer entries, “Morning Pages” style.

Since then, journaling is a part of my daily routine. During the worst of the COVID pandemic I struggled to keep it regular, but I did my best. I tried some journaling services like Journey and 750 Words. I tried using a private blog in Write.as to journal. Now I journal using Standard Notes, which I love!

I never liked the idea of using a public blog to journal private thoughts, but that's just me. My inner critic is still strong, and I must constantly tell him (yeah, I don't know why, my inner critic is a guy) to go away and just let it be. When I'm journaling, I want to be as free as possible, that's why I journal privately. I really like how the website 750 Words describes journaling:

I don't need to title my entries, or tag them, or enable comments, or any of that other stuff. This is writing, and it's online, but it's not blogging, or Twittering, or Facebook status updating. This is between you and you. — 750 Words

It's been a couple of years since I've been focusing on consolidating journaling as a daily activity for me.

I'm off to a good start in 2024 🤘:

My process:

• I protect time in the morning, before I leave to work (it could be anytime, but that's what works for me). I plan my morning routine so that I will have 10 to 30 minutes to write. Sometimes less, sometimes more. All that matters is having this pocket of time protected.
• I do it always at the same place: on my laptop at my home office, using the app Standard Notes. I use the Standard Notes “Daily Notebook” feature with a customized note title format. It's easy to open my notebook and go right to the note of the day.
• I set up a timer to start writing and stop when it's over. Simple as that.

Since I started writing daily, I feel lighter. I feel like I'm living more intentionally. Days are not passing by so quickly.

Because writing is an exercise in being grateful. In remembering the good things. In learning with my errors. In forgiving myself. Daily journaling has helped me go through grief and process my emotions. It's a good mini therapy session!

Sometimes I will journal when I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed at work. Sometimes I just need to do a quick mind sweep in the middle of the day to regroup and move on. So, I open the note I started in the morning and just write some more (I can access Standard Notes via web at work).

And the space I have for journaling is all private. It's a space where I can write whatever, it's not to be censored or edited. It's an exercise to clear my mind, a true brain dump. I usually get ideas to write on my blog from these journaling sessions. Sometimes I start a draft in my journal, which will then be transformed into a blog entry.

My plan is to journal every day, a little or a lot, it doesn't matter. I don't force myself for it to be 750 words or 3 pages long or whatever. I just write how much I feel like that day. Sometimes it's a note saying how I'm feeling now. And that's enough.

I think journaling has now become more than a habit, it's a daily practice to nurture my mental health and creativity.

—

Post 89/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #NoisyMusings #journaling #journal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

My 6-years-old 15.6” ASUS VivoPro laptop couldn't hold its battery charge anymore, it was bulky, heavy to carry around and I actually hated the keyboard and the screen. It still works, if connected to power, so I'll probably use it to play around with Linux or something.

So I decided to get a new laptop and since I've had a good experience with the Lenovo Thinkpad I use at work, I got a new 14” Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

It's ultra light, I love the screen and the keyboard and I also got the docking station to get my cables better organized at my desk (I am not a fan of wireless keyboards or mice). New laptops have fewer and fewer ports nowadays. I used up all the ports available for my basic devices and didn't have any port left to connect my Kobo connector, for example.

So, the docking station solved all the problems and it makes it a lot easier for me to disconnect it and grab my laptop to go somewhere.

Here is my new setup at home:

Because of my old bulky/no-decent-battery laptop I've been avoiding going to a café or a library to do some writing, journaling, etc. And I wanted to do that sometimes, you know, change the scenery and go work on my computer somewhere else.

And I did it! I packed my laptop in my backpack, I didn't need to worry about battery charging and I spent a couple hours at the Public Library typing away!

#journal #journaling #tech #noisymusings

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

One of the things that I've always struggled was to find time to journal. I tried mobile apps, notes apps, journaling before bed or on my lunch breaks. But it was always unsustainable, and I never had more than 10-15 minutes to write. I was either too tired to journal before bed or I had no time throughout the day. And I've been thinking about writing (including blogging more) for months!

So I saw this 30min pocket of time in my mornings. I remembered a book I read during the pandemic about writing practice and also some articles about morning pages, which I will get to in a minute.

My realisation was that using my mornings to write was the best use of those 30 minutes. These were the steps I took to make it happen.

Finding a reason and a method

I went back to the book about writing practice. The book is: “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within” by Natalie Goldberg. Re-Reading this book was the catalyst: I noticed this pocket of free time, connected it with my urge to write more and a technique to follow... And voila, a space for writing practice was born.

Natalie Goldberg describes a simple practice: set up a timer for any amount of time you have available, and start writing. Whatever it is on your mind, just write. Don't worry about punctuation or grammar. Don't edit, just write. You can choose a theme, a topic, anything, or write whatever you feel like in the moment.

Another popular method is the Morning Pages, described by Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist's Way”. The practice is to write 3 handwritten pages (equivalent of 750 words) every morning, every day. Stream of consciousness writing. You can burn the pages later.

I prefer the practice described by Natalie Goldberg because it's more flexible. She actually encourages us to go back and re-read our entries to extract some ideas and good pieces of writing. I highly recommend her book. It's is a delightful read. She connects writing with mindfulness Zen practice, which pretty much aligns with my feelings on writing.

“When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.” You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.” — Natalie Goldberg

How am I doing it

I prefer to type using a full sized keyboard. So my steps are:

1. I sit down at my home office desk

2. Open up my notes app (Standard Notes) and go to my Daily Notes folder to create a new note

3. Set up a timer from 20 min to 30 min (how much I have available that day)

4. Start writing whatever comes to mind until the alarm goes off.

I'm not hard on myself. I will miss some days, but I strive to do it most days.

My timer beside my keyboard

The results

For me it has been a little cathartic experience (in a good way).

Just by having this space to pour out my thoughts into text reduces my anxiety. I never thought it could be that simple.

It's like a mindfulness practice. Because I'm in the moment, transcribing my thoughts. And by transcribing them, they loose power. Worrisome thoughts are not worries anymore. They become fleeting thoughts. It has been a powerful tool to use with therapy. My days are lighter!

For me the important thing here is writing privately. It wouldn't work for me if I was publishing these entries on the internet. It is an intimate mind dump. It is a space to throw it all out. It is not pretty, or logic or even coherent. But sometimes there are good things in there that I will use to write a blog post, for example.

By having these morning writing sessions I have more headspace for ideas. Writing ideas. Life ideas. Fun ideas. I am reading better. I'm feeling less anxious. I'm not writing to please anybody. It's just for me. And it's wonderful.

#writing #standardnotes #journaling #journal #mindfulness #NoisyMusings

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

🎈 Things I write about :

Sections:

🎨 #NoisyMusings: a little bit of everything 📂 #Productivity: organization, methods, apps, GTD 📚 #Books: everything book related

Some Topics:

#apps | #Nirvana (the app, not the band) | #Todoist | #GTD | #MSTodo | #notes | #journal | #journaling | #BookReview | #ReadingList | #Reading | #ReaderGoals | #BookWyrm | #TheStorygraph | #weeknotes | #podcast | #GTDnotes | #100DaysToOffload | #projects | #goals | #DnD

#internet | #socialmedia | #attentionresistance #minimalism | #digitalminimalism #outdoors | #Hiking | #winter | #iceskating |#skiing |#music | #heavymetal | #puzzle | #health | #tech | #linux

When journaling was a thing…and then it disappeared

For years during my adult life I struggled with starting a journal. You know, simple, personal daily journaling where we sit down and write about our day. It doesn’t need to be public. It is a space that is all ours, with our own reflections and sorrows.

The weird thing is that I remember having lots of “Diaries” when I was young. I enjoyed writing on my “Diary”. It was a daily practice that soothed my pre and adolescent despair. I decorated it with drawings. I even did collages with small souvenirs of my young adventures. By the end of the year, my diary was huge!! And kept them hidden from view, of course.

What happened to this habit? It has suddenly disappeared by the time I entered the “grown-up” stage of my life. I don’t remember when it was exactly, but it just happened. Poof! One day I was journaling, the other I was more interested in, what? Internet? Sometimes I wonder if the Internet destroyed some of my habits. It probably did… See, I grew up without internet and then this new amazing technology appeared and dominated me. It was fascinating. Maybe it is Internet’s fault…I don’t know.

Anyway, when I reached my 30’s and started to worry about productivity, I found out that there is such a thing as adult journaling!

Wait, what? Adults have diaries too?

I wondered how I could start this habit. There are tons of articles online stating that journaling is good for your brain, good for stress-management, good for creativity and so on.

How I started journaling: Evernote!

First, I convinced myself that journaling was a good habit to nurture, because I felt my life was passing too fast before my eyes. Journaling would help me with that!

Then, I did a little research and decided that I wanted:

• a private journal (only I can access, I didn’t want the world to know about my frustrations)
• in electronic form (let’s save trees)
• accessible on all my devices (cellphone, desktop at home/work, tablet)

So, I started simple. Since I already used Evernote, I decided that I could create a notebook called “My Journal” and go from there. My first entry was 15th November 2012.

But I didn’t keep the daily routine. My entries were sporadic. And reading back these first entries, they are kinda depressing. I only sat down to write when I was feeling bad. I wrote when something went wrong in my day, when I felt disappointed. They were a way of trying to make the bad feelings go away.

So, from 2012 to 2015 I had an average of 36 entries per year. That’s pretty low when we are talking about a “Daily” Journal. I thought that writing was too difficult. I had to find an appropriate time to sit down and “drudge through the drudgery”.

It was not a habit. I knew I was having benefits from it, but I only bothered to write when I was really needing some mental relief. It was not consistent.

The quest for consistency: Miracle Morning + Five Minute Journal

Being a morning person

In the beginning of 2016, I decided I would change. By January I was journaling every other day, usually before bed. By this time I read the book “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. I was searching for some incentive to do more things in the morning because I enjoy mornings. I’m convinced I’m a morning person.

Actually, the first article that caught my attention on the subject was this one here. And then I naturally stumbled upon Hal Elrod’s book. Well, I will not get into the book’s details here, but I’ll say that this book convinced me of the need of consistency and structure. And for a habit to stick, you gotta keep pushing. So, I completed the “30 day Miracle Morning Challenge” on 1st March, 2016! And I was ready to include journaling into my morning daily routine.

During March 2016 I wrote 30 journal entries! That was great! The habit stuck with me!! But I was still writing about the worst part of my life, I was missing shinny, happy thoughts in my musings.

Discovering the Five Minute Journal

Everything changed for me when I heard about the “Five Minute Journal” method! This a type of daily gratitude journal, where you write during 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. It is straightforward and it was the perfect formula to my straightforward mind.

Originally, the Five Minute Journal is a physical journal, where you have the parts already printed out and you fill them in every day. Like this:

The Five Minute Journal

As I am an adopter of a more digital life, I found out that I could set up a template on Evernote and use IFTTT to create a note everyday for me to fill in. You can find a recipe here. My sections were the following:

MORNING:

• Three things I am Grateful for… (ideas: past relationships, opportunity you have today,something great that happened yesterday,something simple near you)
• What Would Make Today Great?
• Daily Affirmations, I am…

EVENING:

• Three Amazing Things That Happened Today…
• How Could I Have Made Today Better?
• Other:
• 10 ideas:

The optimized version to keep it up: “What have I learned today?”

After a while I tweaked the structure a little and created my own version of the Five Minute Journal.

First, I never used the space for the “10 ideas”. I (un)fortunately don’t have too many ideas in a day. So, I changed it to 3 daily ideas and that was more than enough.

Second, I used to have the question “How Could I Have Made Today Better?” as one of the entries of my journal. And I could never answer this question, I always skipped it. Week after week this space was left blank. Why was that?

I write on my journal in two moments of the day: early morning, after I meditate, and right before bed, when I’m usually tired.

In the evening, thinking about what I could have changed in my day tires me. It frustrates me. I prefer to go to sleep in a more positive vibe.

I don’t want to think about what might have happened. The past stays in the past and there’s nothing we can do about it. Answering this question was making me feel depressed.

As a matter of fact, I know that the purpose of this question is to make us reflect on our actions and then pursue better habits. But this question wasn’t working for me because I felt like I had failed. Maybe this question is not compatible with my introverted personality type (INTJ) with perfectionist tendencies.

Then, one day, a light came down on me while I was listening to this podcast episode about journaling: The Productivityist Podcast: Zachary Sexton. (Thanks Zachary Sexton!) His structure of journaling includes a question: “What have I learned today?”.

So, instead of asking myself “How Could I Have Made Today Better” I decided to ask “What have I learned today?”. That small change makes so much more sense to my brain! I LOVE learning! Learning is something I do constantly, I crave for it everyday. So that was decided!

My journal entries look like this:

I replaced the “pessimist” question with a more “constructive” one for my good old brain. And this reflexive final moment keeps me wanting to get back to it daily. It helped me stick with the habit.

Result: 366 days of journaling!

It turns out I wrote 366 journal entries in 2016! Achievement unlocked! The result of all these strategies is visible on the following graph:

So, in a nutshell, the strategy that worked was:

1. Finding an automated tool to create a template with inspiring sections, that compels me to write;
2. Building a daily habit by doing a challenge and pushing through the first 30 days;
3. Focusing on the rewards to keep it up!

I’m using The Five Minute Journal template since March 2016 and I can say it had positive effects in my life. The daily gratitude habit brings me inner peace and makes me a more generous person. I recommend it!

What about you? Do you have any journaling habits and tips? What works for you?

Thanks for reading!

References:

• How To Be Happy In Five Minutes A Day
• The Five Minute Journal Will Make You Happier
• Create Your Own Morning Routine. The Magic 4 Step Formula
• The Productivityist Podcast: Zachary Sexton

#noisymusings #journaling

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.