Journaling for productivity is a topic that came up in my interview with Adam Harris recently. Adam is (by his definition) an “occasional entrepreneur” and gave some great insights on the power of questions – that’s why the two word title of his interview was called “Quality Questions“.
Whilst the conversation explored the power of questions, what came to light was one of the tools he regularly uses to keep track of his own productivity is journaling.
What I’m going to do in this post is share my recent experiences of journaling for productivity stimulated by the conversation I had with Adam.
Here’s what I’ll cover:
- Here’s why I publish 2 productivity podcasts
- My early experiences Journalling
- Some great journaling resources
- Different types of journaling
- How to journal for productivity
- 5 Minute Journaling
- My experiences implementing 5 minute journaling
- How to journal for productivity – summary
- Relevant episodes from the Profit Profit Productivity Podcast.
I recorded my daily efforts over the course of the week on my Profit Productivity Podcast – that’s the sister podcast to this one.
Here’s Why I Publish 2 Productivity Podcasts
I’ve been running a (more or less) daily podcast for the last 18 months once I took the decision to start developing my own productivity.
Over more than 300 episodes, I realised I was lurching from one approach to the other, dipping into productivity techniques and approaches as and when they were convenient to me.
There was an unhealthy mix of content (about 30%), application (about 30%) and whinging about why I wasn’t applying what I knew (about 40%).
I realised I needed to make a distinction between content and implementation.
So I started the Peak Performance Productivity Podcast to interview people who were already productive (or knew stuff about being productive). That’s my content fix.
I now use the podcast at ProfitProductivity.com to capture how I apply what I learn in the interviews in the Peak Performance Productivity Podcast.
It forces me to get focused on implementing just one new productive technique a week.
I use the daily podcast to reflect on the inevitable challenges I face introducing a new behaviour and of course share the successes.
The approach is really working well for me because I am making shifts in my behaviour that are having a positive impact on my performance.
I’ll link to the episodes on that podcast that are relevant at the bottom of this post.
My Early Experiences Weren’t Journaling For Productivity, But They Were “Journaling”
Now I have been journaling pretty much since I learnt to write at school. In fact the first practice writing exercise I was given in primary school was to write about what happened the day before.
It was usually the first thing we had to do in the morning once we’d had the register taken, come back from morning assembly and settled down at our tables.
I seem to remember the teacher having to put her forefinger vertically across her pursed lips and glare her eyes at any sources of noise from us kids in an attempt to get us quiet.
For some reason, shouting “quiet!” at the top of her voice wasn’t an option she was prepared to take.
Perhaps she preferred to look like an owl scanning for a mouse as she widened her eyes at the multiple noise transgressions and jerked her head to look in the different directions from whence they came.
And then at some point once we were settled we strained our young developing memories to see what we could recall about yesterday after school.
Grubby pencil in hand, tongue sneaking out the corner of my mouth, my non-writing arm encircling my notebook protectively with my head resting on my shoulder, the writing would begin.
Usually I’d write something along the lines of:
After school I walked to where mum works with Simon. When we got there mum was not there. So we waited in the office with Mrs Mcgowan. Mum arrived. Mum gave us an apple each and told us to go to see Jean. Jean was feeding Shirley. Then when mum finished work we walked home.
Michael aged 7
Not the most auspicious beginning to a literary career but we all have to start somewhere.
So the seeds of the habit of recording what’s been happening in my life were sown at a very early age.
I’ve Done Quite A Bit Of Journaling Over The Years But It’s Not All Been Productive Journaling.
Over the years I have dabbled in journalling at different times. I have about 15 hard backed note books that have collected my various thoughts at different times in my life.
In reviewing those journals a familiar theme kept repeating itself.
I’d usually find myself writing at a time when I was just coming out of a low point of some sort.
The journal would then be used to capture and track my efforts to pull myself back up again…
…before fizzling out for a while.
Until I found myself at the bottom of another low point needing to drag my sorry ass out of the despair I was enduring at the time.
Sadly it is a cycle that repeated itself many times over.
Advances in technology, the availability of multi-device applications and sharing in the cloud has seen me switch my efforts to using Evernote to journal about a variety of things.
Whilst the cycle of low point, despair, resurrection and then tail off has continued, the flexibility of Evernote has also seen me journal to track learning to speak some Spanish, capturing the efforts and learnings of different business projects as well as a few other unrelated episodes in my life.
Then over the last couple of years I have developed my own Productivity Improvement Operating System that includes using journaling for productivity.
It is a key component of developing the awareness you need to keep track of how your productivity developing.
I have used it on and off over the last 18 months, and even did a few episodes of the Profit Productivity Podcast to focus my efforts to start journaling again.
But like all things…
It tailed off.
In hindsight I think it was because I wasn’t focused enough and more importantly, I was trying to use general journaling for productive purposes, instead of actually focusing on how to journal for productivity.
So Adam’s interview was a timely reminder for me to start again.
Some Great Journaling Resources
Having decided I’d focus a week on getting back into journaling for productivity again, I had a couple of great resources thrust into my face.
I’d opened up my YouTube app on my iPad to pull up one of my morning yoga routines the day after deciding this would be my focus and found a Tim Ferriss video at the top of the home page.
The video was called How I Journal And Take Notes | Brainstorming + Focusing + Reducing Anxiety | Tim Ferriss.
Was this the universe telling me something or was it just one of those serendipitous moments of coincidence that will make a great story?
I watched it anyway.
…Thank you Tim Ferris.
It was exactly what I needed.
It introduced me to:
- how he captures notes and brainstorms (perhaps the subject of a future post)
- Morning Pages
- 5 Minute Journaling.
I’d not come across Morning Pages or 5 Minute Journaling before so I took lots of notes whilst marvelling at the “when the student is ready…” sentiment.
Alongside the Tim Ferriss video, the first video listed in the recommend viewing column next to it was one from Ryan Holiday (Daily Stoic fame) .
This was called 7 Ways Marcus Aurelius Will Help You Journal Like A Pro and was a great compliment to the Ferriss video.
His video led me to the mother of all “how to” journaling resources by Ryan Holiday on the Daily Stoic website.
It is called The Art of Journaling: How To Start Journaling, Benefits of Journaling, and More.
You probably need to look no further than that article. It is a majestic read written by one of the world’s leading thinkers full of practical advice, journaling wisdom and good stuff about the art of Journaling.
It’s definitely one you’ll want to bookmark.
But to save you a bit of time here are some of the physical resources mentioned to support these two videos.
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