President Wilson looks on from my grandfather's 1915 journal.
Taking note of my note-taking helped improve my outlook. A lifetime of writing and I might yet get it right.
My dad kept a to-do list on an index card folded in his wallet. He would retrieve it from the billfold like a fiver, and add to the list or cross something off.
I kept a to-do list in my head. But my bosses tended to reward co-workers who kept action items on paper. "I know you've got it all thought out," one told me. "But what if you get run over by a bus? Then I'd be lost." So now I make plans.
Since my days in college lecture halls I'd recorded what others say in the moment, in detail. It still took some sort of test for me to go back and study my notes. Taking verbatim notes as a reporter required more speed than neatness. I'd hold eye contact with my source, and the pen would float over the notepad as if across a Ouija board, guided by an occult hand. I scrawled every which way, but legibly enough so to transcribe before I forgot the conversation.
When I started in project management, I carried a notebook to meetings. Software may have managed my action items better, but the notebook never needed a recharge or restart. My notes remained very much in the moment, till they met their end in a filing cabinet graveyard.
It was high time to reflect on and organize my thoughts. This was a change of direction for both my penmanship and my process. This was my entry into journaling.
The journal's journey
Writers use journals to capture observations in the moment that might be useful later in a published work. But the journal isn't just a tool of the journalist. My grandfather reserved one of his bound ledgers to write down (in Polish) things he read, found interesting, and wanted to keep close at hand. During the Enlightenment, this kind of journal was called a commonplace book. Now such collections are mostly online, and known as blogs.
In the days of newspapers, people would just cut out articles and file them away or paste them into scrapbooks. Dad folded the clippings and kept them in his wallet for weeks, next to his cash and his to-do list. No wonder his wallet bulged so. Every so often he'd unfold and reread the article, usually something inspirational from the back pages of the morning Sentinel, or the curiously green-colored lifestyle pages of the evening Journal. ("Today's Chuckle, 4-22-54: A good wife is not simply the one who gets the best husband, but the one who makes the best of the husband she gets.")
The writing journal, meanwhile, became more like a diary, but without the high school confessional tone. This evolution had as much to do with psychology as publishing.
Professor Barbara Fredrickson, now at the University of North Carolina, theorized that negative thoughts narrowed one's perspective, while positive thinking encouraged creativity. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas found that journals had therapeutic value: When people wrote about difficult issues, they showed a better immune response to stress. Therapists like Kay Adams started giving patients writing homework to help them get in touch with their feelings.
3 good things
My version of this type of journal ultimately adopted the format known as Three Good Things. It works like this:
- Write down three notable events in the day, and why they went well.
- Every day there's something that could have gone better, so also note one thing that needs work.
- And just to end on a grateful note, note one random thing that gives you joy: The color of the October sky. The taste of heirloom carrots. The tone of Harry Carney's sax.
There are notebooks dedicated to this format—and yes, there's an app for that too. But I just drop my three things into my project notebook, so that I can stumble on them later.
Like other virtuous actions, journaling can be a hard habit to make. (Even my grandfather left much of his journal blank.) My mornings are set: I like my sleep and my running routine. Fortunlately, a new commute has recaptured lost time for reading and journaling. But nighttime is the right time to be with your thoughts. The TV always claims more time than it deserves, and Twitter turns into a swirling vortex of negativity. An end-of-day meditation on three good things is an improvement in itself.
Moody bible
There are other benefits. I'm better able to pinpoint next steps and plan the upcoming day, and I have a record of milestone dates. I've done book indexing, so journal indexing would be a logical enhancement. But first, I have half a mind to go full psych.
Marking down my gloomy moments allows me to forgive myself and others for being such jerks. Driving on weekends can make me angry, but as in the Elvis Costello lyric I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused. I can't do much about traffic, or about fools acting as if honking will make it disappear. It does not help to obsess about things out of your control. The shrinks are right: Negativity leaves you stuck in a ditch, blind to the way out.
I try to accept my own feelings for what they are, and move out of a place of pain. It's better to make things better. Thinking about why things go right makes them repeatable, and makes you want to repeat them. I see people's charity and want to be kind. I see people's courage and want to be brave. I see people's energy and want to get moving.
Dad had it right. Our days have a lot to keep track of. Our time is limited and valuable. We need to keep it close, and spend it wisely.
No comments:
Post a Comment