Michael Forest
thehabit.space
Copyright © 2017 Michael Forest ISBN: 9781521412411
http://thehabit.space/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. The
author of this book is not a medical doctor, a psychologist, or a superhero. He does not dispense medical advice. The intent of the
author is only to offer information of a general nature. In the event you use the information in this book for yourself, the author
assumes no responsibility for your actions.
Introduction. Journal Writing Superpowers
Chapter 1. What Makes Journal Writing “Intentional”?
Chapter 2. “Bricolage” and the Benefits of Intentional Journal
Writing
Chapter 3. Writing’s Superpowers
Chapter 4. Your Personal Journaling Ritual
Chapter 5. Ideas for Your Personal Structure
Chapter 6. Your Quick Start Checklist
Conclusion. Your Super Power “Fuel Up”
Three Easy Rules
Exercises FAQ
Linking Actions to Goals (and Vice Versa!)
Stopping Self-Sabotage
“Affirmation Expansions”
The “What Are My Roles?” Exercise
The “Power Triggers” Exercise
The “Ten Ideas” Exercise
The “Procrastination Buster” Exercise
The “On Your Deathbed” Exercise
The “Best Possible Self” Exercise
The “WORST-CASE SCENARIO OMG” Exercise
Prime Your Learning
DIY Exercises
5-Day Success Starter Sprint
3-Day Tangible Vision Sprint
3-Day Productivity Obstacle Overhaul
The DIY Sprint Framework
Pre-made Template Journals
Further Reading
Bonus Free Downloadable Resources
Journal Writing Superpowers
What if a daily 10-minute journal writing routine gave you superpowers?
I can’t promise you the ability shoot lasers from your eyes, but I can promise
you that by using some of the frameworks and methods I’ll describe in this book,
your journal writing can have a positive effect on your brain, and this will make
you more productive, more focused on your goals, less distracted, and less
anxious; it can even make you more energized, and better able to deal with life’s
challenges and unexpected hiccups.
In short, it’s like having the amazing power of “hyper focus,” or the amazing
ability to “gain instant clarity.” It’s just that, well, no, you won’t be able to shoot
eye lasers or something.
I’m being tongue and cheek, but I’m also very serious about this because I
believe strongly in it. What I call “intentional” journal writing can help you craft
the kind of life you’ve always wanted.
The superpower “secret” to journal writing is this:
As many journal writing books will tell you, your journal is your own and it
can be whatever you want it to be. However, while that often translates to “just
write what you want,” if you think about it, this advice also implicitly means that
you are also still allowed to embrace frameworks and structures if you think they
will help. In fact, you can embrace them exactly as much or as little as you want,
and you can use them in whatever manner you want.
I repeat: you are allowed to dig into your journal with specific outcomes in
mind. You sure don’t have to, but you are allowed to. Your journal writing does
not have to be an end in itself, and you are allowed to use your journal as a tool.
You can use journal writing to help you finish an important creative project
(such as your novel or manuscript), even to help you lose weight or gain muscle.
(such as your novel or manuscript), even to help you lose weight or gain muscle.
It can help you figure out what your goals are in the first place, and what you
want to do in life. Once you do figure them out, they might change, but you can
use journal writing to stay the course. You can use it to gain clarity, identify
your specific challenges (mental or environmental), address them, and then
move forward, all the while playing to your unique strengths. It can help you
stay focused on the resources at your command, instead of worrying about the
“what ifs” that can otherwise hold you back.
“Intentional” Journal Writing
The framework I’m going to describe in this book is what I call “intentional”
journal writing.
Intentional journal writing just describes a method of journaling that involves
a specific purpose or general outcome. You do this kind of journal writing with
an end in mind. This journal writing is intentional on two levels: you journal
with intention, and often that intention involves programming yourself to be
more intentional throughout the rest of your day.
You will always be the one to decide what that specific purpose is, although I
will provide many ideas here to help get you started. I will also give
recommendations for deciding how you want to begin. (I want to make getting
started as easy as possible for you.)
Just so you don’t get the wrong idea: intentional journaling is not intensely
rigid or strict. If you already have a journal writing routine, you can absolutely
keep it. You can just add in some of the ideas in this book to give yourself an
added advantage.
Intentional journaling balances free writing and more traditional journal
writing with elements that are more focused, if for no other reason than it is very
helpful in making you feel like you are actually, finally directly addressing those
elements of your life you want to address.
I discovered this method of journaling completely by accident.
When I started doing it, I didn’t even realize I was doing what you would call
journal writing. I mean, sure, I was writing in a journal, but I wasn’t describing
the events of my day, or how I felt about those events; I wasn’t keeping a log, a
diary, or anything like that.
Simply “recording my day” and then talking about how I felt about it was
what I’d always tried before with my journal writing. But, like many people,
that’s why I had lots of false starts, and any journal I started always ended up
collecting dust in the corner.
If there are any experienced journal writers reading this—the kind of people
who actually want to write in their journal, the kind of people who sing the
praises of a short journal writing habit—well, those journal writers are probably
shaking their heads right now, reading what I just wrote.
“It’s not just a ‘log’ or a ‘diary’!” they say. “There’s so much more to it than
that!”
Yes, I agree! My point is that too many people never get the chance to
discover this. Journal writing is sold to them as though it’s “just” a log, and so
they get nothing out of it. Alternatively, they hear the suggestion that there is
more to it than that, but they also get advice like, “Listen, don’t worry, it’s all
about self-exploration,” or “Just start free writing, and you’ll get it!” or
“Structure? No, there are no rules! Have fun!”
That can sound “freeing,” but for many people they just feel lost. The idea of
journal writing with some outcome in mind is heresy.
Ironically, after I discovered the kind of intentional journaling I’m describing,
I did start integrating some of that more traditional “recording of daily events”
later on. I found it extremely helpful, but only after I’d learned to balance it with
other kinds and uses of journal writing.
A daily recording of events can absolutely be a part of intentional journaling,
depending on your personal preferences. It just doesn’t have to be a part of it —
certainly not every day — and you don’t have to fall back on that sort of thing
just because you’re staring at the blank page and wondering what the heck to
write about.
How I Discovered These Methods
I had tried journal writing before, but it never seemed to stick. Things only
clicked for me when I stumbled upon some of these extra frameworks by
accident, and then started working with a few of them, bit by bit and through
trial and error, to create something more coherent and workable.
trial and error, to create something more coherent and workable.
I was reading a book on self-development (I read way too many of these)
when I decided I would actually do those pesky exercises those self-help gurus
are always yammering on about. If you’re anything like me, you usually never
do those exercises, because even on those occasions when you can see some
value to them, life just seems to get in the way, but this time, for whatever
reason, I realized ten minutes wasn’t so much to ask, so I made some time and
gave them a shot.
And… I used a journal to do them. I opened it up to the last completed page—
dated months ago (*cough cough*)—and on the next, instead of a journal entry
similar to what I’d been doing, I just threw in some of the exercises I was
supposed to do.
This means the so-called “journal writing” I started doing this time was
actually very, very directed. There were specific prompts, and they all centered
around a single topic; in fact, each one built on the previous one. On one day I
answered a few questions here; on the next day, I answered a few questions
there. I had specific outcomes in mind, related to my own productivity and
focus.
(For the curious: I was trying to clarify my very, very long-term goals, and
then at the same time I was trying to identify areas of nagging doubts and
potential self-sabotage.)
To make a long story short: I found it crazy helpful. Naturally, I wanted to do
more, but you can’t just do exercises like these over and over again and expect to
get the same value from them. Also, I had this idea that the value wasn’t just in
the specific exercises I did; a good chunk of the value came simply from writing
in my journal in this intentional, directed way. It did things to my thinking and
my focus that I really liked.
I started digging into older books just sitting there on my shelf collecting dust.
These were ones I’d read before, so I knew they had similar exercises I’d just
never completed or even tried. I finally gave them a shot. I also started to find it
more helpful to use audiobooks, so that I could literally follow along, listening to
the exercises as I wrote.
I found tons and tons of value in this kind of thing, but then I ran into a
problem: the audiobook I was listening to would end, and I would run out of
exercises. I could redo the exercises, sure, or listen to the audiobook over again
(and I did do that, occasionally), but that can get old pretty fast.
I looked for more audiobooks and more programs that would provide a similar
experience, but that was a little frustrating, for three reasons.
First, you usually have to listen to almost the whole darn book before you get
to any exercises. If it’s a book you’ve already read and you want to skip the reread, it’s also hard to find the bit of the audiobook with the exercises.
(Sometimes there’s a PDF or something you can download, but not always.) I
wished I could just skip this difficulty.
Second, as you might expect, the exercises in many books aren’t narrated in
such a way that it is easy to write as you listen to them. You have to stop the
book, then write for a period of time, then start the book up again, then stop it,
then write, then start the book again, and so on and so forth. This isn’t the worst
thing in the world, but it was frustrating.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I found the exercises from existing
books were only a starting point. I had done them over and over, several times,
and I was ready for more, except there were no more, not for what I needed.
Sure, there were different books, with completely different sets of exercises in
them, but that’s not what I needed.
I wanted and needed depth, not breadth. I wanted to keep building, and
building, and building. I didn’t want to start from scratch on some other topic. I
found I would get started on a set of exercises, and I would want to continue on a
specific path I was on, but then—whoops, the end. I didn’t need a completely
different set of exercises; I needed to keep going on what I was already working
on.
(Hint: This is one reason why I have “mini sprints,” and why you are free to
keep using specific prompts, or even “categories” of prompts, every day.)
The next major step forward came when I tried those increasingly popular
journals with pre-written templates or prompts for each day, with pre-set
questions and sections that you fill out. These were quite good, and there is a lot
of value in journals like these.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
The Five-Minute Journal and The Productivity Planner by Intelligent
Change
The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal by John Lee Dumas
The SELF Journal by BestSelf
(You’ll find more info on these in the Further Resources Section.)
The pre-made journals gave me some great ideas that I implemented later on.
They were the missing link. It was when I started combining some of my
favorite elements of these templates with my own questions and exercises and
multi-day “mini sprints” that I really started to feel like I had a great framework
I could use, as I needed it.
I’ll return to the idea of these pre-made templates a few times throughout this
book. I even recommend you use one as a kind of “getting started hack” if after
reading the framework I provide you’re not sure where or how to start putting
together your own outline or system. (That said, I’ve seriously made it as easy to
get started as I can. When all else fails, see the chapter six Quick Start
Checklist.)
After that, I started experimenting with doing my own exercises and
integrating them with some of the prompts from pre-written journals.
I started asking myself questions. I would literally write out a question at the
top of the page, and then write a paragraph or two answering it. I started playing
with prompts I’d do daily (e.g., “What am I grateful for…”) with prompts or
specific questions that were more tailored to what I felt I needed, on that day, at
that moment.
As with all things, you get better the more you practice this sort of thing. I also
did more research. I bought every pre-made template that I could find. One of
the reasons I wrote this book is to give you all the benefits of intentional journal
writing, with as little unnecessary practice as possible.
I have found that it’s not as simple as saying “do journaling” and then waiting
for great things to happen. There is helpful journal writing, and there is less
helpful journal writing. There are ways to do it well, and there are ways to do it
where you feel as though you’re just wasting your time.
I will give you the tools to do it well and to use this kind of journal writing to
achieve specific benefits that work together and mutually reinforce one another.
If you give this a solid try, you can expect to enjoy these benefits:
Identify the goals that actually matter to you, and who you want to be, then
work backward to create a custom roadmap for yourself to achieve them,
with as little fluff or wasted effort as possible.
Create tangible, actionable items you can do that day (to help keep those
goals feeling real).
Identify and prevent or stop different forms of self-sabotage.
Attack procrastination head on, whether it’s self-sabotage and lingering
doubts, or simply due to “behavioral inertia.”
Create custom “if-then” implementation intentions to address specific
challenges related to your goals, your productivity, or anything.
Identify the incredible resources you already have at your disposal (partly
to prevent yourself focusing too much on what you don’t have).
Ensure your actions today will link up with the kind of person you really
want to be, both today and tomorrow, and the week after, and…
Here’s what I like about the above benefits: whether you want to lose weight,
be more consistent, be better about work/life balance, write a novel, or anything,
you can apply all of the above benefits to virtually any domain, field or topic.
In other words, if someone has written a non-fiction book about it—whether it
gets filed under self-development, fitness and weight loss, general health,
business advice, financial advice, or any non-fiction genre like them—then you
can enjoy the above benefits.
In fact, the more you experience the above benefits, the more they have a
mutually reinforcing effect across different domains. For example, since you
need energy to get stuff done, “being healthy” is obviously related to your career
and financial goals; and, because of the world we live in, money and financial
factors are necessarily related to your family goals, such as the kind of house or
neighborhood you want your kids to live in, and the kind of person you want to
be for your family.
These things add up and create positive feedback loops: having more energy at
work prevents your energy being drained by the time you get home, so you don’t
get snappish for no reason (ever been there? I’m ashamed to say I have been).
Having less stress at work and at home leads to a better sleep, which feeds back
into less stress and more energy. This increased energy helps you make smarter,
better health decisions, and that feeds into…—well, you get the idea. It’s a loop.
This will depend on your own needs and goals, but most people find it helpful
to dip into almost all of these domains or topics at some point. They’re all
related, and it’s useful to treat them that way.
I believe the form of journal writing I am describing can help anyone, and that
it will especially help you if you fit any of the following:
You’ve tried journal writing before, but it didn’t help as much as you
wanted it to help, and you either abandoned it, or very rarely use it.
You can sometimes feel caught in “reaction mode” by the crazy amount of
distractions in your day-to-day life: email, social media, daily to-dos,
emergencies. You want to be more focused on your own personal goals and
your own projects. In other words, you want to be more intentional.
You’d love to have a small window each day where you can finally just
stop, pause, and calmly consider the day ahead, and how to make the most
of it.
You have a lot of behavioral inertia. There are things you know you should
do, but you don’t do them.
If you’re someone who’s tried journal writing before, let me ask you a few more
questions:
Have you ever sat down to stare at a blank page and not known what to
write?
Has recording the events of your day felt unhelpful or boring (even if you
knew it was supposed to lead to some kind of insight… somehow)?
Have you felt constrained or simply at a loss when using generic writing
prompts?
If you are anything like me, you have instinctually seen or felt the potential
incredible value in journal writing—it’s there, you can feel it—but you’ve felt
frustrated with many of the traditional recommendations. You didn’t seem to be
enjoying the rewards and benefits you knew were there, just slightly out of
reach.
If any of this sounds at all like you, my hope is that this book will help you
bridge that gap, and you will enjoy the ideas, the system and the frameworks I
provide here.
You’ll feel always like you have a reason to write in your journal. Instead of
You’ll feel always like you have a reason to write in your journal. Instead of
opening up your journal or notebook with trepidation, wondering, “Uh oh, now
what do I actually write?” you’ll open it eagerly—in fact, by the time you open
your journal, once you get going, you’ll likely already be brimming with the
ideas you want to get down onto the page.
Also, although you’ll find a ton of ideas in this book, you won’t find any rules
that are rigid or constraining. I promise, all of the so-called “rules” are totally
flexible, even if I think you’ll be eager to adopt many of them once you see how
they can give you just enough structure to give you a starting point each day.
Aside from the self-development and pre-made templates I’ve already
mentioned, the framework I’ll outline here has been influenced by a hodgepodge
of difference sources:
Other journal writing advice books.
The actual letters, journals and commonplace books of famous writers.
Concepts and ideas related to the brain, language, rhetoric, and semiotics.
Studies on psychology, willpower, goal setting, and so on.
Popular books on self-development (they tend to talk a lot about changing
your limiting beliefs, don’t they?).
Here’s how the rest of this book will play out.
In chapter one, I’ll outline the differences between “intentional” journaling
and other forms of journal writing. I will also give a brief overview of the system
or frameworks I suggest using when you first begin.
From there, before I get into the nitty gritty systems and frameworks you can
use, I will make two important detours.
In chapter two, I describe “bricolage,” a kind of do-it-yourself or DIY method
of taking and modifying and working with pre-existing elements. This is how I
want you to approach your own intentional journal writing system. Start with
what I give you, but make it your own. Add other elements to it. Work with it.
Shape it. Create what is most useful for you.
In chapter three, I describe writing’s own “superpowers.” That is, why is it
that journal writing can have such a positive effect on your brain, your focus,
your emotions, your productivity, and even your energy levels? This chapter
highlights just some of the reasons why writing has the power it does.
After these detours, we move into setting up a personal structure for you, and
this takes up both chapter four and chapter five, and building on these,
chapter six is just a very short quick start guide or checklist.
I finish the conclusion with a quick discussion of making this sort of journal
writing a daily habit in a realistic way. In other words, I’m not going to suggest
you spend 30 minutes a day writing in your journal for the rest of your life. Most
people would never do that. That’s a bit much unless you really get into it. You
might spend five or maybe ten minutes with a few extra long superpower ”fuelups” during those times when you really need them.
Then we have the practical section.
Here you will find a big list of “as-needed” exercises and a few examples of
what I call “mini sprints.” As you’ll see, this latter section is more to just “dip
into” on an as-needed basis. For both the general exercises and the sprints, I also
include a quick DIY section, so that you can begin to create your own exercises
and sprints.
Finally, we have the further resources, which includes further reading (if
that’s your thing), plus the pre-made templates you might want to check out. I
also have a bonus link towards the end if you want to download PDF or Word
document versions of all the prompts and exercises in this book (this way it is
easy for you to edit them and tweak them).
Even if you don’t want to “take over the world,” the intentional journal writing
framework I provide will help you identify and achieve your specific goals,
address your challenges, as well as identify and build on your strengths.
Best of all (or at least, what I like best about it): it will do this all with a small
journal writing habit that’s enjoyable, easy to start, and uses skills you already
have.
What Makes Journal Writing “Intentional”?
“Keeping a notebook isn't something you ‘get.’ It's not a science, there is no one right way.”
- Aimee Buckner, Notebook Know-How
Intentional journal writing is the act of writing in your journal with some
specific reason or goal in mind.
In other words, it is journal writing with intention.
You’re trying to get something out of it—something specific. You have at
least a general outcome in mind. Going into a session, you might not know
exactly what you’ll find, but you do have a general idea of the kinds of things
you’ll be looking for, or looking to accomplish.
You want to focus your mind this way. You want to dig into this specific issue.
You want to gain clarity about this thing over here. And so on.
If you think of your brain as a computer, you can also think of intentional
journal writing as a way of installing specific apps that will run in the
background throughout the rest of your day. One day you might install one kind
of app. The next, you might install a different one, or have the app set to a
slightly different setting.
For example, have you ever seen those apps that prevent you from visiting
Facebook or some other website for set periods during the day? Imagine if you
did that for specific kinds of thought patterns in your brain that you wanted to
avoid, like unhelpful or overly negative self-talk.
This means that when you take out your journal, you don’t just sit down to
free write or talk about what happened today and how you feel about it. You’re
not just keeping a log. Those things can be a part of it, but your journal writing
doesn’t have to end there. And if those things don’t appeal at all to you, they
don’t have to be included at all.
Instead, depending on your preferences, you mix these kinds of regular
journaling activities with other ones: completing set daily prompts or questions
which focus your mind in a way you want it to be focused, as well as completing
other strategic questions on a more “as needed” basis.
This can actually give you more energy and more self-control. For example,
it’s been shown that consciously affirming your values makes it easier to resist a
temptation a short time later, and this actually partly counteracts the effects of
being depleted or tired at the end of a long day, when you might otherwise be
prone to giving in to temptation.1
Writing about these values can also help you be more physically healthy. In
one study, women who affirmed their core values relative to a control group had
a lower BMI and had smaller waistlines.2 The values they affirmed and wrote
about weren’t even related to weight loss.3 In another study, participants who’d
written about their most important value were better at an executive functioning
task,4 meaning they were better able to set goals and then figure out how to
achieve those goals.
With that in mind, let me ask you: how useful would it be to do this every day,
just as a kind of quick “willpower recharge”?
And how useful would it be if you did this with your most important values,
but beyond that, you were also a bit more strategic about one or two extra values
you affirmed? Such as ones that would be particularly relevant and useful for the
challenges ahead that very day? Or what if you spent another 30 seconds
describing how your core values were related to the specific challenges and
temptations you had ahead? How much more likely do you think you’d be to
overcome them?
On top of anything you want to do daily, you can also use exercises or
prompts on a more “as needed” basis. And, for even more oomph, you can also
use 3-to 5-day journaling “mini sprints” surrounding a specific subject or topic.
Each day in one of these sprints builds on the previous one and allows you to dig
deep into a subject, and come out of the sprint with tangible actions you can
take, and a bigger stockpile of motivation, self-control, and willpower you can
use to accomplish specific tasks.
There is a general framework for this kind of journal writing, but there is no
absolute, set-in-stone set of rules you absolutely must follow. This kind of
journaling is still a fundamentally creative act, and you should never feel
like you “have” to complete this or that. This is especially true if there is some
element of it that is just not helping you.
In fact, I want you to start changing and adapting a system that is different
than the one I use. The system I use isn’t the best one. The one I use is just the
best system for me, right now. Even my own system is changing all the time,
depending on what I need at that time, or—to be totally honest—what I feel like
experimenting with. You’ll find yours will change too; that is a good sign.
Daily Prompts and Strategic Questions
I like to begin a journal writing session with some of these. You will learn
more about them in chapter four when we dig into your journal ritual or session.
All these are meant to do is control my focus. For me, I begin with gratitude
and trying to appreciate the positive things that happened in the day previously.
This latter one is usually related to a specific goal I’m trying to accomplish, so
that I’m actually spending a bit of time (literally, we’re talking about just a quick
minute each day) celebrating the tiny wins I’ve accomplished, or the resources
I’ve discovered, or things like that.
This has the side benefit of keeping me focused on the steps I can take, the
open doors I can walk through, the opportunities available to me.
Part of the idea here is to prevent myself from focusing on what I don’t have,
or focusing on challenges or roadblocks in an overly negative way. Of course
these things should be addressed—I’d never advocate just shoving your fingers
in your ears and shouting “LA-LA-LA!”—but I personally like to address these
from a position where I feel empowered regarding what I can do about them.
These are just what I use, and part of how I like to control my focus. You
might want to begin each day (or end each evening) with prompts that get your
creative juices flowing, so maybe you’d write three ideas for a fiction novel, or
three ideas for accomplishing [whatever]. Whether for fiction or business or
whatever, if you want to become an idea machine, James Altucher recommends
going for ten ideas5—yes, ten. Here’s why: at four ideas or five ideas, it’s no real
problem, but at idea six and seven it’s starting to get harder, and that’s precisely
when you’re in the zone of really pushing yourself. You’re getting better at
being creative. And if you’re always trying to get a specific kind of idea
(business ideas, fiction ideas, etc.) you’re getting better with being creative in
that specific domain.
As long as you’re directing your focus in the way you want it to be directed,
you’re doing it right. You might also write out short-term or long-term goals,
just to remind yourself what you’re working towards. You can also write out
what you can accomplish today to bring you one step closer to those goals —
even if today is crazy busy, and you can only take a tiny, tiny step, you’ll at least
know you’re taking that step.
I’ll give you lots of ideas and recommendations for these in chapter five.
An Example of a “Sprint”
On top of the stuff you do daily, you might occasionally decide you need to
dig into things with a bit more depth. Spreading out a set of exercises or prompts
over the course of several days has a few advantages.
Most obviously, you can dig into something with a bit more depth. Each day
builds on the previous one. But there’s an added advantage in that you can also
build motivation and momentum by doing things in this way. Each day, as you
review what you did in the previous day, gets you even more fired up.
For example, let’s say you decide you need to clarify your goals and your
“why” behind the goals. (This is actually a good starting point. It’ll have huge
carry-over benefits for all the other stuff I recommend.) This means you can do a
5-day or 3-day “sprint” where you really zero in and focus on those goals for
three days.
You’ll decide in advance what your prompts or questions will be. You’ll set
out the prompts and questions for day 1, and for day 2, and for day 3. I’ll include
lots of examples, but ultimately it’ll be up to you.
Then, for the next three days, you’ll begin your journaling session as you
normally do. Maybe this means you begin with some regular prompts you really
enjoy (because of how they get your brain going, or whatever), and then from
there you’ll move on to the goals-related prompts: you’ll dig into what your
goals are for the next year, the next five years, even the next thirty years.
You’ll also dig into why those are your goals: what it would mean to
accomplish them, the kind of person you’d have become, the kinds of feelings
you’ll experience, the ways in which this goal over here related to your career
relates to this goal over here related to the kind of house you want to have,
which is related to the kind of family life you want to have.
This creates a link between the daily tasks you need to do, and how they relate
to your long-term goals. This “link” between distant goals and more proximal
“to-dos” is extremely helpful.6 It makes the long-term goals seem more real.
Being able to think about the “long term,” and then link it to what you’ll do
today, helps you clarify and streamline. There are also interesting correlations
between one’s own time horizon and success. For example, heroin addicts tend
to have shortened time horizons relative to control groups.7 If you’re only
worried about today, you don’t plan for or do the things that will help you
tomorrow, next week, next year.
One of the challenges is that we don’t naturally do this. We also tend to
overvalue rewards we can get now relative to ones we can get later.8 I don’t
think it’s a leap to suggest that this affects our focus and our priorities.
Thankfully, some strategic journal writing in the form of a mini sprint, exactly
like I’ve been describing, can help you to counteract these effects, by making
those long-term goals seem more concrete, by linking them to your present, or
more proximal “to dos,” and so on.
Depending on what you discover in your journal writing, you might also spend
time digging into what the challenges will be, and why or how you’ll be able to
overcome those challenges. If a challenge seems particularly large, you might do
a bit of extra work on it, or run a cognitive reframe of some sort so that you’re
embracing it, or at the very least, feeling as though you’re able to deal with it.
By the end of the sprint, you’ll have much more insight into yourself, you’ll
have a much more concrete vision of what you want and why you want it, and,
perhaps most importantly, you’ll have deep insight into what you really, actually
need to do in order to accomplish those longer term goals.
All of this will have a bunch of side benefits on your motivation and your
brain. It will help control how you react to things, how you make small daily
decisions, and more. It’ll create unconscious “if-then” heuristics that are more
aligned with that vision than they would be if you just flew by the seat of your
pants.
And then, after your three-day goals sprint?
Well, that’s up to you. Depending on how you feel, you might want to dig in
even more to this or that aspect of your goals (e.g., maybe that challenge) or
maybe you’ll move on to something else.
You might already know, by that point, what that something else is. It might
be a more immediate goal you want to work on right now.
Maybe it’s a limiting belief related to how you’ll need to change and develop
in order to accomplish your goals. Or maybe your goals just get you so freaking
jazzed you want to write about them some more. That’s fine, too. Maybe you
find that really focusing on that vision makes it easy to do what needs to be done
during the rest of the day.
How “Intentional” Journaling Developed
As I mentioned in the last chapter, the main framework I’m outlining in this
book grew out of my own sense of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with some of
the pre-made templates that are out there.
Honestly, the real issue with a pre-made template is also its primary benefit: it
is set in stone. It provides a framework or structure. It just stays the same every
day. You can adapt and change that structure a bit, but not that much.
For a bunch of reasons I won’t get too far into right now, there’s a lot of value
in modifying the template, or playing with the template over time, in order to
make it your own. I don’t just mean there’s value in it because you end up doing
prompts that are better customized to your needs; I mean there is value in doing
the modification itself, both in becoming a kind of craftsman of your own rituals
and in thinking about what your needs even are.
When you do this, you start to own your personal process, to craft and shape it,
as well as to make it better fit your life and goals.
In my own case, since I read a ton of self-development books, I found I’d have
minor quibbles with the structure or system of one template or another (and I’ve
tried all the big ones).
For example, some pre-made templates might ask you to write about several
things you struggled with that day, and then you write about how you’ll
overcome those struggles. I’m certainly not into empty positive thinking, but I
also don’t think you should be looking for several new struggles each and every
day.
This is especially true if you’re “struggling” with habits or negative self-talk
or something along those lines, where the difficulty is you have to train yourself
to “not” think that way, which is exactly like “not” thinking about a pink
elephant.
Imagine how successful you’d be at not thinking of a pink elephant when,
each evening, you wrote something like this:
Today I struggled again with not thinking about pink elephants, so let me spend twenty minutes
thinking about how I was not able to not think about pink elephants, and then I will talk about all the
things I will do tomorrow to help me not think about pink elephants. Pink elephants this. Pink
elephants that. Here are all the reasons it is important for me to not think about pink elephants.
If that’s your strategy… uh, good luck?
To be clear: I think zeroing in on your struggles, and then focusing on how
you’ll overcome them, can be very useful if the specific struggle is big enough
and warrants it. (As a side note, and I know this is a minor quibble, but I also
much prefer the term “challenge.” A challenge is a thing you overcome. A
struggle is something you continue to struggle with.)
Whether or not the challenge is big enough to warrant it is always going to be
a personal judgment call, and this is one reason why honesty is so important.
I just don’t think you should go out searching for struggles, or assuming that
every day you must surely encounter struggles worth journaling about. I’m
absolutely not saying pretend struggles don’t exist. I’m saying don’t use a
strategy that actively encourages your brain to turn molehills into mountains
because gosh, you can’t leave that prompt blank!
Yes, you can. If it’s not relevant or important enough, you can leave them
blank, or—if you’re not using a pre-made template—you just don’t include that
prompt at all. If there’s a challenge big enough to warrant throwing it in, you’ll
know.
Sometimes you should stop, address a challenge, and dig into it. In fact,
sometimes the problem is that a challenge is big enough that you need more than
the few lines than any pre-made template can give you. You need to stop and
really dig in with a few paragraphs, or a series of questions.
And sometimes it’s better to just move past it and avoid thinking about it
anymore. It’s over. It happened. Let it go and move on!
The other key element in intentional journaling that I didn’t want to “lose”
comes from self-development books. As with the pre-made journaling templates,
I love these. I am a glutton for them.
When you read a bunch of these books, though, you notice this weird
recurring pattern — almost every guru who does one of these tells the same darn
story.
The story they tell is done for rhetorical purposes. It always comes at about the
same time in the book or program, too. You probably know the one.
After the first few chapters or first few sessions, they assign some “exercises”
(that are often eerily similar to journaling prompts). They’ll do this for the first
day, but on the second or third day they’ll say something like, “Hey, you are
doing the exercises aren’t you?”
Then, in the fourth chapter—sometimes earlier, but usually around there—
comes the story. It goes something like this:
You know, I was just like you once, because I used to read or listen to these self-development
programs as well. And you know what? I skipped all the exercises, too! Yes, just like you! (You
see? This implies we’re the same!) I’d read them and think, “Aw, who needs that! That’s silly!
‘Exercises’! Pshhaw!” and then I’d never do them.
And guess what happened when I skipped them? Nothing! I got nothing out of the program. I
went on with my life, and nothing changed.
But then, a few years later, I went back to the program, and this time I did do the exercises!
Diligently, I did every single one of them. And guess what happened this time? My life totally
changed! I accomplished everything I’d ever wanted. All my dreams came true. Yes, it was all
because I did those exercises.
So, I hope you’ll do your exercises. Anyways, here are your exercises for today…
I don’t want to belittle this kind of story too much, or totally dismiss it. I tease
out of love.
Instead, I want to plant a virus in your brain.
Here’s the virus, and it’s just a single phrase:
“Y’know, maybe there’s something to that…”
As in, “Y’know, it’s probably not a coincidence they all tell the same darn
story. Maybe there’s something to that story.”
Maybe it’s not just them desperately trying to get you to do the exercises. I
mean, sure, it is that, but maybe—just maybe—even if some of these gurus are
lying and making this stuff up, maybe it’s also that some of them are actually
telling the truth.
Maybe they actually really believe this stuff. I wonder why? Why is it they all
say the same darn thing?
Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe I should at least try the exercises…
Well, that’s what I did, my friend, and then ALL MY DREAMS CAME TRU—
Ahem.
No, I’m kidding.
Life’s not like that. (But yes, they did help.)
Even when you do everything right, life can be hard, it can be a pain in the
butt, and you will slip and fall and have to pick yourself up. You will have to
learn and grow and that never stops.
We constantly tell stories about overcoming challenges and picking ourselves
up again, but then we downplay the actual “suck” that goes into that kind of
thing. We tend to glorify it without fully appreciating it. Brené Brown has
repeatedly noted this in her books, and for her it is one reason why we become
so afraid of vulnerability.
But still: there’s probably something to that story. There’s probably something
to doing those exercises. In fact, a lot of the value from a lot of the books and
programs on self-development only comes from those pesky exercises.
And yet, even though there’s probably a lot of value to those exercises, the
problem is that no one naturally wants to do them. Heck, even the freaking
gurus admonishing us to do them admit they didn’t do them at first. This means
that even if you’re willing to admit there’s probably some value to them, you
still have to fight a lot of behavioral inertia in order to actually get them done.
One of the ideas behind intentional journaling is to just skip the middle man
and thereby skip the behavioral inertia.
When you make this kind of journal writing a habit, you’re basically picking
and choosing the exercises that work best for you, and then making them a habit.
And if you do read a book on self-development or whatever, and they do suggest
an exercise, it’s very easy to just throw that into your journal, if it’s already a
habit.
So with that in mind, let me stress again that your journal writing process or
structure is never set in stone; you can add to it, take things out, move stuff
around, tweak this or that, and generally just keep working with things and
trying things to constantly iterate and optimize your process.
And again, when you do this, a small change here and there becomes easy.
This might mean incorporating a new exercise from something you read that had
suggested exercises, or it might even be just an exercise based on what you read,
but which you made up yourself—that’s when you know you’re really into it.
(Of course, to get started, you don’t need to go out and read a book or try to
find one with exercises in it. There’s more than enough stuff in this one to get
started!)
With all that in mind, let’s explore in more depth this idea of adding things,
modifying, and crafting your own journal writing process.
Let’s look at bricolage.
“Bricolage” and the Benefits of Intentional Journal
Writing
When my fiancé and I went to visit my parents over a recent long weekend,
we made the mistake of traveling on one of the heaviest travel days of the year,
using the 401 highway in Ontario.
Canadians familiar with the 401 will be nodding their heads sagely, and with a
self-satisfied smile, thinking, “Ayuh, that was ya first mistake, there, sonny.”
The heavy traffic was… unpleasant.
After a nightmarish experience at one of the highway rest stops, we decided
that enough was enough, so we pulled out our iPhones and checked for some
kind of alternate route.
Thankfully, Google Maps delivered.
We ended up taking a delightful drive through rolling hills in Southeastern
Ontario, just north of the main highway. I’d passed through that area of the
province dozens of times before, but I’d never been off the main highway to do
it. We passed idyllic country homes and small towns, with barely another car in
sight. The term “scenic” route doesn’t do it justice.
Somewhere along this route, we passed this kind of… junkyard antique
shop… place… thing.
I’m not sure what to call it. It had a lot of stuff. Let’s just put it that way.
But out front was a giant T-Rex.
The T-Rex was life size, if not bigger. It looked like the huge Giganotosaurus
skeleton in the Canadian Museum of Nature I’d stared at, years ago, on a school
field trip as a child. (Most people, myself included, would not be able to tell the
difference between a Giganotosaurus skeleton and a Tyrannosaurus one)
Oh, and the T-Rex we passed was made of old car parts.
It was amazing. It was beautiful and strange and fun. From a distance, you
could imagine it as a giant, steampunk T-Rex, on a rampage through an
alternate, magical version of Victorian London.
This car-parts T-Rex is one form of artistic bricolage.
Bricolage is one of my favorite concepts, partly because it’s one that can
bridge across almost any domain or field of knowledge.
Bricolage is just a French term for the construction or creation of something
new using pre-existing bits and pieces. You borrow and steal and bring together
all sorts of diverse things, and use them to make something original.
For example, you take a bunch of car parts and build a giant car-parts
Tyrannosaurus Rex. Why do you do it? First of all, that’s how art works, and
second—honestly—how is that not an amazing idea?
(Every time I see amazing, beautiful abstract sculpture art made from old,
rusted industrial machinery and car parts I’m going to think, “Sure, it’s beautiful,
and it makes me feel strange, powerful emotions inside myself. But it’s just not a
T-Rex.”)
Bricolage is about discovery.
Writing is about discovery.
Bricolage, writing, and journaling. They go hand-in-hand.
No novelist ever knew exactly what they’d write when they sat down to write.
They put words to page. Then they rearranged them. They worked with the
words and arranged them just so.
Finally—finally!—they were able to articulate what they’d previously been
unable to say.
“We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know.”
— Percy Shelley
Bricolage is what I suggest doing, always, with your own journal. You will do
it whenever you put individual words to page, but it applies also to the form of
the journal itself: the prompts you use, the questions you ask, the overall daily
structures with which you experiment.
Read, borrow, pick and choose.
Read, borrow, pick and choose.
Take something, try it, and if it works really well for you, then keep it; if not,
discard it.
If a self-development or self-help book suggests an exercise, throw it in your
journal. Or throw it in a set of exercises, or in what I’m calling a mini sprint. Or
modify the exercise first, and then throw it in your journal.
Hey, it’s your journal, right? Do what works for you.
Read books with 300+ journaling prompts, mix and match the prompts to form
a set, logical structure, and then mix those with exercises from—well, from
anything you think is relevant.
Boom. Now you have a custom 3-day sprint, or a 5-day sprint, or a set of
exercises you can return to weekly, or daily, or simply whenever you feel you
need them.
I will give you a bunch of starting templates, and a bunch of starting ideas and
exercises, but you never have to stop changing and adding and customizing your
own journaling and journaling processes.
I’ll offer a beginning set of exercises and ideas to get you started. But as I
stated in the introduction, I’ve borrowed from the letters and journals of writers,
from exercises in self-development books, from books full of haphazard
journaling prompts, from pre-made template journals for sale (like the Freedom
Journal, or the SELF Journal, or the Five-Minute Journal, etc.) and from a bunch
of other sources.
I’ve tried to use a bit of bricolage myself.
The benefits of this kind of thinking are as follows:
1. You end up doing a bunch of exercises that are incredibly powerful. Not to sound like a
broken record, but there’s probably something to those exercises that all those self-development
writers are raving about. Still, it can feel weird to do them, and—frankly—they can be a pain in the
butt if it’s not a habit. But if you have a journal writing habit, this is no problem at all, because
you’re always doing them—and not only that, but you’re always doing the ones that help you the
most!
2. You make the journal your own. No single set of prompts, or exercises, or any single idea is
going to be exactly what you need. What “you” need is going to be different from anyone else
needs. To paraphrase Bruce Lee, bricolage lets you take what is useful, and discard the rest.
3. You take time into account, as well as the fact that life is a process. You start modifying and
tweaking the exercises as you go. The exercises you need today might not be the ones you need
tomorrow, or the day after, or next week. Or, the exercise you do tomorrow might actually “build”
on the ones you did today.
4. You become an agent and a craftsman. Something happens when you practice bricolage in this
way. Something that is separate from benefits #1 and #2, above. The sheer fact of using your
agency, and your creativity, makes your anterior and posterior cingulate cortices in your brain light
up. This is the area of the brain that is involved in our sense of self, in decision-making, selfregulation, and more.9 10 It’s important. If you traumatize someone, it becomes less active11. The
idea here is to make these areas more active by taking ownership.
Much of the power of intentional journaling comes from this dance between
your own creativity and the use of set exercises and sprints. You choose to trust
one process, now another, then another. You balance your own creative faculty
with some self-imposed structure.
This is why yes, sure, dive into books filled with hundreds and hundreds of
writing prompts. Pick and choose prompts, modify what you see. In short, make
decisions. What I’m saying you should not do is just let some external system
decide for you what prompts you’ll do (e.g., a daily prompt calendar).
Intentional journaling is much more powerful if you make those decisions
yourself.
You take on the responsibility of training your brain to help you accomplish
whatever you need to do.
I really do mean “whatever you need to do.”
Want to write that novel?
Incorporate exercises and prompts that focus on creativity. Maybe have a
prompt that asks you, each and every morning, to list three new fiction ideas. Or,
each evening, have a prompt that asks you to record one thing from your day—a
person, a thing, an event—that you found interesting, and which might at some
future time make its way into your fiction. Dig down and get specific, and then
have those specifics “on file” for your writing. E.B. White said, “Don’t write
about Man, write about a man.”
Then, on top of that creative stuff, write about your goals. Plan out how many
chunks of time you’ll dedicate to writing, and when. List out your daily word
count targets, and how and to what extent you’re meeting them.
Want to earn more money?
You might first want to figure out how much money you even need to make,
and why. For example, you want such-and-such a lifestyle, and that requires
such-and-such a yearly income, and this means you need…
You might then focus on what your plan is to do that. Are you going for a
raise, or starting your own business, or…? What comes first? Are you trying to
budget, or invest your money?
If you feel like you’re at ground zero, write out a list of financial terms you
don’t understand at the front of your journal, and then each day figure out the
meaning or definition of at least one of them. Do this through Google, asking
around, or through any other resource you have.
Set up learning goals, too, so that you can read about investing, or figure out
what other people are doing with their money. You can use the Prime Your
Learning exercise from later on in this book. Or maybe include a few mini
sprints related to limiting beliefs you might have about money.
Want to lose weight?
Figure out what your daily lifestyle challenges are, and brainstorm ways to
deal them. Write out affirmations or beliefs each morning about your weight loss
goals, as well as what you’re going to do to make them happen.
Record cognitive re-frames for some of the negative self-talk you might have,
or the unwanted, unhealthy thoughts you might have related to food.
If you eat for emotional reasons, or you binge eat, there’s almost certainly
some deep, deep digging you’ll need to do. Journal writing can be extremely
helpful here because it’s all about digging deep. (Note: It goes without saying
that if you have a serious eating disorder, speak to a professional.)
The list goes on and on, and the topics themselves do not need to be, nor
should they be, totally compartmentalized. All I mean here is that your long-term
career goals might go hand in hand with weight loss goals. Your desire to be
more disciplined might be related to writing a novel, or to earning more income,
or both.
I believe in what I call “habit cascades.” Overcoming obstacles in one area of
your life, and proactively taking control, almost always carries over to some
other area of your life. A good fitness habit here affects your career over there,
and in turn it helps you create another good habit related to your career, which
then, in turn, affects things related to your fitness, which gives you more energy
so you’re tired and cranky less often after work, and that has a positive effect on
your personal relationships, and when those relationships are less strained, that
begins to affect…
This cascade goes on and on, ad infinitum.
This is especially true if you’re strategic and purposeful. For example, a
morning run makes me less hungry and it balances the chemicals in my brain in
such a way that I am more focused for the next few hours, so that some of my
best writing and research has taken place in the period immediately after a good
run—not to mention that the run itself gets my head brimming with ideas that,
when I get home, I just need to get out of my brain on onto the page. I know this
might sound a bit crazy, but half the reason I bought myself a standing desk was
so I could come in from a good run or workout and just start getting all the ideas
jostling in my brain out of my head and into Evernote before they disappeared
forever, and to do this without having to sit down (which, for some reason, felt
like it interfered with the flow).
Oh, and a run outside in the sun, if it’s done in the morning, leads to better
sleep later that night, which in turn leads to a better run or gym session the next
morning. In short, a habit cascade is just a fancy term for a positive feedback
loop related to habits.
I try to schedule my days in such a way that I can benefit from these things. Of
course, this is always give and take. What I’d ideally “like” to do is not always
possible. That’s life.
But you can always balance your responsibilities with strategy. And
intentional journaling is one of the things that lets you pause for a moment, take
a step back, and think in this strategic, bricolagic kind of way, where you look at
the bits and pieces that are already a part of your life, and then bring them
together to create something new, something more akin to the life you want, and
the person you want to be. You become a craftsman.
the person you want to be. You become a craftsman.
You can start doing this kind of bricolagic shaping of the elements of your
life simply by beginning a kind of bricolagic shaping of your journaling
processes.
That’s where the positive habit cascade starts. You mix and match and bring
together questions, prompts, exercises, and anything else you think might be
useful, given who you are and where you want to go, the kind of person you
want to be, the kinds of experiences you want to have.
Again, it’s about feedback loops. By journaling in this way, you affect your
brain, and your brain, in turn, can affect everything else in your life, which will
in turn eventually affect your journaling, which will in turn… and on and on.
Writing’s Superpowers
“Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality…”
- Socrates
Before we finally get into the nitty gritty of structures, questions, prompts and
all that delicious stuff, I want to take a detour through the act of writing itself.
As Socrates pointed out, the written word is a strange thing. A lot of writing’s
power stems not just from its power to communicate, but from what it does to
the ideas it is supposed simply to represent, and from what the act of writing
itself does—to you, the writer.
It’s not a pure and simple one-for-one translation of “mental idea” into
“written word.”
Something happens. Something weird and interesting.
Imagine your mind after a long day as a tangled bundle of yarn. You can’t
really follow a thread because the whole thing is such a mess. It’s all tangled
knots.
Journal writing lets you untangle those knots, and untangle your mind, then reshape and re-figure your mind into something useful; you replace that tangled
ball of yarn with an elegant web or network of nodes.
Sure, it’s still complex, but at least now it’s organized. Now it has elegance
and symmetry, and you can trace individual lines of thought and see properly
how and where they connect to other ones.
We don’t control every thought we have. We all get unwanted thoughts
coming into our minds; they just “pop up,” seemingly out of nowhere. Journal
writing can give you back some measure of control, and some measure of order
and organization.
and organization.
You might have heard the old metaphor of trying to control your mind or
unconscious as being like trying to steer an elephant: if that elephant wants to go
somewhere, well, that’s where it’s going!
I think of it as being captain of a huge ship. Imagine a huge ocean liner or
even an aircraft carrier. You’re not the actual person at the controls. You might
have access to the steering, but no single person can control this thing for long.
You’ve got an entire crew, and you have to work with them. This ain’t a canoe,
buddy; this is a big, complicated ship.
Journal writing can help you steer the ship. It can give you insight into its
operations, as well as send messages to the crew telling them what you want
from them, so that they steer the ship in the direction you want it to go.
In our ship metaphor, imagine writing in your journal like writing down a
message and giving it to one of the bridge crew, who then physically takes that
message and delivers it to the rest of crew, throughout the various other decks of
the ship. You stay on the bridge (you’re not allowed to leave, sorry), and it takes
a couple minutes before you notice the ship respond to the original order you
sent, but it does happen.
In other words: journal writing is mind control.
It’s most useful to those who accept that their conscious self, their free will,
the part of you that makes you human, the part of you that’s self-conscious and
self-aware, that includes most of the midline structures in the brain like the
anterior and posterior cingulate — is only a fraction of your total mind.
This means that this part of your brain that’s actually “you” — the captain on
deck in charge of this whole thing — has to use strategies that will motivate and
control the rest of the ship so that it actually does what you want it to do. You
need to get those workers who live deep, deep in the lower decks of the ship, the
unconscious, on the same page, and doing what you need them to do.
Even the captain, however, has to have a very basic idea of how the ship
works. He or she also has to know how their own specific ship handles relative
to other ones. Maybe it leans one way in certain situations (e.g. a cognitive bias),
or the crew has been given too much freedom in some things, and they’re
apathetic towards following a certain kind of order (e.g. maybe they’re good
with career stuff, not so good with diet stuff).
I will leave the peculiarities of your own mind to you, but I want to go through
some of the weird ways in which our minds and brain work, to help give you
more control over your crew.
more control over your crew.
The “Anti”-Zeigarnik Effect
Have you ever had some unfinished project you were thinking about, but
hadn’t yet decided how you were going to handle it?
Did it seem to take over your brain and refuse to go away, until you actually
created a plan?
That’s the Zeigarnik effect, named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. She
noticed a strange phenomenon with waiters in Vienna: they could remember
orders that were still in progress with astonishing accuracy, but as soon as an
order was finished and out of the way—poof. Gone. The orders disappeared
from their memory, and the waiters could not recall them at all.
In John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister’s Willpower: Rediscovering the
Greatest Human Strength (2011), Baumeister ascribes a good chunk of the
power of David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity system to its
deployment or awareness of the Zeigarnik effect. That is, you need to decide
how to handle something, make a plan, and then just forget it, so you can get on
with your day and focus on what you actually need to focus on. In Allen’s GTD
system, this means handling a “to do” very quickly if it’ll take less than two
minutes, or delegating it, or filing it in some way that it’ll be accessible when
you need it. Then you can forget about it and get on with your day.
If you don’t deal with it in some way, your brain understands it as still “in
progress,” like those unfinished restaurant orders. In the book, Tierney and
Baumeister describe this as being a lot like an itch that you can’t get rid of until
you make that plan.
The key, it turns out, is that plan. You don’t have to be finished a project, per
se, but if you know, “I’ve blocked out three hours on Friday to finish it, and I
have calendar reminders set up so that I know I won’t accidentally forget it,”
that’s good enough.
In my own case, I deal with these potential itches with a combination of
Evernote and Google Calendar. If I get an idea (creative or not), I don’t have to
keep thinking about it. I throw it in Evernote, add a few tags on it, and then I
mostly forget about it. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Evernote is good at letting
me reference that stuff later if and when I need to.
Similarly, if I need to plan when or how I’m going to do something, I throw it
in my Google Calendar, and I set up the event to send me an email or two
beforehand, so I know I won’t accidentally miss it. Then I can finally forget
about it until it’s time to be reminded.
But let me ask you a question: what if you didn’t want to forget about
something?
What if you wanted to be bothered by certain ideas?
What if you wanted your brain noodling on certain ideas throughout the day?
What if you wanted a certain “itch” to come back a few times each day, and
give you a reminder?
The idea behind GTD, or how I described using Evernote or Google Calendar,
is that we don’t want to be pre-occupied with certain things throughout the day.
They’re distractions.
This is true. That’s why I use a form of GTD myself, and II use Evernote and
Google Calendar in the way I described above. These are strategies to get rid of
things we’re not good at forgetting, so we use tools to make forgetting possible.
But isn’t it also true that there are some things we’re naturally very good at
forgetting? Things which… maybe we don’t want to forget?
For example, maybe you don’t want to be “focused” on eating this pizza with
no distractions. Maybe you want to be distracted from the pizza by an “itchy”
thought related to your long-term goals.
When you’re making decisions about this or that, throughout the course of
your day, you might want specific goals and ambitions right there, easy-toaccess, so that you can assess a given decision according to those goals or
values.
Or, maybe you’re a creative writer. A lot of creative writers will recommend
that you don’t finish a writing session at the very end of a scene, if that scene has
decent closure. Your brain will have a sense of it being finished, so it’ll forget
about it. When you come back to write the next day, you will have to start from
ground zero. This is why instead, they recommend you finish a writing session
right in the very middle of a scene, and from there, you let your brain get
insanely itchy about what comes next. Purposely allow your mind to spend the
next twenty-four hours thinking about it, and when you sit down to write again,
you’ll be brimming with ideas.
Anthony Trollope, the Victorian author, used to do something very much like
Anthony Trollope, the Victorian author, used to do something very much like
this. He would write for three hours in the morning (at a rate of 250 words every
15 minutes!), and then he would go to work as a British postal worker.
Throughout the rest of the day, he would live with his characters in his own
mind, and by the next morning he would be ready to write down his thoughts
and keep to his astonishing rate of production, which allowed him to produce 47
novels and 16 other books.
Goals and Itchy Chunks
Your brain can be programmed to use any free or “extra” processing power it
has to think about how to do this or that, simply because you haven’t nailed
down a precise plan for those things yet.
How do you do this? Easy. With journal writing.
In Write it Down, Make it Happen (2012), author Henriette Anne Klauser
argues that writing triggers the Reticular Activating System or (RAS) of the
brain. She says, “Writing triggers the RAS, which in turns sends a signal to the
cerebral cortex: ‘Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail!’ Once you write
down a goal, your brain will be working overtime to see you get it.”
A lot of self-development books like to mention the RAS.12 The common
metaphor is that of buying a blue car and then seeing blue cars everywhere,
which gets the point across nicely for most purposes.13 14
You remind yourself that you haven’t yet accomplished this goal or that goal,
and you let your brain do the rest. It’ll create an itch that’ll need to be scratched,
almost unconsciously, throughout the course of your day. It’ll also be primed to
notice ideas and opportunities that are relevant to the itch.
If you send it a message that your goal is to accomplish something, your ship’s
crew will get to work on how to do it, and as you wait there on the bridge, they’ll
come back to you with ideas throughout the rest of your day. You don’t
necessarily control when these messages come back, but they will start coming
in.
The balance here is what you plan out and commit to, and what you leave
unsaid or unplanned — what you leave as an itch that demands periodic
scratching.
Articulating a specific goal, without any plan for achieving said goal, is
helpful because doing so creates an itch in your brain, as it gets to work figuring
out how you’re going to accomplish that goal. At the same time, deciding on a
specific plan for how you will accomplish this goal can erase that specific itch,
but don’t worry, because it will also 1) make the goal more real and more
tangible, which is also extremely useful, and 2) it will create a whole new series
of itches, and set your brain’s gears in motion for figuring out the specifics of
some of the smaller chunks.
Once you break a goal down into more manageable chunks, the goal feels
more real, and the smaller, more manageable chunks become the new itches that
demand scratching.
The new itch takes a form like this:
“I’ve committed to [goal]. I know that to accomplish [goal] I need to do X, Y, and Z, and I know that X
comes first, but… how am I going to do that? Hmm…”
mental gears start turning
This is one reason why in a mini sprint, you might want to articulate a goal on
one day, with absolutely no plan for how to accomplish it, and then leave it that
way for a day or so. Let your brain sit on it.
As you go about your day, you can rest assured your brain will work on it
unconsciously, as well as make it itchy enough that you’ll think about it
consciously a few times as well.
By the time you sit down to your next journal writing session, you’ll be filled
with tons of ideas about what to do (and/or write about) next. The only trick will
be writing your ideas all out, and deciding on which ones to pursue first. (Hint:
more journal writing is helpful here too, because it also helps with clarity and
paring things down to the essential.)
This is why on the next day of the sprint, you can finally “pin down” and
articulate those ideas by getting them out of your head and onto the page.
Vague to Concrete
On the flip side of leaving things open-ended, let me discuss the value in
articulating things, or pinning things down.
Have you ever been unable to capture the true complexity and nuance of an
inner thought in your writing or (perhaps more likely) in your spoken
conversations?
Have you ever had a brilliant idea, but when you tried to explain it you
actually just babbled incoherently?
Words and writing are limited, imperfect things. They bring with them
cognitive associations and connotations, and you have to get these just right in
order to convey the original idea you had inside your head.
This is because the original idea is often vague and ill-defined. It still has
potential, and it exists only in its potentiality.
By contrast, the written word, once it is written, just is what it is. It’s there. It’s
finite. It’s done. It’s pinned down.
There’s a great thread in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series where one of the
characters, Eddie, picks up wood carving as a hobby while they’re making camp
each night, as they’re on this journey to reach the Dark Tower. Shortly
thereafter, carving stops being just a hobby, and Eddy has to finish carving out a
beautiful key from a piece of wood, which has to fit a specific lock he’s never
seen before. If he doesn’t get it just right, his friends will die.
Eddie doesn’t want to finish it, though, and he procrastinates. Why? Because
there’s a chance he’ll fail. He hears the doubting voice of his older brother
telling him he can’t do it, that he’ll fail, that he’s not good enough.
Even if he knows his brother is full of crap, it’s hard to ignore that voice.
Eddie knows there is still a chance that the key he sees in his mind won’t be the
key he produces with his wood piece.
It’s a great metaphor for the creative process. In our mind, things are vague
and nebulous, full of their own potential. They exist in their ideal form because
they still have that potential to be rendered in that ideal form.
But once they come into the material world — as writing, as spoken words, or
as symbolic art of any kind — they become just what they are, and they lose that
infinite potential. They get “pinned down.”
On the one hand, that can be a bummer, especially if a work doesn’t live up to
your original, imagined version of it. On the other, that’s what makes writing
and the artistic process worth doing. If it always came out perfect, there’d be no
thrill, no triumph during those moments when you do succeed.
And, more to the point: writing would not be a form of discovery, but a rote
recording of thoughts, like a scribe at a court proceeding. That’s not what
writing is. Writing is much more than that.
Think about it. As you sit at your journal, or even at your keyboard, you don’t
know what you’ll find. Even when you know you want to articulate some idea,
you’re not sure how you’ll do it until you sit down and put pen to paper.
In the Singularity of Literature, Derek Attridge describes this process:
I sit at my desk with my computer monitor before me and my keyboard beneath my hands, writing.
What exactly am I doing as my fingers press the keys and my eyes scan the screen? One answer
would be that I am attempting to express my ideas in words. […] In this case, when I have formed a
sentence to my satisfaction the feeling I have is that it encapsulates something I wanted to articulate
without at first having the appropriate words, or, more accurately perhaps, without my words
possessing the required linear and organized sequence. […] However, there are times when this
description will not do, when I am not putting words into a conceptual structure I have already
planned, not tinkering with an existing text to make it more accurately express what I know I want to
say, not working out a problem according to a pre-existing set of rules, but engaging in an activity we
may call, to give it one of its possible names, ‘creation.’15
The first example he gives is similar to what I am trying to describe. Like him, I
am sitting at my keyboard, trying to express my ideas in words, forming
sentences and playing with them until I find them acceptable.
It is the second form that Attridge calls “creation,” but I would stress that even
the first form he describes is a creative act. When you journal, you don’t know
what you will say or how you’ll say it. You have to find the words. You have to
discover them. You have to venture out and look for them before you know
exactly what you will find or discover.
You will sometimes find basically what you expect, but you will also be
surprised. You will sometimes be disappointed, too, such as during those times
when you have a word for something and you know it’s not quite right, and
you’re sure there’s a better one, but you just can’t seem to find it.
Those ideas in your head, through that process of articulation in language,
become something different. Articulating vague ideas in concrete language
changes those ideas, and it makes you realize truths about them and their
potential.
This is a long way of explaining just a few of the reasons why writing is a
brutally effective tool for discovering specific things about yourself and your
thoughts.
As you organize those thoughts into language, you organize them into a series
of logical relationships. (Regardless what language you’re talking about, that’s
what a grammar is. And yes, this is true even if you’re not using complete
sentences or worrying about pedantic usage rules. This is your journal, not an
English essay.)
Your thoughts can be vague, nebulous, even chaotic. A tangle, as I said
earlier. Writing them out, in sentences or notes, organizes them and tells you
about them.
You articulate. You sort and sift. You place ideas into relationships and
hierarchies.
And once those first words are written, you look at what you’ve written: did
you get it right? Is there something new here?
Once those words are written on the page, and you’re not trying to keep them
all in your head or on your cognitive “stage,” you’ve got a bit more leeway to
play with and think more about those logical relationships and hierarchies.
Writing things down gets it out of your brain and out onto the page, so that
instead of devoting all your brain power to holding onto a thought, you have it
right there, and you can use your brain power to think about the thought. There’s
a world of difference between thinking a thought and thinking about that
thought. Thinking about a thought lets you dig into it, expand on it, and build on
it.
In David Rock’s Your Brain at Work (2009), Rock compares your conscious
mind to a theatre stage. That is, it is a huge cognitive burden to bring a bunch of
players up onto that stage, and then to keep them there.
Imagine a frazzled director trying to keep all the actors standing where they
should be standing. Except the actors themselves have lousy attention spans, so
they tend to wander off if you’re not there to keep them in place. You grab one
actor by his tunic and get him to stand where he should but as you’re focused on
this person, the actor over there has just vaguely wandered off, and when you go
get that person and get them where they need to be, some other person starts
wandering away.
Now imagine you need to call up a memory, so you leave the stage to search
through the crowd, find the right person, and bring them back to the stage. Only
through the crowd, find the right person, and bring them back to the stage. Only
by the time you get back, half the actors are gone, and the others are in all the
wrong position. We need ways to deal with this.
Since we can only hold so many actors at a time on stage, one trick is to find
ways where we don’t have to spend all our energy keeping them in the right
place: in other words, writing things down.
When you do this, says Rock, you’re “saving [your] energy for comparing,
rather than holding the concepts on [your] stage. This small thing makes a big
difference: all [your] processing power is available for considering the
relationship between the items.”
Instead of thinking the thoughts, I’m able to think about the thoughts and their
relationships to each other.
This is where self-discovery comes in.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself;
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
We believe and do things that are totally contradictory.
In your journal writing, you will often write out a variety of things, and many
of them will seem to contradict or work against each other.
In the context of goal-setting or ambition, they might take one of these forms:
Form 1: You want to achieve X but you are afraid of [thing related to X].
Form 2: You desperately want to achieve X, but you associate X with [some negative idea].
Some Examples
You want to be a writer, but you are afraid of having your written work
seen by others.
You want to be a writer, but all your friends have “real jobs.”
You want to be a published writer but you suffer from the same fear as
Eddie, above, and the finished product never matches the vision inside your
head. (Hint: This might be a reason there are no fully “finished” projects on
your hard drive, but rather half-written drafts long since abandoned.)
You want to create an online course but you are afraid of learning new
technology skills.
You want to earn more money, but you don’t want to be a sellout.
You want to lose weight, but you’re afraid of giving up your favorite foods.
Now, once these are written out, here’s the good news: you can pick them
apart and destroy them. Some of them might not even be very logical or true.
For example, if you want to build an online course, you don’t necessarily need
many new technology skills. You should hire someone. Presumably, in a
situation like this, you want to build one because you have good content that
solves a burning pain, not because you just really like online course software.
Here’s the key, though: you can’t discover these kinds of things, and
subsequently re-think the value of these vague associations, until you take those
vague and nebulous associations, and “pin them down” with writing.
In a lot of self-development books, you’ll see stuff about changing “limiting
beliefs.” The authors will say stuff like “You can believe anything you want!”
If you’re like me, your first response to that idea is, “Well… sort of…”
I will say this again and again, but your brain isn’t stupid.
You can’t just lie to it outright. You can’t write, “I am not afraid of having my
work criticized!” right after you discover how afraid you are of having your
work criticized, and expect your brain to respond with anything other than, “Pfff,
yeah okay. Nice try.”
But what you can do is dig into ideas some more. You can work with them.
Once you figure out that you’re afraid of this or that, you can dig into all sorts
of things:
All the reasons this fear is illogical or absurd.
All the reasons why you’re willing to overcome this fear.
Specific ways you can force yourself to overcome it (either in small steps or in not-so-small steps).
Specific ways you’ll strategically get around it and work with it.
You might not be able to just change a fear, but you can darn well ask your
brain to come up with strategies to deal with it. Heck, in your journaling, come
up with a few strategies, but decide you still need more strategies — make it an
itch. Write it out. Articulate the dissatisfaction. Put the brain to work.
Program it to look for even more ways to overcome the fear or more ways to
find reasons the fear is absurd.
Negative associations and contradictory ideas like that are easier because often
they are not a true “limiting belief” so much as a vague, ill-defined association
that’s holding you back. It’s in cases like this where articulating the idea in
words — taking the time to write it out — changes it.
Before it was defined, it was like a play of shadows in the dark. Your brain
doesn’t really know what it is, so it turns it into all sorts of things: you can
almost see the creature the play of shadows has the potential to really be. But
once you articulate it, it’s like bringing that shadow into the light, and revealing
its source as some totally mundane, everyday object.
Alternatively, there is also a lot more room for altering or changing these
associations. If you have a vague negative association (and even a bit of fear)
with receiving criticism for your writing, it’s possible that at the very same time
you also believe that criticism makes you a better writer.
Articulating them both, together, links them together permanently, so that you
can no longer have some vague, ill-defined fear related to receiving criticism,
without also realizing, “Oh, right. I know that I’m afraid of criticism, but logical
me knows that I need it to improve, and that I have a genuine desire to overcome
this fear.”
Now that vague, ill-defined fear is always brought into the light, and it is
always held up against a series of other beliefs and associations that don’t cancel
out the original fear, but do cancel out its negative, paralyzing effects.
This is especially powerful if you compare it to previously, where the fear
could survive endlessly, just barely at the level of consciousness, so that it could
affect you without letting you actually do anything about it.
Giving Yourself Material to Work With
“I can’t make bricks without clay.”
- Sherlock Holmes
As we just found, one of the principle advantages of this kind of journal
writing is giving yourself material to work with. You write something, and then
you write something about what you just wrote, using what you just wrote, or
modifying what you just wrote.
If you just articulated a subtle fear or negative association you have with
something you actually desperately want, you can write about the positive
associations you have as well, to see which ones cancel out the negative ones.
You can modify the negative associations so that they are still accurate, but also
less damaging to your goals.
A trick here is to take the original negative association, then add linking words
or phrases to the end: “but,” “only when,” “however,” and so on.
“________ is bad only when…”
“I am anxious about _______, but…”
“I am worried that ________, however…”
For example, if you associate money with being a rotten old miser, you can
modify that idea to acknowledge that, yes, some people with money are rotten
old misers. You don’t have to pretend you don’t believe that, but you can also
write about how being responsible with money and letting it grow through
intelligent investing is the best way to have money to give back, donate, or use
to create something truly worthwhile.
You can affirm that you don’t have to be an awful, greedy old miser. You can
make it so that whenever that old association comes up — “people with money
can often be rotten old misers” — it also comes up with the association that this
just plain is not true across the board, and there are lots of people with money
who are doing very good things in the world, and if you had money, you too
would use it to create good in the world.
In Ronald Langacker’s Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (Vol. I) this is
called the “repeated coactivation of these relations.”16 By linking two
associations together, you prevent the first, negative association from being
activated without also activating the concept or idea that is far more
empowering.
With a journal, you can ensure that whenever that association between money
and miserliness comes up in your mind (even if only on a not-quite-conscious
level), what also comes up is your awareness that this supposed association is
not absolute, as well as an association between money and the good you could
do with it.
What you discover, what material you have to work with, and how you modify
them, is all down to you and your ideas and beliefs. You might not agree with
anything I just wrote. That’s fine because you can still craft something you do
think is true, but which still helps you.
As another example, when it comes to my everyday diet, I have to balance a
bunch of associations I have. Here are just a few:
1. I enjoy certain foods, like delicious baked goods.
2. Eating those foods in large quantities probably won’t help me with my goals.
3. I don’t want to “give up” certain foods for prolonged periods.
4. Over-restriction and eating “perfectly” is obviously not heathy, either.
5. At the same time, “giving in” to a craving isn’t really the expression of my best self.
Each one somewhat builds on the previous one, and writing them all out lets
me work through them and make decisions about how they relate to each other.
I know from experience that the difference between #4 and #5 can be hard to
see when you’re the one trying to sort through your own conflicting thoughts,
right in the moment. When I’m staring at a delicious brownie, my brain might
say, “Oh, you should totally eat [insert food]. Remember, over-restriction is
bad!” This is a problem.
My brain is correct. Over-restriction is bad.
I can recognize, however, that sometimes that’s not what’s happening;
obviously, I’m not “over-restricting” every single time I say no to a giant
brownie. Sometimes my brain just latches onto those ideas as excuses. My brain
is lying to me, even though it’s using the truth to do it.
I know that eating that food, right now, would actually not be me at my best. I
tell myself that the best version of myself doesn’t over-restrict his eating, but at
the same time, he also doesn’t use the idea of “oh you shouldn’t over-restrict
eating” as a veiled excuse to simply give into a mundane craving. That’s not
being “balanced,” either. The idea of giving in to what I know is just an excuse
is something I find rather unpalatable.
I can now write about all this in my journal, but all those earlier associations
had to come first. I couldn’t see how one association could mask itself in the
form of another until I actually did the work of writing them out, and then seeing
them side by side.
A lot of the Exercises and Mini Sprints later in this book build on this idea of
giving yourself material to work with, and then actually spending some time
actually working with that material, in order to create something really useful for
you.
This means an early question might do some digging, some excavating of your
deeply-held thoughts and cognitive associations, and then the next few questions
get you to organize, think about, modify or improve upon what you wrote so that
the ideas are more useful to you.
They try to balance the benefits of pinning things down but also leaving some
things unsaid, and unplanned. The Mini Sprints, in particular, by taking place
over the course of several days, also sometimes take advantage of the Zeigarnik
effect. They purposely create itches that you scratch for a while before you come
up with a set plan.
These are just some of the things we can do with writing. But what about
journal writing, specifically? What’s the benefit of actually keeping a real,
physical journal?
The Benefits of a Physical Journal
Have you ever read a physical book and remembered a key moment, scene or
idea, and then tried to look it up? I’d be willing to bet that at least part of what
you remembered was where in the book that moment was, and even where on
the page — left page, right page, top, bottom, etc. — it was.
This is harder to do with ebooks. Don’t get me wrong, ebooks have their own
advantages (exporting highlights and notes to Evernote, for example), and I love
them, but the fact that the physical layout is not set in stone since you can do
things to change the layout, like modify the font size or the general layout width,
influences how we remember elements of them.
This is why I recommend using an actual, physical journal, with pen and
paper. If you must use a computer, please do keep it visual. Change font colors,
use a sense of play, insert images, highlight things, use bold, underline, and
italics as much as you can.
Just remember that “But I have bad handwriting!” is not a good excuse! First,
it’s a skill that’ll improve. Second, who cares? I hate my handwriting. Seriously,
it’s awful. But it gets the job done.
When you begin to journal, if you use a physical one, you’ll also remember
the physical, experiential act of writing. It’ll become a habit trigger. As you do it
more, you’ll get “into the zone” faster and faster. This will be very useful on
days where you’re not feeling particularly motivated — your journal writing
habit will get you into a more empowered, energetic and motivated state.
It’s like the catch-22 of note-taking in school. If you took really good notes,
you actually don’t need to review them as much. But if you didn’t take any
notes, or you took lousy ones, you need to study even more—except you don’t
have any notes to study. Paradoxically, you need to take the notes so that you
don’t even need the notes you took.
If you fill up one journal and begin another, then another, and another, and
they are not all the exact same type, when you come back to one of them, or you
want to look for a specific entry, you’ll say, “Wait, no, this wasn’t in the black
Moleskin, this was in that fancy leather one with the flap thingy I liked.”
In my own case, I like reading the entries where I can see my handwriting
begin to break down, as I struggle to get the ideas onto the page as fast as I can. I
have to struggle to keep the writing at least at the level where I’ll be able to
figure out what the heck I’ve written if I come back to it 10 years from now.
(Admittedly, I don’t always keep the quality of my physical writing at a level
where someone other than myself could figure out what I’ve written, but, as they
say in Silicon Valley, that’s a feature, not a bug!)
Keeping Brain Spaces Separate
A side benefit of using a physical journal is that it keeps everything separate
from your computer.
Margaret Atwood, the writer, actually uses two desks with two separate
computers. One is for her writing, and just for her writing. It is not connected to
the Internet. The other is connected to the Internet.17 This keeps things separate
in her mental space. When it’s time to write, she writes. She doesn’t think about
Twitter or Facebook when she’s in her writing space because that’s just not what
she does when she’s in her writing space. All the habit cues and triggers for
those behaviors are associated with her other computer.
Keeping certain thoughts and lines of thinking inside a journal works the same
way.
That journal “space” becomes yours. Your journal becomes a little bubble
that’s totally protected against the distractions life throws at you every day.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever felt this, but there are days where I dread my
inbox. Many people are glued to it, and they will check it first thing when they
get up in the morning because of that little dopamine hit you get when you see
that little red dot, or that bolded subject line that means “new unread.”
I experience this too, but I also have to admit, there are days where I feel the
opposite. I feel as though I have an ambitious plan, a set of goals, a target, a
project, whatever—just a way to approach my day—but I know that my inbox is
going to be filled with all this other stuff that will just be a distraction from my
huge, ambitious plans (which are not to take over the world, I promise).
Deep down, I am very grateful for people contacting me, and even for being
busy. These are good so-called “problems” to have. But at the same time, staying
focused when you’ve got a thousand to-dos cluttering up your inbox and your
brain isn’t easy.
There’s a reason why achieving inbox zero lets you breathe a huge sigh of
relief; when your inbox is empty, your mind can be empty. It’s an amazing
feeling.
I consider journal writing, which takes place beyond the boundaries of my
computer or phone, to be my first line of defense against that clutter.
Journal writing allows me to focus, to plan my day, to proactively set up my
defenses against the distractions that I know the day will bring. This is why, in
my morning journal writing, I’ve started including plans for how I’ll handle
those emails, and I will apportion out parts of my day to take care of all those
smaller distractions.
Once I know that I have a window or block of time where I will address those
distractions, it feels like I have a ready-to-go block or container in my mind
where I can file away those distractions and not think about them. It’s how I deal
with the Zeigarnik effect. Usually, for me, I do this at about 1 p.m., after lunch
time, which is when my brain is kind of zombied out for awhile before I get my
second wind for the day. I don’t do my best work then, but I can absolutely
handle a lot of basic tasks that need to get done.
Without a specific plan, if I get a new To Do or I have to take care of some
small thing, my reaction is something like this: “Oh, darn, I need to deal with X.
When am I going to do that? Hmmm… uh, so… I need to factor in A, B, and C,
as well, so that means, uh…”
If I do have a plan for handling it, a specific if-then implementation intention
(“if such-and-such kind of distraction comes up, then I will handle it by
doing…”) my reaction is easy: I copy and paste whatever links or info I need
into a pre-made Google Calendar event’s description box, then I can set the
reminder and archive the email, so I can move on and actually forget about it.
I’m not recommending everything about my system, by the way, but I am
saying that a bit of time in the morning with your journal, separate from your
computer and before you get into those distractions, can help you proactively
deal with all the stuff that you know, personally, can put you into reaction
mode.
The reason I like doing it with journal writing, specifically, rather than some
other basic productivity system, is that my journal is also where I’m constantly
reviewing my goals and my whys, and so I end up planning for these things at
the same time as I am focusing on what’s really, truly important to me.
I’m in the frame of mind of thinking about how everything actually fits into
some of my longer term plans, and that’s the frame of mind I want to be in when
I plan out my day. This ensures my productivity plans for the day’s tasks are
going to be congruent with my long-term plans and goals.
In other words, it allows me to ask, “What’s really the priority, here?” when
I’m actually in a state of mind where I can answer that question, and I’m aware
of what my priorities really are.
As I said, I like to do this in the morning, but that’s obviously not a necessity.
You can do all of this in the evening, too. This would also let you review the
current day, and plan for the next one. In the morning, by contrast, I tend to
review the previous day and plan for the current one.
Your Personal Tortoise Enclosure
I got the idea of a “tortoise enclosure” from Chris Fox,18 but it appears to
come originally from John Cleese. It lines up beautifully with this idea of brain
spaces and keeping spaces separate.
A tortoise enclosure is like an office, or personal space, that’s 100% yours,
and 100% protected from distraction. Every day, we’re inundated with emails,
tasks, responsibilities, and more.
Your tortoise enclosure is a small, physical space (and often a time) you carve
out for yourself where you can burrow into your shell and just be you, and think
about you, and your priorities, before you have to start thinking about everything
else. It can be dedicated just to writing or to journaling. It can be a room, or it
can be a room at a specific time.
For me, it’s my desk first thing in the morning, but with the computer still off,
and even with the light off. It’s just my desk, my journal, and a floor lamp. It
feels like an enclosure, a little space that’s mine, where I can be intentional
before I deal with… well, everything else I need to.
For me, this time and space is a lot like Margaret Atwood’s two computers.
My desk at 5:00 AM, with just the tiny warm bubble of light from my floor
lamp, is really not the same space as it is later in the day, at noon, with all the
lights on, with my computer on, and with natural light streaming in through the
window.
In my brain, these are two completely different spaces, so the habit triggers
and anchors associated with each are totally different. I can put my brain in a
different place when I am in my tortoise enclosure. I can do it later in the day if I
need to, but it’s not as easy because it’s not an automatic habit.
I recommend you try to carve out a small tortoise enclosure for yourself. It can
be anything. The kitchen table. Your desk at a specific time. An old desk in a
spare room no one in the house uses. Anything. Just something that makes it
specific, and which is in some way protected against distraction. (Yes, you might
have to tell people you need fifteen minutes or half an hour — or however long
you want — where you’re not to be disturbed.)
Make it yours, and protect it.
“What if I can’t create a tortoise enclosure “separate”
from everything else?”
This is a good question. First, the good news: if you commit to using a real,
physical journal, you’re halfway there. Your physical journal will feel very
separate from everything else on your computer, your phone, and all your other
connected devices.
Beyond that, the answer is: do what you can. Maybe you can’t use an actual
different physical space — I don’t — but you might be able to change that space
in some way during the period in which you’re writing in your journal. For me,
the lights are different, it’s a specific time of day, my computer monitor is still
off, and so on. There might be other things you can do (use a different lamp,
close your door when you normally wouldn’t — these small environmental
changes can make a big difference, mentally speaking. Look around your space
to get ideas, and then try something!
Your Personal Journaling Ritual
Your personal journaling ritual is your own. This means you are free to
discard any and all advice I give in this chapter. Take what appeals to you.
Garbage the rest.
What Time of Day Should I Journal?
I do recommend trying to establish a regular time of day to journal. If I had
only one recommendation, that would be it; everything else centers around that
recommendation.
As for what other people do, most people tend to do the kind of journaling I’m
describing in this book first thing in the morning, and (potentially) again in the
evening.
Personally, I stick with mornings, and it’s pretty rare that I even open my
journal after my morning ritual, unless I need a bit of extra focus.
Morning vs. Evening Rituals
I highly recommend you try a morning journaling ritual.
It preps you for the day ahead. That time first thing in the morning is YOURS
— yours and yours alone. This means that before you get inundated with all
those daily fires you need to put out, you can….
Stop. Pause. Focus yourself.
Wait.
Wait.
Think.
Okay — and now you can decide in advance how you will deal with those
fires.
When you decide in advance like this, you become proactive, instead of being
constantly caught in reaction mode.
Even the most seemingly proactive, organized and focused people can find
themselves caught up in reaction mode. It sucks. It’s just that the really
proactive, organized and focused people use whatever strategies they can to
minimize it, because it feels much better to have a plan, a set of personal “ifthen” tactics that you can turn to, instead of trying to just react in the moment.
A morning ritual lets you decide and make plans that will be relevant to what
you have going on today.
Remember that I called this style of journaling intentional journaling.
(Those “if-then” tactics I mentioned? They’re often called “implementation
intentions.”)
You journal with intention, yes, but you also put yourself in an intentional
frame of mind through the journaling. You zero in on exactly what will take you
to your goals, so you don’t get dragged down with all the tiny distractions that
are out there.
You control your focus. One of the few things we have control over is what
we focus on—but even then, it’s not total control. You can be distracted. Things
can jump in out of nowhere. There are thoughts that will pop up inside your head
which you can’t prevent.
A morning journaling routine is a way to program your brain early on in the
day, to help give you some leverage in controlling that focus. Let’s say 50% of
the thoughts that just pop up inside your head over the course of the day are
useless. With a morning journaling routine, you can fudge that percentage a bit,
so that only 30% are useless, and 70% are thoughts related to the topics and
ways of thinking you installed in your brain that morning.
By taking a few minutes in the morning and deciding what will actually push
you forward, you will also pre-emptively avoid those subtle distractions that
disguise themselves as being productive but are really just “looking productive”
or are being productive at accomplishing someone else’s goals.
“But I’m not a morning person!”
I wasn’t either. I became one after I tried it and loved it. I have noticed this
pattern with many, many other people as well. They gave it a shot, and loved the
change, then never looked back.
So, if your first reaction is, “But I’m not a morning person!” let me ask you:
why not?
Is it physiological? As far as I can tell, the chances of this are actually very
slim. Certainly, it was physiological when you were a teenager. Your hormones
and circadian sleep rhythms were different back then.
Now that you’re an adult, you might still be an evening person, but chances
are good this is purely a mental thing. Many people are evening people until,
well… until they’re not.
Instead of lecturing you, let me just recommend The Miracle Morning by Hal
Elrod. If you’re on the fence, give it a read: it outlines some great benefits of a
morning ritual. If you’re not convinced, don’t try it. But if you have nothing to
lose and you’re convinced there’s a fair bit of potential gain: give it a real,
honest shot, and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, obviously, you should go
straight back to later wake up times, as well as later evenings. (Seriously. Don’t
be a zombie!) Although I think the percentage of people who are evening people
is smaller than the percentage of people who just lay claim to that identity, there
are people for whom evenings are just better, physiologically speaking. It’s just
the way their bodies work.
But at the same time, think about it: what if a morning ritual does end up
working better for you, and you do feel more productive and ready to take on the
day with more intention?
Boom.
You would have found a strategy that makes you more productive… Every.
Single. Day.
That is massive leverage.
Listen, I don’t really care, one way or the other, except that I want you to
succeed. To me, that doesn’t mean “becoming a morning person,” but it does
certainly mean being open to some forms of change.
Habit Stacking Your Journaling Ritual
In S.J. Scott’s book Habit Stacking, Scott presents a unique system for
implementing daily habits.
To summarize the strategy quickly: you add up a series of small habits and
“stack” them, one on top of the other, so that the routine for the first habit
becomes the trigger to begin the second habit, which in turn becomes the trigger
to begin the third habit, and so on and so forth.
Effectively, this means you only need to establish the first trigger, and from
there one just leads into the next.
Each habit in your stack is small. They take you only two to ten minutes,
depending on your preferences. Then you just hit them all off, boom-boomboom. It works best if you can find the habits that’ll provide the most benefit.
A journaling routine fits perfectly into this kind of framework, and Scott even
mentions journaling as one of the habits he fits into his own most important habit
stack.
The benefit of habit stacking your journaling in this way is that you can also
do some of the things you’re journaling about.
For example, in my morning routine, I drink a glass of water, then get a pot of
tea going as I brush my teeth and go to the bathroom. When my tea’s ready, I sit
down at my desk and journal. It’s still dark outside and I like it that way.
When I’m done journaling, I move straight to writing, which I’ve probably
just listed as one of my main tasks for the day in my journal. When I’m done my
writing, I take my dog for our morning walk, which also serves as a kind of extra
meditation — but one that’s been a bit programmed in advance by the
journaling.
In other words, when I’m on my walk, I’m not thinking about whatever things
might otherwise just frustrate me, were my thoughts allowed to run their natural
course; instead, I’m thinking about stuff from the journal.
The Actual Journaling Session Let’s dig into the
journaling session itself.
Up to this point, I’ve described a kind of “macro” level of thinking about your
journaling session: where does it fit in with the rest of your day? What do you do
right before it or right after it?
Let’s look at the micro: the structure of the session itself.
Generally, the session has as many or as few sections as you want. You don’t
need to distinguish these sections. I don’t — I just underline any prompts or
questions with a different colored pen, because I like doing it, but that’s it.
If you use a set-in-stone template, the structure of the session — or part of it,
at least — is done for you. There is a huge value in that, and I still borrow from
some of those set-in-stone templates for my own journaling.
Let me include one of them here to give you an idea of a starting point that
you could then modify for your own needs.
Example “Pre-Made” Structure: The Five-Minute
Journal™
The Five-Minute Journal™ by Intelligent Change uses a very simple setup.
Each day is a single page, and each page is divided into two sections: a morning
and an evening.
In the morning, you fill out these prompts.
I am grateful for…
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
Three things that would make today great:
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
Daily affirmations:
______________________
______________________
Then, in the evening, you fill in a few more things:
3 Amazing things that happened today…
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
How could I have made today even better?
______________________
______________________
The Five-Minute journal is an excellent way to control your focus. The
questions and prompts are extremely well framed to not focus on pink elephants
unless it’s necessary.
Tim Ferris himself uses it, and in his book, Tools of Titans, he mentions that in
his own journaling he tends to alternate between Daily Morning Pages and the 5Minute Journal setup. (I discuss Morning Pages, sometimes called “Daily”
Pages, in the Daily Prompts section.) You are free to borrow a template like this,
or to start with The 5-Minute Journal just to get a journal writing habit going, or
to use one of the other ones.
Let me show you the structure I use. You’ll see the first part of it is adapted a
bit from various pre-made templates like The 5-Minute Journal, and the second
part is where things become a bit more intentional.
My Basic Structure
The following is done in a blank journal. In actual practice, I don’t write out a
whole structure like you see below; I’ll write one of the headers, underline it,
then fill it in. Then I’ll move on to the next header, underline it, and fill in the
answers or whatever.
Here is the first section or part of my daily ritual:
DD MM YYYY — 5:00 AM
Amazing things yesterday
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
Gratitude
______________________
______________________
In X days I will…. [Insert primary goal deadline]
In Y days I will…. [Insert a secondary goal deadline]
My #1 Most Important Task Today:
______________________
Affirmations
• ______________________
• ______________________
• ______________________
Everything above is done pretty much every day.
Everything I include below is definitely not done every single day. I would
almost never do all of the headings you see, and many times I won’t do any of
them. What you see above is often enough.
However, sometimes your need a bit more oomph, and that’s where the
options below come in:
Extra Strategic Question or Prompt
______________________
______________________
Exercises
Exercise #1
______________________
______________________
Exercise #2
______________________
______________________
Mini Sprint
Mini Sprint Question #1
______________________
______________________
Mini Sprint Question #2
______________________
______________________
You can see that the second section is not set-in-stone in any way; it’s more
like a bunch of “slots” into which I can insert specific exercises or prompts,
depending on what I need that day (if anything).
Let me start from the beginning, though, and describe my whole process.
First things first, I write down the date and time at the top of the page. I
mention two or three “amazing” things that happened yesterday, and from there I
switch to thinking about today by mentioning things I’m grateful for right now.
This is just under the heading “Gratitude.”
I mention one goal I am working towards, and I include a little countdown: “In
44 days I will….” (I started doing the countdown bit after using John Lee
Dumas’ The Freedom Journal.) Below this, I write out at least one thing I’m
going to do today to take me towards that goal, and also when I’ll do it.
I then move on to other affirmations, usually related to my much longer-term
goals, and that sort of thing. I put in as many as I feel are necessary. If, as I’m
about to write an affirmation, I realize it seems kind of far off or distant, or it just
doesn’t sound right and I have more doubts about it than I would like to have,
I’ll move it down a bit and stick it under another header I call “Visions to Make
Real.” (More on why I do this in the Affirmations section.) The top section, or
daily section, that you see above mostly boils down to “just create a structure
like the ones in pre-made journals, but make it customized.”
The “meat” comes when you add in the extra exercises, prompts, and mini
sprints, and then you start switching them in and out, day to day. The second
section is for stuff that is only used on an ad hoc or “as-needed” basis. You are
strategic about when, why and how you use these. You even plan them to some
degree, at least in the case of the mini sprints.
This is where journal writing truly becomes “intentional.”
For me, this “as needed” section almost always begins with questions or
prompts you would find in the Daily Prompts or in the Adding Your Own
Strategic Questions sections. In other words, I throw in the kind of prompts
other people might use daily, but which I only use sometimes, or when I feel
like I need them.
How might you use this idea? Well, for example, I write affirmations pretty
much every day, but maybe you don’t. Let’s say you do them only on some days
when you feel like you need them. They could go here after you finished up with
the stuff you did do every day.
After this, I move on to either a specific Exercise or I move to the exercises
from a given day of a Mini Sprint, if I’m in the middle of one. The difference
between the exercises and the mini sprints is mostly that Mini Sprints take place
over the course of several days, whereas Exercises are more “one-and-done”
type deals. This also means that I might decide to do an exercise on a whim (or
make one up!), whereas with mini sprints, if I’m on day three of a five-day
sprint, I know going in I’m going to be doing that sprint, and I’ve probably
planned the whole thing in advance.
Again, you are free to take or leave any of what I suggest. Maybe you skip the
daily stuff and only do mini sprints. Maybe you start with just one of the
prompts. Maybe you break up the sprints as “weekend” projects for when you
have more time. It depends on what you think you’ll need.
have more time. It depends on what you think you’ll need.
“If I’m getting my own blank journal, which kind
should I get?”
The most important criterion is that you like it. Get one that calls to you. You
should want to put your most precious secrets inside it and then hold it close to
your chest and never let go. (I am only slightly exaggerating.) More practically,
you want to get one that’s a little smaller than a single piece of letter paper. I
prefer journals that are 7 x 9 inches. Don’t get the tiny ones the size of a small
iPhone that fit in your inside coat pocket —they’re too small for this kind of
journaling.
A lot of people like Moleskins (the larger kind). They’re good quality, though
pricey. There are also cheaper options that are quite similar in shape and size.
How much paper quality matters depends on what kind of pen you use. I like
Pilot V5 rolling ball pens, which tend to bleed through any cheap quality paper.
A ballpoint pen wouldn’t cause this, but I’m not giving up my V5 rolling balls,
thank you very much.
Personally, I like the kind of journal you can generally find at any large
bookstore. I got mine from Chapters/Indigo here in Canada. As it turns out, the
specific one I have is called the LACCIO journal, from a company in Italy
(manufactus.it). The only problem I have is that it’s real leather, and I’m a
vegetarian for ethical reasons, so I’m not supposed to use leather. I stocked up a
few years ago before I became a vegetarian, and I’m literally on my last one. I’m
not sure what I’m going to replace it with.
I also keep a cheap spiral notebook — it’s from the grocery story, and it costs
less than a dollar — on my desk, stacked on my journal, for random
brainstorming and ideas that don’t need to be kept. Notes from Skype
conversations, random notes on work stuff that I need to keep for a day or two,
and no more. It’s for weird ideas, brain dumps and stuff. If I do end up wanting
to keep something from what I put in these cheaper notebooks, I’ll usually just
snap a photo of it with my phone, then send it to Evernote.
“Should I use multiple journals?”
This is an option. One of the advantages of using separate journals is keeping
projects and ideas separate. (Recall the previous chapter on brain spaces.)
For example, if you’re working eight hours a day at one job, but going to
school for a totally different discipline in the evenings, you’ve probably found
that it’s hard to quickly go back and forth between the frames of mind necessary
for each. It’s hard to move from one to the other, to get in the right zone or frame
of mind.
The same might be true if you’re a data analyst eight hours a day, but you’re
trying to write creative fantasy fiction at lunch, or first thing in the mornings.
You’re trying to switch very quickly between frames of mind. That’s hard.
One trick is to use separate journals for each. Having one journal for work
stuff, or daily career stuff, and another for school stuff or creative stuff, or
whatever it might be, can make the journal itself a habit trigger or anchor for
quickly getting in one frame of mind.
Opening up one journal filled with a bunch of stuff about your “daily tasks”
and “productivity,” all related to your career, and then opening up a second
journal filled with all your creative fiction ideas and goals, might be useful if
you really want to separate those two areas of your life.
So if, for example, you’re having trouble getting into a creative frame of mind
quickly at lunch, spend two minutes opening up your creativity-focused journal
to get you in the right frame of mind.
Or, if you wanted to work on a personal project in the evenings, you could
have a journal dedicated to that personal project (or dedicated to the larger goals
of which that project is just one part), and every day when you got home, you
could begin by filling out a few specific prompts. This would help energize and
anchor you, and help get you “in the zone,” and get you focused on why you
really do want to work on this project, right now, this evening, instead of
spending three hours on Netflix or zoning out on Buzzfeed or something.
This is just an idea. I will say you shouldn’t go crazy with it. One or two
journals, max. It might help to make them look differently from each other, too.
I don’t recommend having “sections” within a single journal. Go for a totally
separate journal, or just let the entries go back and forth one after another.
Having sections is like having a separate journal, except it’s not as good at
anchoring how “separate” the journals are supposed to be, and they come with a
bunch of extra drawbacks (e.g., you often end up wasting a lot of space).
Another idea would be to use one of the pre-made templates for one thing, and
a blank journal for another. For example, use The Freedom Journal to
accomplish some specific task, and use a blank journal for other general stuff.
Again, see the Resources section and check the links so you can compare the
similarities and differences between the templates of the pre-made ones before
you make a decision. (There’s a lot of overlap, but there are also subtle
differences.)
Your Turn: How to Quickly Create Your Ritual
The next few sections are about daily prompts, exercises, and mini sprints you
can pick and choose from in order to create your own ritual. You can then read
about the sprints and exercises to throw in on a more as-needed basis.
The first step is easy. Here’s all you need to do right now:
Pick a time when you can do it. Try to carve out a time and space for a
tortoise enclosure.
Put this on your calendar so it’s real.
Pick two to five prompts, ideas, or exercises from the next few sections.
Then, just get started.
You don’t need an amazing journal to get started. Your first entry can be on
scrap paper.
If you’re truly stuck after reading the next few sections, just borrow the
structure of a pre-made template journal to get started. You can add “extra” stuff
to that template later on. Again: check the Resources section for explanations of
the most well-known journals out there; most of them give you PDFs you can
download to get the gist of their structure. Of course, you can also buy a physical
copy if you think having one would help.
I will say that after having looked over a bunch of the pre-made templates and
comparing them, these are the main things I can tell you they have in common:
Most of them tend to focus on gratitude in some way.
Most of them focus on finding one or two main tasks for the day that you
can prioritize above all the other stuff you need to deal with.
You’ll learn more about these options in the next few sections, but I would
start from there, then add one or two extra things that seem appealing. (If it
helps, I’d say “Affirmations” are probably the next most popular prompt or
section the pre-made templates tend to include.)
Ideas for Your Personal Structure
Every day you can focus your mind with a few specific questions or prompts.
In this section, I’ll include a ton of prompts which you can choose to do daily
(morning, evening, or whenever), or which you can choose to just throw in on an
“as-needed” basis.
I have prompts that you can use to stay focused and insanely productive, as
well as prompts and tools to use when motivation is lagging, or when your
vision of the future just doesn’t seem as real as it sometimes does. You won’t
need all of them every day, and some might appeal to you more than others.
How to Use these Ideas
The answer to “how to use” these prompts and ideas is, simply, however you
want to.
My recommendation is to pick and choose the ones that are relevant to you. If
a prompt excites you, use it. If it doesn’t, don’t.
Keep in mind, also, that “daily” doesn’t have to mean truly 100% “daily” for
every one of these. I think daily journaling is a good habit, but even then, you
can go back and forth between some of these if that appeals more to you. I
personally balance a set daily structure with options that are open for different
things each day, but even that might be too rigid for you (or even too flexible).
In short, practice bricolage. Take these and make them your own.
Daily “Morning Pages”
Daily morning pages are a way to start your day with a brain dump. I mention
them first because the general idea is to first sift through all the junk floating
around in your head before you get to some of the other stuff. This way, when
you do get to the other stuff, all the small meaningless stuff that builds up each
day is out of the way for you, so you’re free and clear and ready to dig into the
juicier, important stuff.
Morning pages (or just “daily” pages, if you don’t do them in the morning)
come originally from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. I’ll quote directly
from her:
What are morning pages? Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing,
strictly stream-of-consciousness: “Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to
wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah, blah, blah ...” They might also, more
ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.
[…]
The morning pages are not supposed to sound smart—although sometimes they might. Most times
they won’t, and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages
except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so.19
I don’t use these every day, but I’m a big fan of the concept, for a few reasons.
Remember: bricolage. Since it’s my journal, I can do as I please, and the same
goes for you. You don’t have to use them exactly as written. In my own case, the
flexibility in some of the other things I do (gratitude, my number one focus
today, strategic questions, etc.) accomplishes what the morning pages are meant
to, simply because I tend to be flexible, and if I want to go off on a tangent or
work through an idea that’s kickin’ around in my noggin’, I will.
If I feel a bit frazzled and tangled up in the morning, I know that whenever I
need to, I can just include a brain dump to get started and get all that crap out
there. The morning pages, for me, are a tool.
I also want to mention the second benefit to these daily pages, because I think
this benefit is applicable to any other prompt you use daily, and indeed it’s
applicable to virtually any habit you do daily, including journaling itself.
In her book, Notebook Know-How (2005), Aimee Buckner makes an important
point about the daily pages. At first, her fourth-grade students write really trite
things. But then they get better and better, and they start writing things that,
frankly, don’t seem like they come from the pens of fourth-grade students. They
start saying remarkably insightful things.
Part of the reason for this is a concurrent habit that gets formed. Buckner says,
Don’t expect too much from these pages at first. This is where students will hide the most. They’ll
bore themselves silly writing about things of little importance to them.
[…]
Eventually, they will anticipate and plan for these pages. Getting through the mundane will be
easier and less of a burden. Creativity will begin to leak out and then ... a page will not be nearly
enough to contain it.
(Emphasis added.)
This is key. And again: it applies to almost everything you do in your journal
—eventually you just find yourself thinking about what you’re going to say in
your journal even when you’re not journaling. You’ll even start idly thinking
about which prompts or questions you might want to use from your repertoire or
toolbox.
Don’t worry, though. You’re not thinking actively or worrying about it, and
you’re not thinking with focused effort or anything, but yes: you do begin to find
there’s some old fashioned noodlin’ going on inside that head of yours. Maybe
it’s at lunch, or right after an argument or challenge that you realize you’ll want
to journal about later. Maybe it’s as you’re going to sleep at night.
The first time it happens, that’s when you realize: Wow, I’m looking forward
to my journal, and I’m looking forward to the benefits it gives me.
And those benefits extend to the rest of the day. You don’t just have to wait
until you’re in the middle of a journaling session to enjoy them, because now,
even as you go about the rest of your day, your brain is sorting through that
tangled ball of thought-yarn, sorting and rearranging things, prioritizing things,
and letting you get at what’s truly most important to you. Your brain is learning
to organize itself in new ways.
As I mentioned, a lot of people who talk about daily pages frame it as a brain
dump, as taking the trash out, and that kind of thing. Yes, it is that, but it’s not
all trash — sometimes it’s just stuff that needs to be untangled and organized.
This is a hugely important step in programming your brain because of the
positive effects it will have in areas of your life beyond your journal. You’ll feel
more focused, organized, and less swamped.
I also want to add that even if you’re using a more “structured” prompt than
morning pages, don’t discount the power of a random tangent or a brain dump. If
the ideas are kickin’ around in there, you can just start writing, and writing, and
writing some more, all to help you work through an idea (or series of ideas) from
all the angles. You get words onto the page so that you can better think about the
relationships between some of those ideas and concepts, and finally untangle
some of your thoughts.
A quick note about “free writing”
Before I discuss any other prompts, I want to make a very important note
about this kind of free writing, and this is especially relevant if you’ve tried it in
the past and hated it.
Here it is: when you’re free writing, it is totally okay if your pen “stops
moving.”
Your pen is allowed to stop.
You can stop and pause for a moment. Nothing bad will happen. I promise.
In the past, if you’ve felt trapped by the advice that you must never ever stop
writing or stop your pen from moving, I hereby free you from this damaging
advice.
When I teach writing at university, I find student after student who hates free
writing. But when I dig in and ask them about it, I discover that the sole reason
for this is that when they were first taught to do it, they were told they absolutely
could never stop writing, and they took this advice extremely literally. So every
time they try it, the student sits down, but they don’t have much to say, and in
trying to write as fast as they can and never let their pen stop moving, they
engage in all sorts of free associations and word dumping that are essentially
nonsense. They’re thinking too hard about trying to “not stop their pen from
moving,” rather than actually accessing and working through the important ideas
sitting there in their own brain.
They’re actually not engaged in a “brain dump”! Instead, they’re skirting over
the surface of all the good stuff that’s actually kicking around in their brain, just
waiting to be accessed. They’re so close to all that good stuff, too, if only they
realized it was okay to pause for one freaking second.
Just a little pause, here and there, that’s all it takes.
Once students learn it’s okay to pause every now and then, they see an
immediate improvement in how much this kind of free writing helps, because
those precious extra seconds allow them to finally access the thoughts that are
right there, just below the surface, instead of just jumping from random concept
to concept as fast as they can, worried about not stopping, ever.
If all you do is try to write as fast as you can and freely associate, your brain
can pull up ideas that are actually totally irrelevant to anything. Then, as you
keep going, your brain will link these irrelevant ideas to other irrelevant ideas.
Nothing will be relevant. Trust me, your brain can be very creative, and if it’s
panicked, it can create links from one mental domain to another based on some
really weird stuff. And yes, those weird links your brain makes can be extremely
interesting and worth exploring, but if you’re too panicked in the first place to
stop and explore those links, you lose that benefit as well!
Listen, as long as you don’t stop and ponder for literal minutes at a time, and
you don’t try to be a perfectionist or sound smart, pausing for five to ten seconds
is totally okay, and this is true whether we’re talking about morning pages, or a
brainstorm, or anything related to free writing. It’s still stream-of-consciousness,
but it’s stream-of-consciousness without the panic.
Daily Gratitude
What got me to really embrace gratitude is the idea that it cancels out all your
negative, petty emotions. You know the ones I mean: various forms of jealousy,
envy, resentment, even fear. Thankfully, gratitude basically cancels them out. If
you’re feeling grateful, you can’t be feeling resentful or petty or anything like
that.
This is a very useful idea if you think back to the problems of not thinking
about pink elephants. It doesn’t work to say, “Don’t be envious! Stop being
petty! I must not be petty! I MUST not be petty!”
Instead of focusing on those less healthy emotions, you just focus on the
emotion that cancels out the negative ones: real, raw gratitude.
The other benefit of gratitude is you can use it to overcome the sense that you
don’t have what it takes. Our minds always want to tell us, “Ah, well, that
success story had [blah blah] and [blah blah] going for them. I don’t have those
things. Therefore I can’t use them to prove I can do it too…”
Sure, you don’t have those resources that other person had. But you also likely
have resources that are unique to you, and which they, in turn, never had.
Gratitude can get you focused on those resources. These are the resources you
already have that other people, when they hear about your success story, will
say, “Oh, I can’t do what they did, that person had ______ and ________ going
for them…” and when you hear that you’ll just smile and nod. You’ve been
there.
With all that in mind, here are some things I find it helpful to be grateful for:
Your spouse.
A pet you hug when… well, when you need to hug a friend.
Skills you have.
Tools or software you have.
Things you’ve learned.
Your willpower and/or energy.
Opportunities you have.
Relationships you’ve developed.
Anything you feel you can leverage.
Successes you’ve had.
Notice that last one: successes you’ve had.
My final benefit for gratitude: gratitude makes you more humble. Confidence
and humility are not mutually exclusive. Arrogance might be mutually exclusive
with humility, but confidence? Even some pride? No way.
In fact, they’re deeply bound together. You can be proud of something you’ve
accomplished, while grateful and humble about the opportunities and support
systems that allowed you to make it happen. You’re still proud of what you
achieved, but you’re grateful for the opportunities that made that achievement
possible.
Think of it this way: have you ever noticed how truly confident people don’t
ever need to take all the credit for something? Without any “false” humility,
they’re just very quick to point out all the other people who helped or supported
them. (Speaking of false humility: doesn’t this go hand-in-hand with a false,
fragile confidence, as well?)
People who are open and humble yet still very confident just don’t feel the
need to hog all the credit. We like people like that. They inspire us.
Humility and real confidence go hand in hand. Gratitude is one of those secret
ingredients that gives you access to both.
You can practice this with a simple prompt:
Today I’m grateful for…
Or a question:
What am I grateful for?
Or, since it’s your journal, and you’ll know what it means, you can just stick it
in a header:
GRATITUDE:
• Write a thing for which you’re grateful…
• Write a second thing for which you’re grateful…
Alternatively, you can just put them in one after another, with no bullets, all in
a single paragraph. I actually do it like this, because I like the rhythm it creates;
the first few things I mention are always the same, so they become almost like an
incantation.
From there I usually just list things or people I’m genuinely grateful for, and
probably some things that are relevant to whatever I plan to do that day. If I’m
doing some changes to a website, the fact that I actually know a bit about HTML
and CSS will come in handy, and I’m grateful for that. If I just had dinner with
friends the night before, I’ll probably be reminded that I’m grateful for them.
Sometimes I’m even grateful for material things I have.
If you don’t like saying the same things over and over, a trick here is to just
get a little bit more specific. Instead of being grateful for your spouse, be
grateful for an amazing quality your spouse has; instead of being grateful for this
amazing quality they have, be grateful for a specific time when that quality
really shined through and helped you when you needed it.
Long-term Goals
Filling out your goals each and every day keeps you focused on them, and
keeps them feeling real to you. It also helps you decide on what you’re going to
do today to make them happen sooner.
Goals can seem far off, so reminding yourself that you’re working towards
them, and then actually deciding exactly what you’re going to do today to help
you move towards them (even if it’s just one super small thing), makes them
seem much closer and more real to you.
Obviously, most people have many goals. You don’t need to list all of them,
each and every day. That’d be impossible.
You can list the ones that are most important to you today, and you can also
stick with a primary goal for several weeks or months, if you want to keep it top
of mind.
I find, personally, that I have one or two goals that show up each and every
day, for months on end, then I have maybe four to six goals that are a bit
secondary, and they trade places with each other, showing up every other day or
so in my journal, and then I have kind of spur of the moment goals that I realize
I’ve been working towards unconsciously (often because I’ve just realized
they’re connected in some way with my more important, primary goals).
Your goals can be anything. I do recommend dedicating a sprint or something
to dig into your goals and your why behind them. Make no mistake: the why is
the most important part. The why is what makes the goal feel real, what makes it
feel important and worth going after, and also what guarantees you’ll feel
fulfilled when you achieve the goal. We all know it’s possible to be rich and yet
be totally unhappy and totally unfulfilled. (On the other hand, the idea that
money can’t buy happiness is one of those ideas that’s true—but only in a very
trivial way. It ignores the very real pain and stress of not having enough of
money.)
Side note: I write my goals out daily, but I actually don’t tend to create a
heading called “Goals” like I do with gratitude. Instead, I tend to make sure I
mention my goals in my affirmations, since it allows me to frame my goals as a
thing I am working towards: I am doing X, I am making Y happen, etc. If I feel
like I need more than that (maybe my motivation seems down that day),
sometimes I’ll have an extra strategic question or prompt that gets me to dig into
and visualize a specific goal, just so it feels real and concrete again, and actually
invigorates me.
Your ONE “Most Important Task” (1MIT)
In Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s The ONE Thing (2013), the authors mention
an interesting effect about dominoes and the force created by knocking a domino
ever.
As it turns out, if you take a normal domino and tip if over, it actually
generates enough force to knock over a domino that’s 50% larger than the first
one.
In other words, if you start with a normal-sized domino that’s two inches tall,
because of the power of compounding, the 31st domino could actually be 3000
feet taller than Mount Everest, and the buildup of energy that starts with that
tiny two-inch domino would be enough to knock it down. By the time you got to
the 57th domino, the domino that gets tipped over could be almost as tall as the
distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Your ONE Most Important Task, or 1MIT, should be a search for that starter
domino, the key leverage point, that will make the other things easy. If you
accomplish it, it will lead you to bigger and better things.
On the macro level, my starter domino is actually my morning ritual itself,
which is when I do my journaling and decide from there on my 1MIT. It starts
with journaling, then I move on to my most important task of the day, which is
usually writing. If I get that done, managing the rest of the day is easy. Trying to
work that stuff in with the rest of the day is much harder, and kind of a pain,
frankly.
The first domino for me is the journaling because that’s where I decide what
the other ONE thing is that day. Usually it’s writing, which I do immediately
afterwards, because that’s when my brain is at its best.
But you could do the same thing the evening before, or even, if you work 9-5
but want to get work done on personal projects in the evening, right after work.
FIVE TIPS
to Find Your Day’s “1MIT”
Let me suggest five tips to finding your ONE Most Important Task for the
day.
Honestly, I think most days you’ll have a good idea what it is. There will be
ONE thing you can find that, more than anything else, will take you closer to
your goal. The more you zero in on that, the better.
But on days where you’re not sure, let me suggest a few tips. For an example,
I’ll use “Write 2,000 words today on __________” (where the blank space is the
name of your book, or novel, or thesis, or whatever it may be).
1. It should be a S.M.A.R.T. goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,
and Time-Bound.
Since we’re talking about a daily task, it is already necessarily Time-Bound.
But make it specific, attainable, and realistic. By “measurable,” I simply suggest
it be something that’s easy to check off. Either you did it, or you didn’t. If you
want to write 2,000 words a day, either you did it, or you didn’t. If you hit 1,000,
you didn’t do it. If you hit 1,999, you didn’t do it. Write another sentence. If you
hit 2,500, you did. If you hit 5,000 you did. And yes, you can reward yourself
that day for killing it.
Conversely, if you write every day, but you consistently hit only 500 words,
your goal isn’t yet Realistic. You can climb and move up to 2,000 words, but not
yet. You want to be able to reach your 1MIT 99.9% of the time.
2. It should be something that will feel good when you accomplish it.
Again, let’s say you want to be a novelist. If you do, it probably feels good to
write a couple thousand words. It can even feel good to just record the number in
a spreadsheet, because you know those daily numbers tend to quickly add up
over time. Writing 2,000 words a day means it takes 25 days to write a 50,000
word novel or book, and only 50 days to write 100,000 words.
3. It can stay the same each day, every day, but this is not a requirement at
ALL.
It doesn’t have to, but it can. Your 1MIT can stay the same for a few months,
then switch for a few months. Or it can stay the same every day, but on days
where you know you’re just not going to be able to do it, you adjust it for that
day. But you do it in the morning or the evening before, and you’re intentional
about it.
For example, if you want to be a novelist, it can be “write 2,000 words.” Each
and every day. It doesn’t have to change. But if you’re traveling, maybe you
know 2,000 words will be extremely difficult. You can make it only 500 words.
Or it can be, “Get three new ideas into Evernote” (or into an idea journal, or a
file called “ideas.txt,” etc.). It can even be something totally unrelated to the
writing itself, if, say, you’re at a conference and your 1MIT that day is to go
meet so-and-so, even though you’re a giant introvert. Or go talk to three new
people. Or anything that will move the needle.
This brings me to tip 4.
4. Find the key leverage point.
With our aspiring novelist example, more than anything else, writing 2,000
words will move the needle on their career. The other stuff—the marketing, the
blog, the networking with authors or publishers or whatever else they might
think it is important to do—all that works better the more books they have under
their belt. The writing is the thing they can leverage. They can slack off on the
other stuff, but if they get the words out there, the day is a win. This is even true
of editing, since they can’t edit until they have a rough draft.
5. It should be something you wouldn’t necessarily do anyways.
For example, don’t make it “go to work.” First of all, that’s not specific
enough (see Tip #1). Second, you’ll probably do that anyways. As I mentioned
above, I don’t make “journaling” my 1MIT, even though to me, that’s the starter
domino. I do it anyways, and my journaling session is when I decide on the
actual 1MIT. (And I usually do that 1MIT right after journaling, when my time
is still my own. But that’s not a requirement!)
Now, you have to be honest with yourself. If you’re having trouble with
writing, it can be “write something.” Every day, you have to write something.
There’s no word cap, but you have to write something related to some specific
project. I did this on my dissertation, where the words don’t come very quickly.
You can’t just sit and write—you have to double-check and cross-reference and
blah blah. Almost every paragraph has one or two citations. But as long as I
wrote a single freaking sentence I wasn’t avoiding the actual writing and getting
caught in the research.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you’re 30 years into a writing career,
and you’ve written 2,000 words a day rain or shine for all those years, then you
probably don’t have to make it your one thing any more. You’ll do it no matter
what. Your ONE thing could be something else that’ll move the needle for you,
something on top of the words. Again: honesty.
Of course, you can also decide on several important tasks you’re going to do
each day.
Several pre-made journals do this, including the Productivity Planner and The
Emergent Task Planner. They also tend to give you little boxes or squares to fill
in so that you can decide how many focused periods of time (like 25-minute
Pomodoros of focus on a single task20) you’ll allocate to each. The benefit here
is that you visualize the time allotment, which is a very helpful shorthand for our
brains, especially for this kind of stuff.
I do this when needed, but I always find it helpful to focus on the ONE Most
Important Task that would make the day a win. It simplifies things and gets me
focused. The 1MIT gets priority, the others are secondary. As always, my
recommendation is do what works. I want to emphasize also that it’s okay to use
a slightly different system from day to day. Some days you can have two tasks,
some days five. It’s up to you.
Affirmations
If you’ve ever tried affirmations, but they felt a bit “empty,” this section is for
you.
For a long time, when I thought of “affirmations,” I would imagine a very
meek, frazzled skinny guy standing in front of his bathroom mirror trying to
convince himself that he’s confident, successful, and wealthy, when he was
obviously far from any of those things.
Then I read research that said if you don’t believe in them, affirmations make
you feel worse.21 By this point, I just thought affirmations were always awful. I
thought there were no potential benefits, but that there were huge risks.
I wish I could tell you there was a single “Eureka!” moment that changed my
mind about them, but the truth is it was simply a lot of time, research, and
experimentation that led me to slowly and grudgingly accept that recording
affirmations in your journal can be extremely powerful and useful.
Affirmations can help you focus. Affirmations can motivate you. They can put
you into an empowering state of mind almost instantly, like magic.
Now, I said they can do all these things, with “can” being the keyword.
Reader beware: if you use affirmations in the wrong way, they will be empty,
meaningless, and, believe it or not, they will be even worse than useless.
Affirmations, done poorly, can actually make you feel worse.
I believe there are two, closely-related keys to experiencing some of the very
powerful benefits of affirmations.
The first key is that they need to have weight behind them, and the second key
to affirmations is that you need to believe them.
I’ll discuss both these keys in a bit of depth, so you can know with surety that
you’re really benefiting from them. Finally, I’ll offer you an alternative to
affirmations, if there are specific ones you don’t think feel real, or they don’t yet
have that weight to them you think you need.
Affirmation “Weight”
By “weight,” I mean that any individual affirmation should be just one piece
By “weight,” I mean that any individual affirmation should be just one piece
of a much larger vision or set of goals that you have already spent time thinking
about, and to which you’re already fully committed.
Let me explain with an analogy.
Think of the most heart-wrenching, emotional movie you’ve ever seen, or a
powerful book you’ve read. Maybe think back to one that was bittersweet, sad,
that brought you to tears, or at least gave you that feeling behind the eyes that
you could cry. (C’mon, you know the one. It comes with a tightness in the chest,
like you have this huge depth of emotions that have suddenly risen up, and now
you physically can’t even contain them.)
Now think about what would happen if you were to sit through a trailer for it,
or if you were to skip to the most heart-wrenching scene in the movie or book
and re-experience “just” that scene.
You’d go right back into a state of high emotion, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t
experience “just” the trailer, or “just” that individual scene. Your memories and
cognitive associations would come into play, and you can bet they would
drastically affect your current experience.
If you were to do this before you ever saw the movie or read the book, a trailer
or individual scene might be pretty sad, but honestly, it wouldn’t have much
weight behind it, would it?
By contrast, after you’ve seen the movie, those individual scenes or trailers act
as a kind of shorthand for all the emotional weight that comes with the entire
experience. The more you’re invested in the full experience, the more powerful
that shorthand will be. In my case, I really like the book, Cloud Atlas (2004), by
David Mitchell. I also really like the movie that came out by the Wachowskis.
So not only can the movie’s trailer put me right back into the state I was in
when I first sat through the movie and it reached its crescendo climax, but
nowadays, just listening to the movie’s instrumental finale music is enough to do
that to me.
Let me give another, more powerful example.
When I was in middle school, I remember one class we were learning “When
the Saints Go Marching In.” It’s a very popular, recognizable tune that sticks
with you: …Oohhh when the saints… ♫
(You’re probably thinking of the tune right now.)
Anyways, we were at the point in the semester, and our musical careers, when
we weren’t good enough to just pick up our instruments and play the sheet music
we weren’t good enough to just pick up our instruments and play the sheet music
in front of us all together and properly in sync or harmony, at least not where it
would sound like anything recognizable. But we were at the point when we
could get there pretty quickly over the course of a single class.
Just as we were approaching a point where probably all of us were sitting there
thinking, “Oh, wow, this actually does sound like the song!” we noticed that one
of the boys in the class was actually balling his eyes out.
The music quickly stopped, exchanging glances with each other, wondering
what was happening.
Our teacher at the time was an excellent one. You know the kind I’m talking
about, one whose positive influence on us went far beyond our ability to play a
bit of music. I can’t remember exactly what this teacher said, but my recollection
is that he handled it really well, and made the room a safe space for the boy who
was crying.
(My recollection of being a teenage boy is that, yes, we are capable of great
kindness and caring, but because of our own fragile sense of self-consciousness,
we aren’t always the best at dealing with someone who’s vulnerable.)
As it turned out, the boy said, as he collected himself, they had played, “When
the Saints Go Marching In” at his grandfather’s funeral.
His grandfather, with whom he was very close, had passed away five years
ago. At our young age, that’s practically a lifetime, but he’d loved his
grandfather, and felt his loss deeply.
And as we had sat there in class, in our chairs, playing the music, again and
again, and within the span of a single class we became better and better and the
tune became more and more recognizable, the boy had been worked up into this
state of high emotion — the exact same emotional state he’d been in when he’d
been sitting there, in the church pew at his grandfather’s funeral.
The boy had been going through the pain, the loss, the sadness, as well as, by
extension, the associated bittersweet memories of when his grandfather had been
around.
All it took was a single song, one that isn’t inherently sad at all. But because
of the boy’s specific cognitive associations with the song — which is just a
fancy way of saying all the weight behind the song — the tune had brought him
back to that exact moment, and the exact state of mind he’d been in.
Affirmations, done correctly, work a lot like this.
You don’t just say them by themselves. That’s like only listening to movie
soundtracks and expecting them to have the exact same emotional effect as the
movie itself. In order for the music to have that effect, you need to watch the
movie, and it has to have a real, true emotional impact on you when that specific
music is playing.
Affirmations are the music that bring you back into that state. They’re not just
an individual sentence, but an individual sentence that comes loaded with a
flurry of empowering cognitive associations that put you into an empowered
state.
In short: this is another way of saying affirmations work best when they
build on some of the other things you do in your journal.
If you’re not sure what I mean, try the 5-Day Success Starter Sprint first, and
craft affirmations based on some of what you write about or discover there.
And even then, make sure that any affirmations you do write are ones that
have some weight behind them. Only you can decide on this.
This brings us to our second key to affirmations: you also want to be acutely
aware of which of your goals or aspirations you believe in most, and to which
you feel most committed. Which of your goals get you most excited while at the
same time feel the most real? Again: no one can decide this except you!
The “You Better Believe It” Rule
Here’s how NOT to do an affirmation: Stand in front of your bathroom mirror,
shake your first, and say, “I am a confident person! I am a confident person! I
AM a confident person!” when you don’t for even a split second believe you are
a confident person.
If you do that, you will feel worse, you will feel less confident, and overall it’ll
just be downhill from there.
By contrast, if you’re Muhammed Ali, and you say, with firmness, “I am the
greatest,” and you really believe it because you’re freaking Muhammad Ali,
well, there’s probably something to that.
This problem of belief can seem like a catch-22: if you just affirm stuff you
already believe, what’s the point of doing it in the first place?
My answer is you do not have to completely believe the affirmation itself,
especially if it contradicts reality, but you do have to completely believe you’re
on your way there, and that, generally speaking, you are making real progress
towards that reality.
Of course, this relates to what I said about affirmations needing some weight
behind them. Don’t create an affirmation like, “I am a confident person,” if you
haven’t already spent some time and done some work on that idea. First, it’ll
have no weight if you don’t do the work. Second, doing the work will give you a
much better idea as to whether or not you believe in and are committed to the
affirmation.
Affirmations are just a form of visualization turned into language. It’s very
useful and powerful to visualize things you don’t believe are literally happening
as you visualize them, as long as you believe that what you’re imagining is
something you have the power to make real.
The power of an affirmation that doesn’t represent current reality, but
represents a reality you are committed to, is that the words themselves become a
kind of magic incantation that you latch onto, stubbornly, and then you don’t let
go.
That’s at the heart of what I mean by “belief.”
An affirmation has to be something you can latch onto, believe in, and then
stubbornly refuse to let go of it.
I believe that humans have an important inner freedom, but that this freedom
is limited. You are free, and yet of course you are influenced by the external
world, by other people, even by parts of your brain you don’t control.
It’s sheer nonsense to pretend otherwise, but keep in mind this doesn’t make
our inner freedom any less powerful; it just means we have to ruthlessly protect
that freedom.
In short: dreams are worth protecting.
You’re allowed to be stubborn about them.
You will have doubts. You will hear from people who tell you that you can’t
do this or can’t do that. These will often come from people who have given up a
measure of their own freedom, all in exchange for the petty, small payoff of
feeling “right.”
I mean, let’s be real. If you showed me ten people with very lofty, very
ambitious goals, and you told me nothing else about them, but you forced me to
make a 50/50 bet with you as to whether or not each one of them would succeed,
I’d bet against them. Statistically, that’s the most likely outcome.
But that doesn’t matter. Screw the statistics. Screw a need to feel “right.”
Personally, I consider that need a very vulgar and petty form of pride.
All that matters is you, and what you believe.
It’s worth it to try, and it’s pathetic to give up at the outset because of the
odds, or because it’s easy to feel “right.” There’s a reason we prize stories of
human achievement where someone beat the odds.
I mean, obviously: don’t invest your life savings in something that,
statistically, won’t work. That’s stupid.
But most things don’t require that kind of risk.
The only real risk is one of pride. We’re afraid to fail. We have a serious
aversion to “loss,” even when that loss isn’t real or material in any way. It’s just
a feeling of having not won.
In fact, most of these types of things actually have asymmetric risk-reward
ratios. If you lose, you lose a bit of pride. If you make it, you take a step
forward, and grow, and achieve massive success. You have to lose a bunch of
times, and pick yourself up a bunch of times — because, if we are being honest
with ourselves, then yes, even when there is no “material” loss, it still sucks.
This is what Angela Duckworth means by grit. It’s one of the most important
factors in lifelong success. It is the ability to pick yourself up and keep going.
It’s not positive thinking or pretending that life’s lollypops and rainbows. It’s
picking yourself up, working through the pain, and stubbornly refusing to take
the easy exit, because there will always be one, right there, calling to you.
Affirmations are the thing you just freaking stubbornly latch onto, and you
don’t let go.
They are there to help protect your inner freedom and your dreams from the
doubters, the haters, and the energy vampires out there in the world. Use them
wisely! (Oh, and enjoy them!)
What makes a good affirmation?
Generally, I like affirmations that begin with “I am,” “I have,” or “I VERB.”
As I said, they don’t have to completely represent current reality, but you
should use affirmations you can actually believe in or truly get behind, and
which you can write down with firmness. Personally, writing out a good
affirmation excites me, and makes the vision or goal seem more real to me. It
puts me back into a state where I can almost taste it, and that keeps me focused.
Sometimes I write out affirmations that don’t do this for me. I just don’t use
those ones again. It’s fine. You experiment.
Yes, you can be creative with these. You should be creative with these!
Sometimes you discover a new affirmation that, as soon as you write it out,
you immediately think, “Yes. This is a key piece of the puzzle.” You write it
down and you realize it’s both an important factor in your goals or dreams, and
it’s also something you can truly believe. You write it out and think, “Yes, this is
me. This is who I want to be.”
This means that the “further away” a goal or vision is or seems from my
present reality, and I know that, and I know that my brain knows that, the less
likely I’m going to use it as an affirmation, and the more likely it is that I’ll use
it in what I call a “Visions to Make Real” section (more on this in a second!).
Here are some examples of affirmations:
I am leaner and leaner every single day.
I write 3,000 words every day.
I am an author.
I am unstoppable.
I earn $10,000 every month from
.
I have unlimited energy.
I have totally untapped stores of physical energy.
I have everything I need right now to achieve massive success.
I am smart and strategic about my goal to
.
Use whatever makes you feel like your larger goals and vision are somehow
more concrete. Only you can be the true judge of this.
If an affirmation is just not presently true, and my brain knows it isn’t true, I
will use an alternative to affirmations I call, “Visions to Make Real.”
“Visions to Make Real”
(…an Affirmation Alternative)
These are very simple. They’re like affirmations, except you file them under a
separate heading, one which acknowledges that they don’t feel as real as the
affirmations do, at least not “yet.”
Also, instead of using the present tense, you might use future tense. So instead
of “I am,” or “I have,” you might write, “I will be,” or “I will have.” That’s it.
That’s the only difference.
Whether or not you use these instead of some affirmations, or which ideas you
use them with, are totally up to you. This is all about your brain and what you
believe or feel.
Your brain isn’t stupid. If you try to tell it things it doesn’t believe, it’ll come
back with, “Uh, seriously? You want me to believe that?”
If that’s what your brain is saying in response to an affirmation, it shouldn’t be
an affirmation.
That’s where Visions to Make Real come in. With these, your answer to your
brain is, “No, I don’t expect you to believe it. But it is where we’re going, so
deal with it.”
The decision as to whether or not to use these, or when, is based entirely on
you, and doing your own gut check.
I want to be clear: again, I think it is perfectly acceptable to have insanely
lofty goals.
Like, insanely. Totally unrealistic. The kind of stuff any reasonable or
intelligent person would scoff at.
As in, if you want to write, “I earn $10 million dollars every year,” even when
you’ve never earned more than minimum wage, well, that’s totally okay in my
book. Do it. If you can write that as an affirmation, and really believe in it, and
really use that to do something about it, then go ahead. Screw what anyone else
thinks or says.
However, if you’ve never earned more than minimum wage, and you have no
idea how to go from there to $10 million per year, and writing “I earn $10
million per year” just doesn’t feel real (which is fine and normal), then in this
case file it under Visions to Make Real.
In short: for affirmations stick to stuff that feels real and true. And by real I
mean so real you can almost taste it.
A good way to think about the difference is this: affirmations are good when
you have a decent idea how you’re going to go from A to Z. You have some idea
of the path. There are unknowns, and you know there will be hardships, but
you’re committed to doing it and you can see it in your head. By contrast, if you
have no clue how you’ll go from A to Z, but you still really want to get to Z, file
it away in the “Visions to Make Real” section, and then use Affirmations for the
stuff you do know how to do.
For example, using our friend above, who has only ever earned minimum
wage, but wants to earn $10 million per year, maybe this person knows, based
on their education, their degree, or their skills, how if they really went for it, they
could get a $50k/year job. It would take a little strategy, some pounding of the
pavement, and zeroing in on that target like crazy, but doing it feels real. They
can see that path. There are unknowns, but they can see it. That can be the
affirmation, while the $10 million per year can be in the Visions to Make Real.
This might sound pedantic, but the reason for this distinction is so that you
don’t accidentally install doubts in yourself.
It’s been proven in the research that affirmations just don’t work very well if
you don’t believe in them. So my advice is this: be real, and be honest. This is
why the gut check is 100% on you. If you can really, truly believe in what you
write, awesome. If you write it and think “Aw, I dunno…” then start smaller for
the affirmation, and file away the really lofty stuff in “Visions to Make Real.”
Also, keep in mind that this is not some two-day transformation seminar where
you write down all your goals and then stick with them. I’m describing things
you can do daily, or weekly, or every few days, or whatever.
Everything you write today can be different tomorrow. You’ll be modifying
all of these things as you go.
What doesn’t feel real today might feel a lot more real a few months from
now, after you’ve racked up some smaller wins. As you go through some doors,
others will open up, and you’ll start seeing new possibilities. The things you’ve
already achieved will be things you can leverage to go even further.
Or, you’ll realize that your goals have changed. What once seemed important
will seem less important. You’ll get new goals. That’s all fine.
Affirmations and “Visions to Make Real” just keep you focused on what your
long-term goals are, at least for today, and the point of them, and intentional
journaling, is to get you focused here, now, on doing the things you need to do.
We use these journaling tools so we know where we stand: here’s where we
are, here’s where we’re going, and here’s what we need to do, and who we need
to be, to get there.
Your Own Strategic Questions
Every question is, in some sense, a rhetorical question. Every question you ask
brings with it a host of presuppositions and assumptions. Every question defines
the conditions according to which it may be answered.
For a starter example, let’s look a question that is a bit over-the-top:
“Why do I suck so much?”
This seems over the top, but I’d bet most people have unconsciously asked this
of themselves if you add “at ____” to the end.
As in, you screw up, or something doesn’t work out, and you ask, “Ugh, why
do I suck so much at ________?” or “Argh! What am I so bad at ______?”
(Depending on how frustrated you are, there might be more colorful language
in it.)
The problem with such a question, obviously, is that it presupposes that you
suck. It’s not a question of whether you suck; no, that part is assumed. From this
assumption, the question tells your brain to start answering why you suck so
much. Your unconscious will start exploring and imagining reasons why you
suck, then, on top of that, why you suck so much, and finally — on an even more
subtle level — what “so much” even means.
In other words, on one level, the question asks you to explore why you suck so
much, and it asks you to explore all the ways in which you suck.
If you want to go back to brain shaping and mind control, I think it is safe to
say this is not an empowering question. Imagine again you’re the captain of a
giant ocean liner. There’s an iceberg, right ahead. Your first thought is, “Aw,
this is my fault.” You have access to an entire crew, so you turn to them and say,
“You! Ensign! I want you to visit the bowels of the ship and find out why I suck
so much! Find out why I did this!”
The ensign comes back a few minutes later with plenty of answers from other
grumbling crew members. They were happy to answer the question! So the
ensign stands there, rambling off answers, and you, the captain, stand there, right
at the ship’s wheel and all your navigational instruments, listening to all the
reasons you suck so much.
Meanwhile, the iceberg is a bit closer. You have done nothing about it. But the
ensign is saying stuff like, “Well, one time you gave this other order and it didn’t
work out!” and “And this other time, you tried to steer the ship but that also
ended up not working!”
At the end of it, you turn to the ship’s wheel, your instruments, the rest of the
crew, and—you’re paralyzed. Why? Because the ensign has just listed all the
times when using your amazing, complex instruments, all the things that give
you ultimate command over the ship, resulted in something not working out
totally right. So the iceberg is still right ahead, but you’re thinking, “Oh, but last
time I tried to steer this thing, it kinda messed things up. And last time I gave an
order, I didn’t like what came back, and that was a screw-up as well…”
Standing immobile, mouth hanging open a bit, like a zombie, you look to all
the instruments you have at your disposal, the stuff you use to take command of
the ship, and yet sure enough, without fail, the ensign has relayed to you
sometime in the past when using a given instrument resulted in you “failing.”
You’re totally, 100% paralyzed.
When you ask a question like this, and you presuppose a belief like, “I suck,”
your brain will be almost completely unable to start exploring or imagining
reasons why the opposite is true, why you don’t suck, or why you’re awesome,
or capable of more, or even why you are at least capable of starting small and
digging yourself out of whatever situation you’re in.
You’re already boned, in other words.
Most people find this pretty obvious, so let’s go deeper.
Here’s another pernicious question:
“Why does this always happen to me?”
What does a question like this assume or presuppose?
I would argue this question is an even deadlier one than the first question, for
two reasons:
1. On the surface, it seems like a decent question: if stuff is happening to you,
shouldn’t you find out why? However, the problem is…
2. …the underlying structure of the question robs you of agency.
The answer to the question won’t actually get you anywhere. Your brain will
just come up with all kinds of reasons as to why you’re powerless.
This is what I mean by the underlying structure of the question robs you of
agency: your ability to act and take ownership of that action. Grammatically, you
become the object of the sentence. Remember middle school? Subjects do things
to objects. Don’t be the object. Be the subject, the doer of the action.
When you ask “Why does this always happen to me?” you turn yourself into
an object. Stuff is happening to you. It’s not even, “Gosh, I screw up a lot, but at
least I can try to change that,” it’s more like, “I’m just kinda here, and the
universe crushes me and there’s nothing I can do, because the agent of the action
is outside me, beyond my control.”
And if, on top of that, you train your brain to come up with all sorts of whys,
you just strengthen all that stuff that’s beyond your control.
The really pernicious thing is that the question’s underlying presuppositions
might even be true: stuff does happen to you that’s beyond your control. Awful
stuff. Stuff that’s unfair. But your ability to respond, your own personal agency,
your choice as to how you respond to what “happens to you” is your
fundamental human freedom. Victor Frankl called it the last human freedom.22
Please don’t waste that last human freedom on a question that robs you of your
other freedoms.
Now, you could argue that you’re not giving up any freedom at all. Maybe
you’ve identified a consistent pattern of something happening to you, in your
life, and it’s about time you got to the bottom of it, precisely so that you can do
something about it! Shouldn’t you ask the question then, in that case?
No, you shouldn’t.
Look, if you’re asking the question so that you can get to the bottom of things,
of course that seems fine, but I would wager you probably already know “why”
something is happening to you. Anything beyond what you already know is just
going to be a bunch of crap that isn’t true, and it’ll be a bunch of crap that will
still rob you of agency, because you’ll probably come up with things you really
can’t do anything about.
Just skip straight to the end, and ask, “What can I do about it?”
“Argh! Don’t you get it? To answer that I need to know why!” you say.
Yeah, yeah. I hear you.
But if, in order to answer what you can do about this thing that’s happening to
you, your brain needs to dig into why it’s happening in the first place, then guess
what? Your brain will do that. Your brain is pretty smart. Don’t you trust it
enough already to do that?
If you’re the type of person who takes pride in digging into the real causes
behind your experiences, you probably already trust your brain. Trust it here.
When you start with the “What can I do about it?” part, you control your
focus, so that you still dig into the why, but you only do so exactly as much as
you need to, in order to answer the more empowering and useful question of
what you can do about it.
The Number One “Meta” Question to Ask
Whenever you ask a question, it’s good to stop for a moment and think,
“Where will this get me?”
Be honest, and think about how your brain tends to work on these problems.
In other words, what kinds of answers are you going to get?
Imagine your brain or your unconscious was a really trustworthy personal
assistant: one who knows everything about you, who is totally trained in
research, and who is just as smart as you.
This means if you ask them “how” to do something, they’ll come back with a
bunch of research, as well as detailed notes and a breakdown of where your
assistant thinks the key leverage points and opportunities are. They might even
have a few recommendations for strategies they think you should use, even if the
final decision is up to you.
You give them the instructions, they scamper off, do whatever it is they need,
and then come back to you with answers. It’s that simple. If they need to dig into
some other, secondary questions, they will.
You can trust them to figure out what those secondary questions are, but you
want to give them the number one question that, once answered, will make your
life better.
life better.
Controlling Your Questions with Journaling
Controlling your brain with questions is powerful, but it is also a skill.
Everyone — everyone — still asks disempowering questions sometimes, but you
can learn to avoid them for the most part, once you embrace and think through
how disempowering they can be. They become kind of disgusting: things that
rob you of your agency and free will, while providing only a kind of mean or
petty secondary benefit.
The nice thing about journaling, though, is you get to stop and consciously
pick the questions you ask.
You get to do it in a safe, low-pressure situation.
You get to install the question, and install the habit.
You can do it first thing in the morning, or late at night. You still train your
brain in an empowering way.
Good Example Questions
What’s my superpower?
Which of my superpowers will I use today?
What are three things I’m grateful for?
What is my number one goal for today?
What is one thing I will do today to help me accomplish [insert longer term goal]?
What is something I can improve today / tomorrow, and how will I do it?
In
year(s), what am I totally dedicated to accomplishing?
How can I make today better than it would otherwise be?
How can I make today a huge win?
How can I expect to grow today?
What is one small thing I will do today to improve my relationship with my spouse / friend / family member?
What is one skill or resource of mine I’ll use today?
What is one thing I can learn today?
What is one empowering belief I already have?
What am I looking forward to today / tomorrow?
What is one small thing I can do today / tomorrow to help someone important to me?
What is one goal I’m going to get closer to today?
What is one challenge I’m looking forward to?
What is one thing I’m better at today than I was yesterday?
4 Sets of Question Re-frames
1. What is something that challenged me (or will challenge me) today?
2. How will I overcome it?
1. What’s one thing I’m not looking forward to doing today / tomorrow?
2. How can I do it and still enjoy the entire process?
1. What is one thing I have to do today / tomorrow?
2. How can I not just do it, but totally blow it out of the water?
1. Where are my expectations set too low?
2. What can I do to raise that bar to an insanely high level, and still totally believe in it?
Picking Questions for Your Journal
You can pick one question, or a few, based on how you want to control your
focus. You get to decide.
This will be based purely on personal preference, and where you’re at on a
given day. This is true mentally (e.g., something is bothering you), and also
practically. Maybe you have a hectic schedule coming up and you want to stay
focused through it all, or you have a big goal you want to especially focus on for
the next week or so.
Throw certain questions in daily, or throw in some only on an “as-needed”
basis. (The questions that are two-step cognitive re-frames, for example,
probably only need to be done when there’s something specific you need to deal
with.)
Example Custom Structure
I’ve already described my own, and given a pre-made template example (the
5-Minute Journal), but let me describe one way to set up your daily prompts, and
balance them with some of the “as needed” ideas in this book, such as the nondaily exercises or mini sprints you don’t necessarily do every day, but rather
when you need them.
If you were to pick and choose a few prompts from the above example as your
daily set up, you might end up with something like this:
2 things I’m grateful for…
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
4 daily affirmations…
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
4. ______________________
My ONE Most Important Task today is…
______________________
______________________
What am I looking forward to today? *
______________________
______________________
* Note: This question is switched out for one of the re-frames if there’s something you’re dreading
and you feel as though you need to deal with that.
[Insert any extra “as needed” exercises, questions, or mini sprints]
______________________
______________________
You can see this custom setup borrows from a few of the setups above. It’s got
a balance of structure with some variance every day.
If I had to guess, were you to do it this way, you’d probably come back to a
few of the same questions again and again for that last section. For example,
every other day you might throw in, “What’s one thing I’m looking forward to
today?” because you like that question. Or you might go back and forth between
that one and “What is one thing I can learn today?”
In other words, you don’t have to come up with some new question every time
you open the journal, but in your personal setup, you’ve got a spot where, if you
do have some new question you want to try out in your journaling, you do it
there By the way: you don’t have to use numbers like I did in the example
above, where you do exactly “4” affirmations, or “2” things you’re grateful for
or something. Personally, I don’t use numbers for stuff like that. Sometimes I
write three affirmations, sometimes as many as seven to ten. It depends on what
I feel I need.
In my own journal, my “1MIT” is a number, technically, in that it is usually
ONE thing, because that’s basically the point. If you write down two “ONE
things,” something’s obviously sort of broken—and yet… sometimes I do! Some
days there really are just two equal things, and I need to make sure they both get
done!
At the same time, you might not choose to do a 1-MIT at all, but start with
your three most important tasks. I just really like whittling things down to one
single, most important thing, but lots of journals break down tasks in terms of
the one or two main ones, then a few secondary ones, and so on.
My point is just that some people really like having a number as part of the
structure. If that’s you, include a number. Always aim to hit such-and-such a
number of things you’re grateful for, or so many affirmations, and so on.
If you want more freedom, though, don’t include a number.
If you’re in between, make the number “at least two” or “at least three” or
something, so you have a minimum, and then if you want to throw in more, do
so.
I want you to see some of the ways you can balance a baseline structure
with creativity, freedom and flexibility.
Your “baseline” structure can be the average or mean, or it can be the bare
minimum for each section. Your structure can change day to day, and the
baseline structure can change over time.
Just start with something, try it, and see what happens. If you don’t know
where to start, either use the example above or see the Resources section and
start with one of the pre-made templates.
Quick Start Checklist
Getting Started ASAP: A Checklist
Step 1.
For the first section, pick one to three daily prompts that can be part of your
daily structure: gratitude, affirmations, specific questions that appeal to you.
Alternatively, just use a pre-made template.
Step 2.
For the second section, pick out two to three exercises that appeal to you, and
keep these exercises in your “back pocket.” You don’t even have to use them
right now. You have them “just in case.”
Step 3.
Pick one Mini Sprint, and begin with that, to be completed over the next three
to five days, at the end of your daily prompts section. I recommend the Success
Starter Sprint if you’ve never done goals or anything like that before.
Step 4.
On a plain sheet of paper, write down your intended sample structure, the
exercises you’d like to have on “standby,” and the mini sprint you’re going to do
to start things out. Stick this piece of paper in your journal. (You’ll have it
memorized in no time, but for now, have it there for quick reference.)
memorized in no time, but for now, have it there for quick reference.)
Step 5.
Decide when you will do your journal writing, and put it in your calendar. If
you need to set a reminder or an alarm (or both), do it. Also, set up your
environment so that it is your own private tortoise enclosure. This is where you
craft the rest of your life. Protect it.
“What if I don’t have a journal yet?”
Get a crappy one from the nearest convenience store today, or just write on a
plain sheet of paper. It can be lined or not. It doesn’t matter.
Of course, get a nice journal you actually want to write in, and do it as soon as
you can. Most big bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Chapters, etc.) will have them.
If you’re too busy, order one off Amazon. Just search “journal notebook,” then
filter to “Amazon Prime” in the sidebar (you don’t need the Prime membership,
but it means shipping will be reliable) and from there pay the extra couple bucks
to get decently fast shipping, depending on where you live and the notebook you
decide on.
When you have your nice journal, you can rip out the entries you put in the
crappy one and keep them for posterity. You’ll be fascinated by what you wrote
a year from now.
“I’m still not sure where to start!”
Your structure starts with these three prompts:
3 amazing things from yesterday:
2 things I’m grateful for right now:
How I can make today amazing:
Then from there, you should start doing the questions in the success starter
sprint. (Start at day one, obviously.) Now you have no excuses. Sorry.
Your Superpower “Fuel Up”
There’s an ongoing theme in a lot of superhero movies and television: the loss
of one’s powers.
Maybe the source of the powers, such as crystalline, glowing meteorite,
becomes depleted. Maybe the evil genius villain comes up with a device that
somehow saps away the powers. Maybe there’s some other cosmic explanation.
With some superheroes, the source of their powers is constantly in danger of
being depleted.
Symbolically, I think that’s the most realistic portrayal.
There are always days where we feel like we’re on fire, and we can take over
the world. We’re in flow. We go entire days where we slip into that state of flow
effortlessly, easily, and quickly.
But then this feeling dwindles.
Motivation sags.
A week later, and it’s… gone.
What happened? Well, nothing. That’s just how life works. There are ups and
downs. There is an ebb and flow to our energy, as well as to our motivation and
focus.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do to work with that ebb and
flow. To make the highs higher, more frequent, and longer lasting, and the lows
less low, and less frequent, and shorter lasting.
To me, this is what Intentional Journaling as a habit is all about. That’s why
there is flexibility in how much you do.
Some days you just need a super quickie reminder: “I’m super grateful for
this, blah blah, here’s an affirmation or two, yadda yadda yadda, and — yep,
let’s just get straight to it. I’m ready. I know what I need to do. Let’s just do it.”
Yeah, those days are nice.
But on other days, that just won’t cut it.
On other days, you need to stop, and you really need to think to figure out
what you’re grateful for.
You write out a few affirmations, and you realize you’re not even thinking
about them. You’re just mindlessly writing the words, with no visualization, no
sense that these things are a real possibility that you are making happen. It’s like
when you “read” three pages of a novel and realize you have no idea what
you’ve just read.
Your super powers have been depleted. It’s time to refill the tank.
The nice thing about journaling is that the more it becomes a habit, the more
half the battle is done for you. If you’ve been writing out affirmations or goals or
whatever for weeks, and you’ve been genuinely jazzed and excited about them,
the habit of journaling will get you a good way back into that state of excitement
and focus. The physical act of writing, the visual cues of opening your journal,
the visual and tactile cues of the journal itself — these are all cues that will put
you back there. It’s just that some days these aren’t quite enough, not without a
bit more work on your part.
On those “grey” days (a.k.a. those “blegh” days) you throw in an extra
exercise or two. Check out the ones on Linking Actions to Goals, or the Power
Triggers exercise.
If the affirmations are feeling a bit rote or “automatic,” and you’re just writing
them out without feeling them, try the Affirmation Expansions.
If things are really down, or it’s not so much that today is bad, but rather — if
you’re being honest — the past few days haven’t gone so well, then begin a
whole new sprint. Try the 5-Day Success Starter Sprint (yes, just do it all over
again, even if you already “know” what you want to say) or the 3-Day Tangible
Vision Sprint.
Or devise your own, either based on the ones here or based on your own
creativity or other exercises you’ve used or read about.
What all these tools and exercises have in common is one thing. No, not just
“journaling” (which is really a means to an end) but something more
fundamental: it’s stopping and pausing for just a moment.
Stopping and pausing and — well, that’s it. You stop and pause.
This means you stop reacting on automatic pilot. You carve out a moment to
think, to assess, and then to decide. You’re going to think and assess anyway.
With journaling, you’re just more organized and intentional about the decisions
you make.
You’re back in control.
You’ve got your superpowers again.
I mean, yes, when I say “your superpowers” what I really mean is something
more like “your free will,” or “your fundamental human freedom,” or maybe
“the astonishing-yet-untapped potential that exists inside every human being.”
Over the long term, these things are more powerful than x-ray vision or super
strength.
They’re also more precious, and it’s easy to lose one’s grip on them. We have
to guard them. In the flurry of the day-to-day, it’s easy to give them up, without
even knowing that’s what you’re doing.
But you don’t have to give them up. Ever.
Stop. Pause.
Sit down and decide, write, plan, explore, dig deeper, imagine more, see
further, and at the end of it all: please use your powers for good.
“As Needed”
Exercises & Mini Sprints
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Note that you can download printable, editable versions of the prompts,
exercises, pre-made structures, and mini-sprints from this book by visiting this
link:
thehabit.space/journaltools
I provide everything from this book in both PDF and Word document formats,
so that before printing them off you can edit and customize them.
Three Easy Rules
for the Exercises
RULE 1.
Be honest and real with yourself.
Hey, it’s just you and the journal. Don’t cheat yourself. When the time comes
make it a point of pride to be willing to dig into the hard stuff. (This is when it’s
necessary. It’s not always necessary. Some exercises are about digging into your
deeper beliefs. Some exercises are just about brainstorming and having fun with
it.)
Also note that his does NOT ever, ever mean you beat yourself up. You are
not your past actions, and you are not your negative associations, and you are not
the weird, negative thoughts that might pop into your mind or anything like that.
Those things are not “you.” On top of this, you are allowed to screw up. No one
is perfect. This is good. This is where the growth comes.
RULE 2.
Relentlessly focus on what you can influence.
This is you, your mind, and most of your behavior, and — to a limited extent
— people and things close to you in your life. You will still be influenced by
external things. Again: you won’t be perfect. But stick to this rule and you’ll
avoid dwelling on the stuff that will just drive you bonkers.
RULE 3.
Have fun.
Don’t want to do any journal writing today? Then don’t. You don’t have to. I
promise. This is not just me being passive aggressive. You genuinely don’t have
to. This is all stuff you should do when you want to do it. “Structures” are to be
used when you feel like they can help.
As a side note for this rule, modify things. Do things differently. Break the
rules. If an exercise or session particularly excites you or gets you revved up,
think about why, and try to replicate that in other sessions! Tweak things. Repeat
stuff you like, cross out the stuff you don’t. Do more of what seems to be
working, and less of what’s worthless. As long as you follow rule one (honesty)
with this, you can’t go wrong.
FAQ
Do I have to do the exercises exactly as written?
No.
Also, I don’t just mean that in a “you really should do whatever you want”
kind of way. That’s true, as well, but I mean that it should be clear what the
“point” of a given prompt is. (I’ve tried to keep them short and descriptive so
that if you do write the prompts as written, it won’t take you forever, but they’ll
be descriptive enough that you can come back to them later and know what the
heck you were talking about.) You are free to change them, add to them, subtract
from them, and so on, as you see fit, to get more out of something, or to tweak it
to get at something slightly different, or simply because you think you can
improve upon something you find here.
When should I use a given exercise?
Whenever you think it would be useful to you. Pick and choose the ones that
make your brain go, “Yeah, I could use this.”
That’s it. That’s the only heuristic you need.
Some you will find are good once, and maybe again a few months later. Some
might be useful every few days. For example, I think the exercises on Stopping
Self-Sabotage, the Affirmation Expansions, and the Meta “Exercise” Exercise
will be the ones you’ll probably want to do again and again, every so often.
Those frameworks are pretty darn useful.
Should I do exercises every day?
If you’re in the middle of a journaling session and you really want to, right
then, sure. If this happens every time you journal, go for it.
But don’t plan on it because you’re super ambitious and you want to “do it
all.”
Take the minimum viable dose and then move on and actually do the stuff
you’ve been journaling about. Save the extra high dosage for days when you
need it. I don’t use exercises every day. Sometimes I even shorten the so-called
“daily” prompts I use because I want to get on with this, that, or the other thing.
Some days you might just be busy.
EXERCISE
Linking Actions to Goals
Here’s the thing: sometimes motivation is lacking. You were on a motivation
high yesterday, but you’re on a low today. Goals seem distant, far off. Will it
really make a difference if you do X, Y, or Z? These exercises will help you
create the link between small daily actions, and distant, far off goals (or to goals
that just seem that way!).
Option 1. Link the Action to the Goal
One problem related to situations like this is that our brains are pretty lousy at
linking present actions to future rewards. One strategy is to make that future
goal seem more present, more real and more concretely linked to our
present actions. All we need to do is link the goal (the thing we want, the
carrot) to the action that takes us there. The idea is to make the extrinsic
motivator feel closer to the present action and make the present action feel
almost intrinsically motivating.
You can do it in this format:
ACTION
Insert a specific action that, presently, doesn’t feel very exciting.
WILL LEAD TO…
Write out the goal in a simple sentence. Then talk about the goal, re-hash why you want it, and finally, how
the action will lead to it.
It might sound simplistic, but I found it works wonders. It’s a simple reminder,
but it has a big payoff. When you write it out, something happens in your brain
that makes the association more concrete.
I find this an especially good exercise if you write out your 1MIT, or most
important task for the day, and it just doesn’t feel very intrinsically motivating or
exciting. You want to be excited about it, but honestly, it just doesn’t feel that
way today. In this case, you can use this exercise to make the link between the
1MIT and the goal more real, more concrete.
This way, as you’re completing it, you feel the progress, and you can feel
yourself exercising your will and your agency to go out and get the things you
want in life. Many times, that’s all it takes: the realization that you have chosen
to do this, and that you are able to take action. You stop feeling trapped, or like
there’s no hope. Instead, you remind yourself that you are already taking steps to
control your destiny.
Option 2. Use a Small Action to Feel Closer to a Goal
Here’s another way to accomplish something very similar
to the above exercise, but it works in the opposite
direction.
In this one, simply write out the goal, then write out one or two small actions
that you will do today to get you one step closer to that goal. You can do this
daily, or you can do it only when motivation is down, or those long-term goals
you’ve been excited about just seem further off than usual.
I do it in this format:
GOAL:
Insert a specific goal I’m working towards.
TODAY I WILL…
Insert one or two small actions you can do today to make it happen, and make the goal seem more real.
The key is to keep them short, simple and easy to accomplish. Don’t go
overboard. You just want to be able to accomplish these small actions and then
say, “Yes, I am one small step closer.”
In other words, choose actions that will themselves make the goal feel real.
In other words, choose actions that will themselves make the goal feel real.
You can look back on them and, having accomplished them, feel closer to your
goal.
This is the place to stay the course and — as my teammates in Canadian beer
league hockey would say — just get ‘er done. Remember, this is for when
motivation is low. We just need to stay the course and make the day a win,
because those wins add up, and, perhaps even more importantly, so does the
feeling of making those days a win. That feeling of control and agency is
probably one of the most important parts of all this.
If you’re doing this first thing in the morning, be real and honest about what
you have coming up that day. The same holds true if you’re doing it the evening
before a very busy day.
You absolutely can put in the action that you’ve already put as your 1MIT, if
you’re using that idea as a prompt already. That’s fine. If it makes the link
between your 1MIT and your goal more concrete, then do it. Sure, this blurs this
exercise with the previous one, but who cares? If it helps… it helps, and if you
prefer this version over the previous one, use this one.
EXERCISE
“Affirmation Expansions”
In the chapter on affirmations, I claimed that affirmations only work when
they meet two key criteria: 1. You truly believe in them, or at least, you can get
behind them.
2. The affirmation has some weight behind it.
This exercise is designed to help you with both of these things.
It’s particularly useful if you feel a specific affirmation has started to lag a bit
in one or both of these areas, but you still think the goal to which the affirmation
relates is pretty solid. In other words, your goals are decent, you believe in them,
but something about the affirmation itself feels a little weak.
This exercise will put some of that weight back behind the affirmation, so that
when you write it out, it feels more real, more tangible, and it is more effective
as a trigger to get you motivated about the larger goals and vision to which the
affirmation relates.
The Exercise
The exercise itself is simple. You write out the affirmation, as normal. Then
you write it out again, a bit longer this time. Then you do it again, even longer.
And again, and again, so that it gets longer and more filled in each time.
Here’s an example for a fiction writer thinking about building a career and a
loyal fan base of a thousand true fans:
I am a writer.
I am a best-selling author.
I am a best-selling author with lots of loyal readers who love my work.
I am a best-selling fiction author with lots of loyal readers who love my work because it mixes
the adventure and tropes of Star Wars with some of the drama of a good HBO show.
I am a best-selling fiction author with lots of loyal readers who leave rave reviews on Amazon. I
connect with fans. My ideal fan loves my opening trilogy because it mixes the adventure and
tropes of Star Wars with some of the drama and mystery of a good HBO show, and creates
something totally new. I write regularly, and fans appreciate that new books come out on a
regular schedule.
I am a best-selling fiction author with lots of loyal readers who leave rave reviews on Amazon. I
connect with fans. My ideal fan loves my opening trilogy because it mixes the adventure and
tropes of Star Wars with some of the drama and mystery of a good HBO show, and creates
something totally new. I write regularly, and fans appreciate and stay with my longer series’
(and tell their friends about it!) because they know that new books come out on a regular
schedule.
I am a best-selling fiction author who… [etc.]
The benefit is that when you’re done, every time you write out “I am a bestselling author,” your brain will also think about all that other stuff you wrote.
The affirmation, in other words, will have more weight. You’ll also believe in it
more, because that weight gives the affirmation more authority and
believability.
In the above example, you know how and why you’re going to be a bestselling author. You know what the plan is.
Now, how long should you do these? In other words, how much does the
affirmation need expanding?
My advice: try to expand a single, one-sentence affirmation to at least a
paragraph.
Beyond that, you can do it as long as you want, or as long as you feel the need
to do it. You might expand one or two in a single journaling session.
(Bonus: You can also build yourself a mini-sprint where each day you expand
one or two affirmations. Do it for the course of three to five days, and you’ll
have three to five affirmations that have much more power.) You should get to a
point where you look over what you wrote and think, “Okay, yes. This
affirmation definitely has more power, and it feels more real to me and also
more tangible.”
Personally, I rarely go much longer than six or seven levels of expansion. This
ends up as a long paragraph, or half a page to two-thirds of a page of writing.
The reason? That’s about when I get that feeling of the affirmation feeling much
more real and tangible.
EXERCISE
The “What Are My Roles?” Exercise
This exercise is about self-knowledge.
Have you ever felt yourself “caught up” in a role?
For me, I know exactly which one I’d say for this. That role for me was “the
class clown,” way back in high school. I remember back then there were days
when I genuinely didn’t want to be that person, and yet, sure enough, some
smart ass comment would occur to me, and before I knew it, I’d already said it
out loud. I still cringe when I think about it. I didn’t come across as smart or
witty. I came across as a loudmouthed jerk.
This was especially frustrating because it didn’t happen in other environments.
It didn’t happen at home. It didn’t happen when I played on a hockey team. It
didn’t happen anywhere—except at school. The environmental cues were very,
very strong.
This exercise is about exploring those rules, and figuring out what the cues or
triggers are, and how you can change. Keep in mind that simply the act of
thinking about the role, and selecting a new one (or just modifying the existing
role in some way) can give you back some measure of control, and help you get
the most out of that role.
1. Roles I play:
List as many as you can. Start with the obvious ones — father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter —
and from there move into the more subtle roles you play: the “responsible one,” the “jokester,” the
“martyr,” the “fat guy,” the “heavy one,” the “manager,” the “trapped one.”
2. Role limitations:
Look at your answer in the first question, and then look for the ones that might have drawbacks. Write
about those drawbacks and clarify them. More than anything, you’re looking for roles where you give up
about those drawbacks and clarify them. More than anything, you’re looking for roles where you give up
some agency to the role itself. If you selected “the heavy one,” think about what limitations that imposes
on your actions, what kinds of beliefs come bundled with it. Even if you pick something that seems
empowering, like “the responsible one,” you might dig into what disadvantages come secretly bundled
with this role.
3. I play this role when/because…
What are the triggers? They might be environmental (e.g., me in high school) or they might be specific
situations that come up, specific actions by other people in your life, specific types of conversations,
decisions, anything. They can also be emotions. Playing the role might serve a secondary gain, the way
playing “the martyr” might make you feel needed.
4. A better role:
If we know the role isn’t as empowering as it could be, what would be a better role to play? Do we
need to pick a whole new role, or modify the current one? If so: how? Use your creativity here, but base
it on who you are, and who you know you have it in you to be. (Be real.)
5. Benefits of new role:
Be concrete. Think in terms of if-then. “If this, then in this role I would be able to respond by… [etc.]”
From there, maybe move on to what the benefits would be of responding or acting in this way.
Also talk about why the new role is more “right” for you. This part is all you. Link it to who you are,
and why you can take on this new, better role.
EXERCISE
The “Power Triggers” Exercise
What are your power triggers? Let’s find/create them.
1. What is a SPECIFIC time when you felt really confident, strong, smart,
and everything just sort of… clicked?
This could be a time at a business meeting, a sporting event, a vacation — anything goes, as long as it’s
specific!
2. How did it feel? How did you feel?
Use your imagination and really put yourself back into that memory and situation.
3. How did you move? How were you standing? What is it that made you so
successful and confident at this time?
Was it a thought? Was it seeing things just working? Was it a way of standing or moving?
4. What behaviors, thoughts, movements, and so on, don’t have to be specific
to that event? Which ones can you “take with you”?
Some of your answer for #3 will be specific to that event, but some won’t be. Ways of moving. Ways
of standing and breathing and thinking.
The goal here is to come up with a series of triggers that will put you back into that state of confidence
and poise. You want to be able to go through them, one by one, and get back into that state of mind.
EXERCISE
The “10 Ideas” Exercise
This one is simple, and it comes from James Altucher, mentioned earlier in
Chapter One. All you do is write out ten ideas. What you’re doing here is being
creative in the short term, but also nurturing your own creative powers in the
long term.
The point is NOT to get 10 amazing ideas. The point is to brainstorm. If only
one of the ideas is any good, that’s fine. The more you do, the less it matters how
good any one single idea is. (You usually only need one killer idea. The trick is
coming up with the 50 crappy ones to get to the killer one.) I put this as an
exercise, but of course it can also be a daily prompt. You can just make them
generic, or aim to get ten ideas about some specific topic.
10 Ideas:
…related to business fiction whatever.
EXERCISE
The “Procrastination Buster” Exercise
This exercise is to help you identify something you’ve been consistently
procrastinating on, and then come up with a system to stop doing that.
1. I procrastinate on…
A project, a behavior, anything. You can also phrase this as “I sometimes procrastinate on…”
2. This is costing me…
Go over the top. But what is it preventing you from accomplishing or getting? Now, don’t be hard on
yourself, but focus on the consequences you’ll experience in your life.
3. My ONE concrete solution is…
For example, pick one time of day you can dedicate to accomplishing this behavior (instead of
procrastinating on it). Just be specific. After you get home from work, first thing when you wake up,
whatever. Try to pick a very specific time or at least a specific trigger.
Don’t just “install an app” that blocks Facebook or something. You can do that as well, but you have to
own the behavior, otherwise your brain will find a way around things like apps or other external stuff.
It’s best if you can pick a set time of day, but if not, you want to pick and/or create an if-then
implementation intention: when this happens, I will respond by doing [blank]. When I have a specific
thought pattern, I will respond by thinking [whatever]. When I realize I’m just procrastinating by surfing
Facebook, I will immediately [blah blah].
4. My THREE EXTRA “quantum torpedo it from orbit” solutions:
What are three or MORE small ways to MAKE SURE you do it?
An alarm? A Google Calendar event? A friend or spouse you can tell, and thereby commit yourself to
it? A bet (with money)? Have fun, but try to pick several things. “Aw jeez… but I only need one!” No,
screw that. If you only needed one, you wouldn’t procrastinate.
Pick several things you can do… and then quantum torpedo this thing from orbit.
Final Step
Now go do everything you said you’d do in question #4. DO IT RIGHT NOW.
Instead of doing a fifth question, just do everything you planned in question #4. It’ll take less than five
minutes to set up, so do it now.
Tip
If, after running this exercise, you’re still procrastinating on whatever this behavior is, it probably isn’t
just laziness… instead, you probably have some fears and negative associations you need to dig into
(related to the behavior, related to whatever goal the behavior is supposed to lead you to, etc.)
So: run an exercise or two related to those fears. See the Stopping Self-Sabotage exercise.
Or, if you don’t feel like it, do the final step above and stop procrastinating on this one thing. Then you
won’t have to do any further exercises about it! You can procrastinate on having to do another exercise by
not procrastinating on your behavior!
EXERCISE
The “On Your Deathbed” Exercise
There’s stuff we do in our lives that just don’t matter. It is a cliché now, but
yeah, when I’m on my deathbed, I probably won’t think, “Gosh, I wish I
checked Facebook more often.”
One of Stephen Covey’s key habits in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People is “Begin with the end in mind.” By this, he means, quite literally,
thinking about the very end. He asks you to literally imagine yourself at your
own funeral, and look at the faces of the people there. What are they thinking?
What do you want them to be thinking? What kind of life would you have lived
for this to be possible?
I’m a fan of this poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social
condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
In this exercise, you imagine a life lived well and lived fully and you explore
what that would mean to you.
You also get real about what you’re doing now that won’t lead to that. In my
own case, I’m not always very good at stopping and smelling the roses and
spending time with those I care about. This exercise has been a good reminder of
what my priorities really are.
Stephen Covey says, “The most effective way I know to Begin with the End in
Mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed.” I think
Mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed.” I think
that’s a great way to end an exercise like this if you have the time. (You could
also split things up over two days: thinking about the deathbed/funeral on one
day, and developing the mission statement on the following day.)
On my deathbed…
1. I want to have accomplished…
2. I want to have spent lots of time…
3. Stuff I will see as a waste of time:
With the above in mind, fill these out:
4. Stuff I’m NOT doing currently, but should:
5. Mission Statement:
Write a mission statement that will center you, and help you keep the “end in mind.”
EXERCISE
The “WORST CASE SCENARIO OMG” Exercise
The dark.
The forest at night.
The unknown.
Our fears gain strength from the unknown. Our brains like comfort, safety, the
known, the familiar. They’re evolved to flash red warning lights when we’re not
really sure what we’re afraid of, because hey, it could be really bad, right?
Right!?
In Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week, he suggests a simple exercise to get
real about this: simply stop, pause, and imagine the worst-case scenario. And he
means the worst. Actually write it down, and spend some time with it. Imagine
what you could do to deal with it.
The worst case scenario for you might actually be really bad. It might suck.
I’m not saying it won’t. But I am saying there’s value in taking an honest look at
it and realizing, “Okay, so there are things I could do to deal with this. I would
not be helpless.”
I think one of the values of doing something like this is that a lot of our fears
are based on very little. The only reason they have any power over us is because
our minds amplify vague unknown worries into huge and vast all-encompassing
what-ifs.
“I’m afraid of writing a novel. It might suck.”
Yeah, it probably will! But that’s fine! That’s why you write another one, and
another, and another. Writing a bad novel is not the end of the world. If you
want to publish it before you write a second or third one, use a pen name. Or
make sure to go the traditional publishing route, and this way gatekeepers ensure
you don’t publish something that’ll earn terrible reviews.
“I’m afraid of starting a business. It might fail.”
Well, maybe. Sure, there’s a good chance of that. If you’re investing your life
Well, maybe. Sure, there’s a good chance of that. If you’re investing your life
savings into it, that’s a big deal, and your assessment of risk would be something
you should spend a lot of time thinking about. But if you’re starting out with a
$10/month website with a blog and an embedded contact form, that’s less of a
big deal, isn’t it? What would you do then? (Literally just stop paying the
hosting fees, then move on with your life?)
1. My worst case scenario for [insert goal]?
Go in depth. Don’t exaggerate, but dig into what could really, actually happen.
2. What would have to happen:
Sometimes a worst-case scenario is pretty bad, but it’s also preventable. Writing things out helps you
realize that actually, you can still aim to accomplish [whatever] while preventing the worst-case scenario
from happening. It’s possible to lose weight without putting your metabolism at risk. It’s possible to start
a business without a huge financial investment.
3. How I could respond:
Simple. How would you respond? What options would you have? Sometimes writing out the answer to
this question also helps strengthen or boost your answer to #2, above, because you start thinking about
warning signs, and coming up with implementation intentions (if-then statements along the lines of, “If
___ happens, then I will do ______”).
Tip
As you can probably tell, you can also use this exercise to dig into very specific fears that are leading to
various forms of self-sabotage. Fears about starting a business, fears about writing a novel, fears about
starting a new fitness regimen—anything.
EXERCISE
Prime Your Learning
This exercise is for anyone who wants to be able to bust out strange and
interesting facts at dinner parties. I’ve always felt that the trick to doing this
without sounding like a windbag is to have such a huge database in your brain
that you can actually pull something relevant when it’s relevant.
You can also use this exercise to look for specific things. All you’re doing
here is priming your brain to look for whatever it is you want to learn.
I came to this exercise by thinking about my teaching. A piece of advice they
give to new university lecturers is to tell your students some of the key things
they’ll learn in a given lecture.
It’s like setting an alarm in their brain; it primes their brains to “look” for
those things, and when they find them, their brains go ding ding ding! They get a
little shot of dopamine, which gives them focus and helps them learn.
You can do the same thing with yourself and your own brain. All you need to
do is prime it.
The only trick here is experimenting with how specific you want to be, since
you don’t know in advance exactly what you’ll learn (since otherwise, you
wouldn’t need to learn it).
Also, related to this, you can experiment with how active you’ll be. You can
specifically prime yourself to learn, but you can also brainstorm small actions
you’ll take towards that learning: opening a book, scanning one you’ve already
read, that sort of thing.
(Note: This exercise is best done in the morning. It might work okay if done in
the evening, by priming yourself for the next day, but honestly, it works better in
the morning. For the evening, I’ll provide an alternative below. You can, of
course, feel free to do both!)
MORNING
1. One thing I can learn today:
Write out what you want to learn: a crunchy anecdote, an explanation for some concept you’re
wrestling with—anything.
2. What I currently don’t understand:
The point is to clarify what you do understand, and what you don’t understand, so you know exactly
what holes in your knowledge you need to fill in. This is part of the priming.
3. One small action:
This is one small action you can take today to learn what you need to. Make it small and quick. Call up
a friend, Google it, whatever.
4. The plan:
When will you do this? Be specific, and put it in your darn calendar, with an alarm. If you don’t, it’s
because there’s a part of you that’s actively planning NOT to do it!
EVENING
1. Today I learned…
What is one thing you learned? Take the thing you learned… and teach it to yourself. This works better
when it’s genuinely something you did not know until today. In other words, don’t just try to teach
yourself something that, if you’re honest, you already knew. If you don’t have anything from that day,
spend five minutes on TodayIFoundOut.com.
Tip
Instead of doing it in the “evening,” you can do that final section the morning
after: “Yesterday I learned…”
EXERCISE
DIY Exercises
Intentional journaling is about journaling with a purpose.
However, sometimes the exercises I have provided won’t do diddly squat for
you, at least not relative to what you need right now.
Thankfully, you’re not limited to those exercises!
Here are some recommendations for coming up with your own exercises (or
modifying the ones I listed).
Try stuff. You can’t go wrong, really. You’re not going to break things.
(How could you?) You will discover things that work that surprise you, but
only if you experiment.
I like about 3-5 questions, on average.
I like the flow of an exercise to begin with digging, digging, digging, and
then from there moving on to actionable stuff that’ll get you fired up and
will provide you with specific, actionable things you can do, including
those “if-then” implementation intentions. (This is not set in stone or
anything, but it’s a good structure to steal and use.)
Be “intentional.” That sounds obvious, but pause for a moment and think
about what you want the exercise to accomplish. Will it make a goal more
“top of mind”? Will it keep you more focused? Will it deal with a specific
obstacle in some way? Work backward from there.
It’s okay to play to your strengths. Don’t do these just to address
weaknesses; giving yourself a boost where you already feel strong is totally
okay. That helps. It feels good, too, and it’s a case where the thing that feels
good is helpful. Always a nice combo.
Remember that an exercise generally takes place in a single day. This
means you shouldn’t make an exercise so long that you won’t do it.
Spreading it out over two days is of course fine, but you just have to make
sure you do it. (See Rule One, above, from the Three Easy Rules.) There is
no rigid boundary between exercises and mini sprints; there are just the
advantages and disadvantages of doing things all in one day versus
spreading them out over several days.
It’s okay to use questions that dig into the pain of a bad habit (so you’ll
actually be able to get rid of it, without giving in to secondary gains and
payoffs), but you have to avoid beating yourself up. You are not your bad
habits. Remember the Three Easy Rules!
MINI-SPRINT
5-Day Success Starter Sprint
If you’re not sure where to start, use this chapter to begin a 5-day success
sprint. If you do this, I want you to commit to at least five days of journaling.
Note that although the intentional journaling I describe in this book can often
be done in under five minutes, for this success starter sprint, you want to spend a
little bit more time than that each day answering these questions. It’s just five
days. It’s a sprint.
The reason for the additional time is simple: it’s important to spend actual time
thinking about and exploring the ideas in this sprint because it will make them
more concrete and your brain will be more likely to return to them again and
again, even when you’re not journaling.
You know how when people talk about success they say things like, “Well,
young person, be careful. You know, life is a marathon, not a sprint.” (And
you’re expected to nod along, awe-inspired, as though you’ve never heard this
amazing insight before?) Well, in this case, it really is a sprint.
I recommend giving yourself at least 20 minutes per day to do these. Look at
your week and your schedule, and pick a time on your calendar for each day. Set
an alarm. I recommend first thing in the morning before you have anything else
to do. I know that in the evening I’m too likely to say, “Eh, I’m too tired,” for
this kind of stuff, so mornings make it more likely to get done.
Day ONE.
1. The area of my life I want to improve:
Maybe it’s your health or your career. Maybe it is a very specific number, in terms of finances, weight
loss, or whatever. General or specific, it’s up to you.
2. NOT improving it has already cost me…
What has this cost you ALREADY by not taking care of it? I mean in terms of happiness, money,
relationships, and where you’re at currently. Really go for the pain here. Ideally, you’ll be thinking about
your answer as you really tackle changing things for the positive in days 2 through 5.
3. The one goal I will commit to, right now:
Boom. Draw a line in the sand.
4. The benefits of accomplishing this goal:
Go nuts here. Have FUN with this. How will you become better? What physical benefits will you
enjoy? Will you enjoy material benefits? Relationship benefits? How? In what way? Paint a picture.
Spend a lot of time with this one. Soak it in. Talk about anything, including the stuff that will genuinely
make you a better version of yourself, but also the stuff you just plain want. (Don’t feel you need to be a
saint!)
5. Existing skills I can use…
What can you leverage? What skills do you already have that will help?
4. Why I can COMMIT to my goal…
If you can’t think of something, make it up. I’m 100% serious.
5. What is one small thing I will do today?
MAKE IT SMALL. It shouldn’t be hard. Something that will feel good to do. It can even be “read over
this entry later today.” Again: SMALL.
Day TWO.
1. My Goal:
2. My PAST fears and negative associations:
This is with respect to your goal. What are your past fears and negative associations with this goal? List
them all. Fears, negative what-ifs, cultural associations, anything. If you can’t think of any, just start
listing negative associations that you’ve “heard about,” even if you don’t believe in them.
3. NEW associations:
Remember the section on giving yourself material to work with. You should not lie to yourself here.
But you should work with and modify these beliefs so that they serve you. You can stay real, but focus
on what will empower you. Some ideas will be obvious, and you can also try adding words like
“however” or “but” to the end of a negative belief/association. You can also change an “is” belief, to a
“might be” belief, like this: “X might be bad, but… [blah blah]” or “I might worry about X, however…
[blah blah].”
Day THREE.
1. My Goal:
2. NEW associations that will serve me:
This is your answer from yesterday. Yes, re-write them all out. Yes, you can change them a bit if you
feel you can articulate them a bit better or more accurately.
3. OTHER associations I have that will help:
These are beliefs or just general associations you already have. List them out. You’ve probably got
some beliefs about hard work, learning and such things which will help you. What are your ninja skills?
(What do friends ask you for help with?) Public speaking? Writing great emails? Nailing it in the gym?
4. My hidden resources:
Interpret this how you like!
4. What I can be grateful for RIGHT NOW:
This is in terms of your goal. You can be grateful for this sprint and the fact that you’re doing it. You
can be grateful for your journal. You can be grateful for the people you love. You can be grateful for
your desk, your computer, anything that will serve you, and that you are glad to have in your life.
5. A “chunk” I can do over the next 10 days:
Be real here. Based on what you’re working on, pick a date, and set a mini goal. This doesn’t need to
be the end of the entire project (which could be months off), but it is a small, manageable chunk of it so
that you can say, “Yes, I did it.” You might feel motivated to really think big here, but I actually want
you to lowball this goal. Make it real, but also make it absurdly easy to meet this goal. The secret is that
as you go, you can crush it if you want, and totally blow past it. How good would that feel?
Day FOUR.
NOTE: First, review day two’s “fears and negative associations” to help you answer the following
questions:
1. How I sabotaged my goal in the PAST…
Try to be as specific as possible. Talk about specific behaviors, procrastination, thought patterns and
associations, that sort of thing.
2. New behaviors:
Identify the triggers, and then identify alternate behaviors that will prevent the sabotage. Instead of
eating ice cream, the craving for ice cream is now a trigger to call a friend, or open your journal, or go
for a walk, or anything. If you can’t think of anything, start with “I will open my journal and [insert
something creative].”
3. Why I’m committed to these new behaviors:
Things to talk about: why it’s important to you, the benefits and goals you feel you committed to
accomplishing, why the new behavior is actually easy to do, and helpful, and so on. But you can also
think about how the self-sabotaging behavior is linked to your old fears and negative associations, and
how your new behavior might be linked to your new, more empowering associations—the ones you
consciously decided on.
4. I can handle challenges because…
Here’s the thing about this prompt — the trick with stuff like this is you don’t want to create a selffulfilling prophecy by saying, “It’s okay if I screw up!” but you also don’t want to beat yourself up and
feel totally destroyed the first time you experience a slip up! You are human, after all. And life’s like
that. This is why, in this prompt, talk about how you are already equipped to handle hiccups, slip ups,
and things like that, and how you will move forward in the face of challenges. This doesn’t mean they
will happen, but it does mean you can meet those challenges in a real and honest way that keeps you
moving forward.
5. Affirmations (or “The Vision I’m Making Real”)
Related to the goal you picked, write a series of affirmations you can really get behind and feel jazzed
about, beginning with “I am” or some other present-tense verb. Examples: I work out three times every
week; I enjoy discovering new recipes; I write every day; I am always improving; I read and soak up
knowledge; etc. Remember, these can be anything. Be creative, and don’t be afraid to write out very
small, specific things if you think they’re part of a larger vision related to your goal. Side note: If you’re
not sure, or these don’t feel real to you, put them under a heading called “The Vision I’m Making Real.”
Day FIVE.
NOTE: Review all of days 1 to 4 before you begin!
1. My Goal:
Start with “I will…” or some other verb. This is likely very similar to what you wrote on Day 1. If you
want to change it a bit, go for it. (Goals shift all the time; that doesn’t make them less powerful.)
2. Over the past five days, I can be grateful for…
Small wins, serendipitous events, family members, tiny things you’ve already accomplished or
discovered, support systems you realize you have.
3. My main insights for this sprint:
Don’t try to dig for something really weird or subtle. Focus on the big obvious stuff that jumps out at
you, because this is the stuff you will never forget. You discovered something about a negative
association or something about a goal you had. Maybe a vague feeling became a more concrete
realization. This can be anything.
4. What I will continue to work in my journal…
As always, go for the leverage. What was the most fun? Do more of that. What needs more work? Sure,
do more there as well. Just make a decision.
5. Affirmations (or “The Vision I’m Making Real”)
Just like yesterday! You don’t have to re-write all of them. Re-write the ones that pop into your mind.
Ignore others if they are not exciting. Add in new ones if they occur to you.
6. [Optional Bonus] One tiny extra thing I can do TODAY…
Note: Only do this if doing it gets you excited! - Write something you for sure can and will do today…
but again, look for the leverage!
MINI-SPRINT
3-Day Tangible Vision Sprint
The idea behind this sprint came from lessons I’ve learned about marketing
and copywriting.
In copywriting, I’ve learned you need to dig down and figure out what the
physical, material, tangible result of a benefit is. This is what would actually,
physically happen in the real world if your product/service delivered on its
promises.
This is not the “secret” or “underlying” benefit, where the marketer says, “Oh,
your market says they want to lose 30 lbs., but really what they want is to feel
more confident!” That’s vague, and speaking as someone who has had much
more than 30 lbs. to lose — it’s basically total rubbish.
Instead, the tangible benefit is what the person would actually, physically feel
or experience in the real world. It’s more like someone says they want to lose 30
lbs., so in the actual world, this might mean actually standing on that oldfashioned weight scale in their bathroom they’ve been avoiding for years, and
experiencing the feeling of seeing that little red pointer finally stop below 200
for the first time in a decade.
Or it might mean fitting into size 34 pants instead of size 38 or 40. Or it might
mean fitting into the jeans you had in high school that gave you a great butt. It
might mean the difference between how you feel taking your shirt off at the
beach if you feel self-conscious about your weight, versus how you’d feel if you
had a six-pack that you actually couldn’t wait to show off. This is far more
specific and concrete than a vague idea about “feeling more confident.”
In copywriting, at least, when you move towards these specific, tangible
experiences, you make the benefits feel much more real in the imaginations of
your audience.
The point of this sprint is to do this with yourself, and with your own goals,
and thus make your goals feel more real.
If you feel as though you’re one of those people who’s “just not good at
visualization” or something, this is a great exercise to make your goals and
visualizations more concrete. You’ll be able to taste them. They’ll feel so real
it’ll be as though you can reach out and touch them.
It’s when you get to that point that the goal itself starts working its magic in
your brain, and you can’t help but be constantly thinking of ways to make that
vision a reality.
Having a goal is great, but exploring what that goal means in a concrete way is
what has power.
As you dig even deeper, you learn about who you need to be to accomplish
that goal. Using the example above: what kind of person would be able to just
take off their shirt at the beach to reveal a six-pack — beyond the beach, what’s
their day-to-day life like? What would they have to do to get there, and maintain
that?
You also explore why you want that goal, which, ideally, is related to the kind
of person you’ll need to be to get there.
Finally, when you focus on the actual material aspects of that goal, you also
tend to focus on the actual material aspects of how to get there. Someone who
wants to “lose weight and feel more confident” needs to, uh, be more confident,
I guess? By contrast, someone who wants to take their shirt off at the beach25
needs to do very specific things.
Day ONE.
1. My Goal:
2. WHEN this became a goal:
Not to get all Freudian here, but try to dig into why or what influenced you to have this goal. Was it a
specific lack you felt, growing up — or even one you still feel? Was it based on the actions or behaviors
of a major role model in your life? Where did it come from?
3. WHY is this a goal you have?
Dig into what the benefits are of the goal. What will you enjoy doing when you’ve achieved it? Will
you feel good? Does achieving the goal say something about who you’ve become in order to achieve it?
If so: what? Why do you want to become that person? Try to think about both “who’ll you need to be”
and “what you’ll get” when you think about why you want to achieve this goal. As well, try to link this
to really fundamental values: will it show you’re ambitious, driven, smart, caring, compassionate, or
something else entirely?
Day TWO.
1. Daily life after accomplishing my goal:
Put yourself as far into the future as you need to. Imagine you’ve accomplished your goal. Describe
your life in as much detail as possible.
Be very concrete. Focus on even the mundane stuff: What is your daily schedule like? You wake up,
and then what?
What kind of house do you live in?
Do you work from home?
Do you exercise? If so: how/when?
What are your conversations like? Who do you talk to on a daily basis?
Are you married? Do you have children? How/when do you make time for that stuff? Has it changed
from where you are now?
2. New Goals I will likely have…
Put yourself back into that place where you’ve accomplished your goal. What are your NEW goals?
What are your NEW desires? You never stop growing, so once your daily routine and schedule look like
what you described above, think about this: what are some of your new goals?
What are you working towards, and how are you doing it?
What is it about this new work do you enjoy?
What do you do on a daily basis to make it happen?
Day THREE.
1. What the road looks like:
Looking at your vision from yesterday… how are you going to get from here to there? What does that
road look like?
Look at your answers from Day Two. Now, how are you going to get from where you are now to that
place? What will that road feel like? What are some of the (potential) major milestones? What are some
of the difficulties? (Exercising or writing or working on some project first thing in the morning, or late at
night? Going to the library? Taking a course? When/how will you do it?
Just like yesterday, be very, very concrete. It’s okay to focus on really mundane realities of what you’ll
need to do.
2. Likely challenges I will overcome:
Everything worth doing has challenges associated with it. What are some of the challenges you’re
going to have to face? Again, try to stay very concrete. What will it feel like to face these challenges?
What kinds of things will you have to do to overcome them? How will that feel?
Be real and honest about these challenges. Sometimes… they suck. They hurt. They kick you in the
face. But now is the time to imagine both the challenge and your response. Now is the time when you
can be wild and craft a response that perfectly addresses the challenge.
3. TODAY I will…
What is one thing you can do TODAY? List it here.
The key is to start today. It can be small, but start today.
MINI-SPRINT
3-Day Productivity Obstacle Overhaul
Even the most productive people can get caught up in actually producing that
they don’t pause, stop, and take a moment to look at the structure of their day,
their workflows, and find areas of improvement.
The irony is that the more productive you generally are, the more identifying
small fixes here and there can produce big changes.
Also, I’m not sure about you, but I know that sometimes I can feel as though
I’m in a bit of a rut. When this happens, one of the things that helps me is
spending some time thinking about and then deciding what I’m going to do
about it. That’s where journaling comes in to save the day. (Yes, like a
superhero.)
The goals of this sprint are three-fold. First, you identify any problems or
weaknesses in your productivity, and you try to drill down to get really specific
about what the precise bottlenecks or obstacles are. Then, you identify what you
can do about it, which can mean anything from trying new routines, structures,
or habits, to simply new implementation intentions, that is, a few “if-then”
statements or plans about how you’ll deal with specific obstacles or challenges.
Lastly, you also become more of an active agent, just in terms of your
productivity and workflows.
That feels good, it’s empowering, and it prevents you from feeling trapped.
Day ONE.
1. Where I will improve:
2. Specific obstacles or challenges to deal with:
These can be obstacles in your workflow or even mental challenges. Just get specific. You don’t have
to brainstorm a huge list, but do try to list more than one, just so that you can then pick the biggest or
most important challenge that’s worth addressing.
3. What it would mean to overcome these challenges:
Before we come up with a plan, let’s prime ourselves to want to come up with a plan and then actually
really want to implement it. This is the last question of the sprint, so from there, we’ll leave our brains
stewing for the next 24 hours on all those amazing benefits we’ll experience once we start really dealing
with this.
(Bonus points if you encounter the challenge on the same day you journal about it, so that you end up
thinking the whole time, “Holy crap I cannot freaking wait to deal with this!”)
Day TWO.
1. My number ONE challenge or obstacle:
This is from yesterday.
2. WHY I will overcome it:
Reiterate the benefits of dealing with this, but get really specific about what the challenge or obstacle
is, and what it is causing.
3. Specific strategies I can use:
Try to come up with at least three, if not more, ways to overcome it. Some ideas: changes in any of
your routines; “if-then” implementation intentions (good if the obstacle has a specific “trigger” you can
deal with); changes in your environment, or ways to control your environment.
4. The ONE MAIN Leverage Point:
Let’s cut through the maybes, the hemming and hawing, and the waffling between this and that. What
is the ONE thing you could do that would blast this obstacle out of the water?
What is it you know you have to do? C’mon, by this point, you probably know exactly what’ll nail this
specific obstacle out of the water. So: what is it? You can expand on something you wrote above if it
will truly blast the obstacle out of the water.
5. What I will do TODAY:
You might be able to actually do the number one thing identified above. If you can’t do it all, what can
you do, or what do you need to do to get started? Do you need to order something, set up a calendar, start
a tracking spreadsheet — what is it?
Day THREE.
1. What I still need to do:
Also address when and how you’ll do it. We’re still looking at that number one challenge, continuing
straight from yesterday’s journaling, as well as what you actually did. What’s left?
2. Smaller challenges “left over”:
We identified the biggest lever, and we’re well on our way to dealing with it. Which smaller obstacles
are worth addressing?
3. Things I can do TODAY to deal with them:
As always, I recommend starting today (if not right after answering these questions!).
4. Things I can do TOMORROW to deal with them:
You already know lifelong habits are what are important. Look forward to what you’ll do tomorrow.
5. Other plans:
This is open season, but dig in and/or be creative. Again: this is part of acknowledging that this stuff is
about habits and lifelong consistency. So, what will you do?
MINI-SPRINT
The DIY Sprint Framework
As you go, you’ll discover you have more specific needs than the sprints I
provided in this book account for (which are really just sprints I’ve used,
meaning that they’re based on my needs).
Here is a framework or set of guidelines for coming up with your own sprints.
You can use these to overcome specific challenges, or install new mindsets, or
give yourself a “mindset overhaul” if you find yourself falling into thinking or
thought patterns you don’t like.
For example, in your own head, you might be experiencing negative self-talk
about a very specific subject. Design a sprint to deal with that. Or, you might
realize that your brain is very subtly procrastinating or avoiding a specific
subject that your conscious mind (i.e. you!) knows you need to deal with head
on.
As always, note that none of my tips or guidelines are set in stone. They are
not the words of the gods. They are ideas for you to steal, take, and use to make
new cool new things.
General Guidelines
Each day, include at least one question, but avoid going past four or five. You
just won’t do more than that, unless you’re doing a special all-in-one, single-day
sprint.
Use your common sense: some questions you come up with you’ll be able to
identify as ones that will obviously take longer than the others. Try not to
include five super long questions one day, then only include one short
question the next.
Two to five days is what I find works best. Anything shorter isn’t really a
sprint (partly since you will lose the benefits of “stewing” on certain ideas
between sprint days), and anything longer I find tends to drag towards the end.
When to Break Up a Day
The benefit of breaking things up into “days” is that you give your brain time
to “stew” on an idea. Be strategic about this!
Think of it this way: if your brain is like a computer, then a massive, massive
chunk of its computer processing power is for apps that are constantly working
in the background, completely hidden. The goal of the sprints — and the breaks
between days — are to control what those apps are working on.
So on one day, you might focus on the pain being caused by a given obstacle,
and then…let yourself stew on that pain. That might sound negative, but it’s
much less so when you know that the next day you’ll be dedicating specific time
to overcoming that obstacle. You’ll get to a point where you can’t wait to sit
down, journal and write down all the ideas you now have for dealing with that
problem. You’ll have been stewing on it.
You can also, of course, do this for the benefits. One day might be spent
outlining the benefits of doing something, and getting your mind focused on
them so that by the next day you’re excited to dig into how to actually make that
something happen.
The “Flow” of a Single Sprint Day
The benefit of keeping a series of questions within a single day is that you can
dig deeper and deeper into something. Each answer can provide material for the
next one.
Think of it like a child asking, “Why?” gets answer “But why?” gets answer
“But why?” and so on. (Until the parent freaks out.)
Recall what I said earlier about getting ideas out onto the page. Your brain can
only do so much at one time. It can only hold so many actors on stage (and keep
them from wandering off, or moving around into the wrong order).
To deal with this, you don’t just try to keep all that stuff in your head. You
write stuff down. This allows you to think about the logical relationships
between what you’ve written, or to think about what comes next, or what builds
on what you’ve written down.
One question gets you to populate your mental stage, but then you write it all
down. The next question can ask you to consider or build on what you’ve written
down. And then again, and again.
For example, one question can ask you what you need to do in general to
accomplish [whatever]. This is the bird’s eye view. The next question can dig in
further and break that down into chunks or mini goals. Another question can
help you figure out what you need to do right now. It’s hard to do that well
inside your head. It’s easier when it’s broken up.
My Recommendations
I like to end sprints with tangible actions I can take. These are just small wins
that get the snowball rolling. Once that snowball picks up momentum it’ll get
bigger and bigger, and it’ll do so faster and faster as it rolls downhill. But it
starts small.
I also like to take those actions right after journaling, if I can. If I can’t, I’ll
take a second to schedule it on my calendar for that day, because otherwise it’s
just way harder to actually get them done.
Yes, I’ve learned the hard way that it feels awkward to get to day two of a
sprint when you haven’t done the things you said you’d do at the end of day one.
Try not to do this, and keep this in mind when you’re thinking about
procrastinating on those actions. Use it as a motivator.
Although the form can change based on the obstacle or what you’re dealing
with, I also like to include questions that will basically generate some form of
“if-then” implementation intentions towards the end of a sprint.
Small wins (and I mean “small”) are also good. This is because the first step is
always the hardest. You can break down the first step into mini steps that are so
small it’s impossible not to start. (Hint: the fact that you’re journaling about
them is itself a step to getting started, and helps to break down that barrier. This
is a side benefit of journaling.)
Steal from books with exercises. Just try to throw them into a sprint
framework.
Steal from the non-sprint exercises section in this book. There’s nothing
preventing you from picking and choosing the questions you like to make your
own sprint.
My Basic Framework
I like to follow a framework that’s basically just what you see below.
Sometimes two elements take place within the span of a single day, sometimes
one element gets split into multiple days.
1. Dig into WHY and/or WHAT, and expand
What is the challenge? Why does it exist? Why do I want to deal with it? What will be the benefit?
This might take place over multiple days, depending on how deep you get into things.
2. Brainstorm HOW, and expand
Questions that answer how you will do [whatever]? Questions that ask what actions need to be taken,
and how will you do them? This is often where I do various forms of brainstorming, and getting myself
to focus on the resources I can use.
3. Move towards the tangible, tangible, tangible.
Questions that force you to create actual, specific plans, set deadlines, and commit to doing things, and
often doing things at a specific time.
4. Ever onwards…
Questions that emphasize this isn’t the end, and that build momentum in a way you’ll take with you
into tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
Alternative Frameworks
Keep in mind I’ve been focused on productivity and self-development. You
could also devise sprints for other stuff.
For example, let’s say you wanted to outline a novel.
You could create a sprint for that.
You could create a sprint for that.
One day is crazy idea brainstorm, one day is all about your characters and
character arcs, another day is plotting. Or, maybe one day is the general plot and
character arc overview, then from there you have a single day dedicated to each
act of that plot. (For this, you might want to ignore my five-day sprint limit
recommendation, depending on your beliefs about creative writing, and what
you’ve found works best for you!)
Or you might just run your sprint twice, since, with this kind of thing, your
earlier ideas naturally get modified as you go: all those crazy ideas from the first
day have a different meaning once you’ve thought more about your characters,
your setting, and your plot. Some of those ideas just won’t work at all anymore,
while others will slot in rather nicely, and on top of all that, you’ll be able to
think of a bunch of new crazy ideas.
Similarly, another very interesting use of journaling sprints, related to the
above, would be one for getting yourself unstuck, in case you’ve written yourself
into a corner. That is, you’ve got your character in a situation, and you need to
get them out of there without some lame deus ex machina.
So: devise a sprint about it.
Focus on what the corner is, and have questions about what would or would
not be thematically appropriate. Get those ideas onto the page, and that way you
can free your brain to work with them, instead of it spending all its power trying
to do all that at the same time.
You could do similar things if you were devising anything else creative: an
online course, a nonfiction book, a dissertation, an app or coding project —
anything.
Use your imagination, and think about what you’d like to accomplish.
The possibilities are limitless.
FURTHER RESOURCES
RESOURCE
Further Reading
Books are good. Books will give you ideas for journaling, and make you better
at journaling. I’ve included a bunch of footnotes if something in particular
interests you, but from a much more general perspective, I think these books (or
articles) in particular will help you most when it comes to journal writing and
getting the most out of it.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron This is the origin of “morning pages.” Don’t
skip it because you “already know” what those are! There are lots of exercises in
this book for anyone seeking a creative path. There are exercises for thinking
about money (don’t be a starving artist!), for freeing yourself of doubts and
constraints that are pushing back your writing, and more. Cameron also now has
workbooks and courses you can find online and on Amazon with more tasks,
prompts, and things like that.
Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins Check out the chapter on goals,
then turn it into a mini sprint. There’s good stuff in here that has certainly
influenced some of the exercises and mini sprints in this very book.
Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott
Scott’s framework for habit stacking is remarkably simple, and on top of that,
he provides over 127 specific habits and ideas you can include in your own
“stacks,” in order to establish routines and habits that serve you and serve your
goals.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck An excellent book.
Dweck’s “growth” mindset is especially good at helping you learn to dig into
your bad habits or negative self-talk, and to do it without beating yourself up.
You will become better at taking criticism and using it to grow.
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod If you’re on the fence about waking up early
to get some journaling in, read this book. Let me put it this way: I was already an
early riser who knew full well the benefits of having that time to myself to get
focused in the morning… and this book still made me want to try this miracle
morning thing, even though I was essentially already doing it! (I will also add
that some form of journaling is one essential part of what Elrod considers a
“miracle” morning.)
Notebook Know-How by Aimee Buckner Aimee Buckner teaches her fourthgrade students to keep “writer’s notebooks.” She’s been doing this for years. Her
students, in the fourth-grade, often produce trite thoughts—about what you’d
expect from fourth-graders, really. But they also produce amazing, simple,
honest insights. Why? Because she’s taught them how to use a journal for
digging deeper and getting at the heart of things.
The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg If all those
self-help and self-development books had the footnotes and research behind
them that Charles Duhigg’s books have, this world would be a better place. Not
only that, but Duhigg’s a great writer, illustrating how habits work and how deep
the habit rabbit-hole goes with a careful balance between stories and
explanations.
“Teach the Motivating Force of Revision” by Donald M Murray in The
English Journal, Vol. 67, No. 7 (Oct. 1978), pp. 56-60
This article is about teaching writing, technically, but all of Murray's articles
about “teaching” writing are about acknowledging first what writing is and what
it does. Teaching revision as punishment, for example, is absurd. That’s not how
great writers revise. For them it is a motivating force, a method of discovery, of
playing, learning, changing and seeing what happens.
Bonus Free Downloadable Resources
Ready to get started? Note that you can get a free download of all the premade structures, templates, prompts, and mini sprints from this book by visiting
this web page:
thehabit.space/journaltools
I provide all the exercises and prompts from this book in both PDF and Word
document formats, so that before printing them off you can copy, paste, and edit
the prompts you want to have there for reference!
Yes, this is a blatant bribe to get you to sign up to my email list. But the email
list is cool and good, and filled with smart cool cats like you, to whom I like to
send other free stuff and resources, and sure, maybe an announcement when I
have a new book or something.
About the Author
Michael Forest lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He journals every morning
to prevent feeling crazy and overwhelmed as he tries to get a lot done every day.
You can read more of his ideas and articles related to productivity, fitness and
more at his website, http://thehabit.space/.
Notes
1. Schmeichel, Brandon J, and Kathleen Vohs. “Self-Affirmation and SelfControl: Affirming Core Values Counteracts Ego Depletion.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 96.4 (2009): 770–782.
2. Logel, Christine, and Geoffrey L Cohen. “The Role of the Self in Physical
Health.” Psychological Science 23.1 (2012): 53–55.
3. Partly, that’s because I’m really just describing “self-affirmation theory,”
which isn’t about relating your values up against a given decision, but simply
strengthening your inner sense of self. Googling self-affirmation theory will
open up lots of stuff here. The place to start is Steel, C. M. “The Psychology of
Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self.” Advances in Experimental
Social Psychology. 21 (1988): 262-302.
4. Harris, Philine S, Peter R Harris, and Eleanor Miles. “Self-Affirmation
Improves Performance on Tasks Related to Executive Functioning.” Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology 70.C (2017): 281–285.
5. Altucher, James. “The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine.”
JamesAltucher.com. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/05/the-ultimate-guidefor-becoming-an-idea-machine/
6. See the “Which Goals?” section in Chapter 3 of Roy F. Baumeister’s and John
Tierney’s Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
7. Petry, Nancy M, Warren K Bickel, and Martha Arnett. “Shortened Time
Horizons and Insensitivity to Future Consequences in Heroin Addicts.”
Addiction 93.5 (1998): 729–738.
8. Bickel, Warren K, and Matthew W Johnson. “Delay Discounting: a
Fundamental Behavioral Process of Drug Dependence.” Time and Decision. Ed.
G Loewenstein, D Read, and R F Baumeister. New York: N.p., 2003. 419–440.
Print.
9. Check out Bessel van der Kolk’s wonderful book, The Body Keeps the Score:
Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking Press,
2014. The book is very accessible and down-to-earth, yet presents fascinating
neuroscience research.
10. Another book worth checking out is Rita Carter’s Mapping the Mind.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010. The version I have is a bit
older (1998), but it’s been updated.
11. Bluhm, Robyn L et al. “Alterations in Default Network Connectivity in
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Related to Early-Life Trauma.” J Psychiatry
Neurosci 34.3 (2009): 187–194.
12. Aside from Klauser’s book, I’ve seen it in Anthony Robbins’ Awaken the
Giant Within, Chris Fox’s 5,000 Words Per Hour, and elsewhere.
13. Naturally, it’s a bit more complex than most books make it out to be. The
RAS is sort of a bottom-up approach to attention. To prevent being
overwhelmed, your limbic system and various midbrain structures tells your
cortex, “Hey, I found a thing! Pay attention to this!” Often, this is about pure
arousal: Hey dummy, pay attention to that freaking tiger about to kill you; you
can forget about things like, oh, the faint feeling of the breeze on your left ear
lobe. Deal with the tiger first!
Keep in mind, though, if we’re talking about things like “goals” to prime the
RAS to look for specific things, what we’re talking about is top-down attention:
whether your cortex can tell the RAS to be biased towards specific types of
things (i.e., things that will help in the achievement of your goals). Mohanty et
al. write, “Increasingly, research is showing that emotional information can be
employed endogenously to guide attention. Studies are beginning to elucidate
the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in anticipatory biasing of
attention by threat or reward-related cues.” See Mohanty, Aprajita, and Tamara
J. Sussman. “Top-down Modulation of Attention by Emotion.” Frontiers in
Human Neuroscience 7 (2013): 102. PMC.
Rita Carter also has a nice very basic summary of attention in Mapping the
Mind. London: Phoenix, 2003. pp. 304-5.
14. The actual role of writing goals in stuff like this needs further research, but
things like task orientation, motivation, the promise of reward, etc., are definitely
involved in how our brain controls attention. Check out Mohanty et al. 2013
from the previous footnote, as well as Engelmann, Jan B, and Luiz Pessoa.
“Motivation Sharpens Exogenous Spatial Attention.” Emotion 7.3 (2007): 668–
674.
15. Attridge, Derek. The Singularity of Literature. London and New York:
Routledge, 2010.
16. Langacker is actually describing a situation where context suggests the
repeated coactivation of relations, such that they get linked together in a longer,
more complex chain. I am adding that journal writing lets you do this
consciously and with specific intentions or outcomes in mind. See Langacker,
Ronald W. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford UP,
1987. Pp. 164-66.
17. Margaret Atwood qtd. in interview with Charney, Noah “How I Write:
Margaret Atwood” Daily Beast. 10 Oct 2013.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/10/how-i-write-margaret-atwood
18. Fox, Chris. 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter. Chris Fox
Writes LLC, 2015. Kindle.
19. Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002.
20. That’s all a Pomodoro is: 25 minutes of focus on one, single task, followed
by a 5 minute break before the next Pomodoro. It’s called a “Pomodoro” because
the original version used a timer shaped like a pomodoro tomato. There are a ton
of apps for these. I use an old version of Focus Booster for Mac. You don’t need
a ton of fancy features though—the simpler the better. (An actual physical egg
timer might work best.)
21. For example, Wood, Joanne V, W Q Elaine Perunovic, and John W Lee.
“Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others.” Psychological
Science 20.7 (2009): 860–866.
22. A lot of self-development books like to cite Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search
for Meaning (1959). I find their summaries are often misleading or
misrepresentative of his work, so really, just skip the middle man and read the
original. It’s about his time in several Nazi concentration camps, and finding
meaning in life even when other humans are doing everything they can to take
that away from you. Fair warning: it can be hard to read.
23. King, Laura A. “The Health Benefits of Writing About Life Goals.” PSPB
27.7 (2001): 798–807.
24. Burton, Chad M, and Laura A King. “Effects of (Very) Brief Writing on
Health: the Two-Minute Miracle.” British Journal of Health Psychology 13.1
(2010): 9–14.
25. Why did I keep returning to that image of someone taking their shirt off at
the beach? I’ve just been looking at those old, vintage Charles Atlas ads, where
the scrawny nerd buffs up and becomes king of the beach. I mean, I’m pretty
ambivalent about those ads (and most ads focused on body image) but holy crap
that was good marketing. Talk about using tangible results to get at the more
abstract ideas about “confidence”!