A Practice For Staying on Course
I also suggest that once every ninety days or so you take an hour to read your journal entries from that period. But don’t be overly focused on the details, like the budget meeting three weeks ago or last Thursday’s pasta dinner. Instead, focus on the broader patterns or trends. Capture the headline. Look for the lead in your day, your week, your life. Small, incremental changes are hard to see in the moment but over time can have a huge cumulative effect.
~ Greg McKeown, Essentialism
This is something I need to do.
Between this blog, as well as my personal journal, I need to sit down and review these entries thoughtfully on a regular basis. No real goal in mind. Just to see if my subconscious can weave together any narrative or emerging trend that needs to be nurtured or nipped in the bud.
I’ve never done this. At least not in any systematic way.
It never really helped that past attempts at journaling are/where in a hodgepodge of random notebooks (normal sized and pocket sized), a variety of apps on my computer or phone, and on blogs and medium.
In the last several months, I’ve made a concerted effort to focus all my journaling in evernote so that everything is held in one place (and searchable!). And then all of my public musings have been scrawled in this blog. So two places to review.
It might be constructive to also review my twitter messages since I’m pretty active there too? I’m not sure. We’ll see.
The point is, there is a value in these writing exercises. It not only helps me clarify my thoughts in the moment, but if I do it right, it can also become a wealth of reminders and nudges to get me back on focus towards the things that were once meaningful to me for good reason. Like the meditation practice of coming back to my breath when my mind wonders, reviewing these writings will bring my distracted world back towards my mission.
Ok. This weekend, it is my goal to review the past 3 months of thoughts. Wish me luck.
