About a month ago my 6-Minutes-Diary ran out of pages. One thing was crystal clear: I wanted to keep the journaling routine as it has value for different ‘customers’ of different ‘services’ in my life. In other words: establishing that habit and ‘making a vow’ worked really well.
It didn’t take long to decide what would be up next: a book with more degrees of freedom and with more white space.
Don’t get me wrong: the 6-Minutes-Diary has been a great tool for me to work with for a certain period. It has inspired me a couple of times and I really loved its thorough psychological foundation. On the other hand, now I had this strong urge to have something with more free space.
Different needs, different tools – again
First, I switched back to the Clarity Journal because it has more degrees of freedom and some white space. And from my experiment with it I still had half of that book available. What seemed like an inversion of my decision a couple of months ago was now just the right step to go. And funny enough, the theme ‘different needs, different tools‘ still was valid.
Soon I noticed I had to beat myself to do the “journaling thing”….
The routine got stuck! Interesting!
Why I am doing what I am doing the way I am doing it?
Being stuck was an indicator that I might need to re-adjust the method and tooling again. Obviously reusing the material that still was there wasn’t the way to go!
So I sat down and I reflected on questions like: Why exactly am I doing the daily journaling? What needs are to be covered by it?
In need of more space
I found I need a more radical change. For a while I’ve already been using a blank notebook for special occasions to reflect on and journal about two to three times a week. And now was the time to use that very blank notebook for daily journaling.
Using that very blank notebook for daily practise is what I am doing now for 10 days: using at least one blank page per day.
The structure is varying from ‘freestyle’ to a bit more structured. Two ingredients I’ve been keeping so far from the Clarity Journal and the 6-Minutes-Diary is:
- morning: setting the intention(s) for the day
- evening: listing things, moments, experiences, … that I am grateful for every day (and how I contributed to them)
What’s next?
My writing practise has become a mindfulness practise helping me structuring my days and life a bit better. And yet I have the feeling something is missing still and I am curious what will emerge next on my journey… .
As the topic of Bullet Journaling has been coming to me repeatedly I have ordered the book by Ryder Carroll and I will be inspired by his thoughts and journey soon. The thing that struck me already is that a Bullet Journal is way more than a “productivity thing” and that Ryder also describes it as a mindfulness practise.
Addendum: here’s my series on 10 reasons why you should NOT 😉 start a BulletJournal.