Journey to Journal
I've been on a quest to establish a journalling habit for a couple of years now. It's finally taking off, and for anyone else who is struggling to start a new habit, I thought it might be interesting to read about how mine is going. So here are excerpts related to establishing my habit (and its struggles), when I journal about journalling. If you stick to the end, you’ll also learn what my takeaways are that you can apply to your own habit-creation journey.
(Journal entries have been edited for a better reading experience, which means entries unrelated to the journal journey have been omitted, as indicated).
10/15/2024 So, I'm still doing poorly with a journal or blog or posting goal or habit. [Aside: maybe it's that ambiguity about what I’m doing that's part of the problem.] I see a few hurdles.
First, I really like writing by hand, pen on paper. In and of itself, not a problem if I just want to journal. But my purpose for this journalling is to develop content for a blog for my coaching business. [Re: above ‘aside’: Look at that! It’s not as vague a goal as I thought.] Obviously, no one reads my paper journals, which means I also need to type them up. That's an extra step that isn't fun. I have looked at OCR notebooks, but they're not cheap, and it’s not the same as writing on paper.
Second, I still don't have an anchor or rhythm for the writing. Writing in the evening on the deck is out, now that the weather is cool again. I tried 8AM on Mondays and Fridays in lieu of the office commute (also tried 4PM on Fridays) but it's not sticking. I do it once, then something else feels more attractive the next time. I’m not ready to toss out this idea entirely because it has potential; it’s only half-baked.
In my James Clear reading tonight, he suggests “create least resistance; shape the environment; make it easy.” But…writing for five minutes or writing just one sentence feels like a wasted effort: because nothing will ever be coherent if I’m writing one sentence a day.
Maybe I need to remove the thinking. Maybe I need more structure, so that there's less decision-making required. James Clear talks about Twyla Tharp whose habit was to hail a cab. She didn't decide to go to the gym, she just had to hail a cab. The rest fell into routine from there.
If I can create structure that dictates what I do each time I sit down, might that help? For example, Monday: pen + paper writing. Tuesday: type it up. Wednesday: edit. Thursday: review and prep. Friday: post. This plan has some merit. Maybe. Eight AM each day. It falls apart if I have a breakfast meeting like on next Monday, but maybe I plan ahead or work around those rare occurrences. I should at least make an effort to trial this plan. See if the structure pans out.
Baby steps.
10/28/2024 Here is how I'm doing with the concept of “journaling” or related activities at 8AM before going to or logging on to work: mediocre. There's more inclination to wrap up breakfast around 8:00 AM, to limit my Squaredle play time, and do something in the journaling/coaching realm before work than before: that's the positive progress.
The negative or not working-well side is that at 8:00 AM, I still need to finish my tea or do more things in the bathroom that reduce actual journal time. The schedule hasn't worked out perfectly either. For one, I'm not in a cadence of write-type-edit-prep-post yet. LinkedIn threw a snag in my system when it changed the banner size. So, the banner I'd prepped wasn't fitting right, and I spent a whole block trying to fix it. Argh.
I don't think my system of write-type-edit-prep-post is flawed. I think it's manageable. The time in the morning just before work also seems reasonable. It has boundaries and cues and makes sense, in theory. I need to work on the wake-up time, which will influence the pre-8:00 AM routine, and I need to get in the write-type-edit-prep-post rhythm. I also see that it would help if I knew what I'm writing about before I sit down on a Monday morning. Overall, I've got a better framework than ever. I just need to fine tune it and turn it into a habit. I'm optimistic I can make it work.
11/18/2024 So. For all my excitement about landing on a blogging structure that was logical and feasible, it quickly fell apart. Schedule changes, picture proportions, technical details, sleep, transportation, conversation: all interrupted my beautiful idea.
Tonight, I read a few more pages from James Clear. “The point is to master the habit of showing up.” (Atomic Habits, page 163) Then do the two-minute rule (or, the easiest thing). He even gives an example for journaling and says write less than you feel like. Build the identity you want through the small act of showing up in a way that's easy, and, therefore, achievable. Because the point is to do the damn thing, not think about it or want it.
Which means I need to do the 8:00 AM write two sentences and only two sentences until THAT part of showing up is a habit. A routine, something I do without making the decision to do it because it's the default action.
My “early morning yoga” routine didn't start as “early morning.” I started as “yoga in the morning” when my work schedule changed to start an hour later. I kept my usual wake-up time and added in yoga. That routine became a habit, and when my work start-time returned to its earlier hour, I shifted my morning routine and got up earlier, to accommodate the yoga.
So. Tomorrow and the rest of the week: two sentences every morning.
11/20/2024 Thwarted by a tissue! It seemed like a great idea, to do the two sentences right after my morning yoga because it's already an established habit. I didn’t realize that picking up my used tissue, taking it to the kitchen compost bin on the way to the shower, was already an established post-yoga habit.
11/21/2024 I brought the tissue with me this morning, to the desk, to experiment with what a post-yoga two sentence journal would feel like. Perhaps the tissue will become the cue, the item embedded in a signal, and so I may also want to attempt an evening version to confirm the flow of habits.
11/22/2024 This tissue is turning into the cue, due to the fact that it was the object of notice a couple of days ago. After giving it so much attention, it now makes me think of journalling instead of being the mindlessly grabbed object on my way upstairs. Fascinating!
11/25/2024 Creating a habit that happens at a particular time – 8AM in my case - clearly doesn't work (for me). I'm not going to drop everything or stop my current activity to do something else that's self-inflicted and somewhat arbitrary when I want to finish my current "project" to its full completion so I can make a clear start on the next one. Therefore, sequence of events is more important than a start time when it comes to habits.
11/25/2024 [on the computer] Okay, morning number one as I try out this ink-to-text method [in OneNote]. The one downfall is that I lose about a minute to the computer booting up. However, this ink-to-text thing is working rather well. So maybe it's best to do this for the long form writing, because it saves the step of typing! Awesome.
11/25/2024 #2 This entry comes after evening yoga as a further experiment into potential cues. I know last year during the Goals course I journalled before evening yoga, but what if I tried after yoga? Both morning and evening because the meditative opportunity of yoga can provoke ideas for journal entries and blog posts. I'll leave the journal here, where I do yoga.
11/26/2024 The open book with pen on top, here on the table beside my yoga mat, makes it nearly impossible to forget about my intention to write two sentences. Instead, my problem is I don't have any profound thoughts to share as whatever occurred to me in the night has now disappeared with wakefulness.
11/26/2024 #2 Also post yoga. Habits are so interesting! The desire for change or action is not enough. It requires a structure, a precursor, and a desire for an outcome that serves me better than without it. Therefore, habit-building is more about the system it will reside in than—or as much as—the habit itself.
11/27/2024-11/29/2024 unrelated entries
11/30/2024 Last weekend (Nov. 23-24) when the journal was at the desk, I didn’t write; it was the weekend, so the routine of the day felt different, and so it felt like a weekday habit of going to the office to write my two lines could be dropped for the day. Now, a week later also on a Saturday, because of the open notebook here on the table beside my yoga mat, it feels more natural and normal to do the writing. It’s as if it’s becoming a habit!!!
12/01/2024 This journal writing is definitely gaining the characteristic of habit. The conclusion of yoga and the signal of the open notebook with pen is compelling, because now my default action is “write.” The friction is now in the decision is whether or not to ignore the notebook, which requires a reason (excuse) to myself as to why it would be permissible today to skip this activity that I’ve decided is important to me. It’s easier just to write a few sentences and be done with it, rather than make the decision NOT to write. Whoa.
12/01/2024 #2 - 12/05/2024 unrelated entries
12/06/2024 The cue of the open journal right beside my yoga mat has been an excellent hook. I've been able to consistently and automatically write after every yoga routine since I started. It really speaks to the efficacy of linking a new habit onto an existing habit using a visual cue. If this is my writing time—which I like because pen on paper really is easier than typing, and easier than stylus on screen—the next step is to establish the post-breakfast, pre-work habit of typing up the journal, editing, more editing, uploading, and posting to the blog. It's that fourth/fifth step that feels the most daunting at this stage. Make it easy! That's the quest.
12/06/2024 #2 unrelated entry
12/07/2024 I notice how my entries have gotten longer. I started this timing of the habit with the ease of two sentences as per James Clear. Writing only two sentences was actually a bit of a challenge. Then, knowing “two sentences” was a symbolic gesture of "not too much," I let myself go beyond two sentences but kept it to five or six lines on the page without any real decision of when to stop. The five to six lines soon stretched into 'writing until I finished my thought.' Next, I also started typing up the entries, and I'm now in the process of thinking through how to turn the two sentence entries into blogs that might actually be posted, so I've increased my writing into more fulsome entries. Which, it seems, looks like I’m creating a journaling habit. Amazing.
12/08/2024, 12/09/2024 #1, unrelated entries
12/09/2024 I'm so excited! One of the challenges in my journal-to-blog quest has been the handwritten-to-typed-text step. (Aside: I've already learned that I need to hand write, not type. I just so much prefer and love to write by hand.) Yes, I can type what I've written. But typing is tedious. I'm a decent typer, because I was taught proper typing in grade 8 (on a computer), and then again in grade 9 when "Typing" was still a compulsory course, even though it was on computers (black screens with orange type and a boxy cursor). But I'm not super accurate. Did I mention that typing is tedious? Typing up my notes was part of the process I couldn't smooth out and was willing to accept that it would just require time to do—until today.
(Another aside: I had already given up the ink to text feature in OneNote. It's very cool, but too distracting for long form writing. Taking pictures of my writing didn't work either. The system didn't recognize my cursive penmanship as text, pretty as it is.)
Today I was talking to a friend about my writing progress and my typing stumbling block. She asked why didn't I try dictation and read my writing out loud? Light bulb! I had been thinking in the box: dictation as that action of saying thoughts out loud so someone else can write them down for you. I also thought about "Transcribe" as the tool whereby recorded audio is converted into text. My friend's simple question suggested I think about these tools in a way I'd never even considered. It was a "Mind blown!" moment.
At the first possible moment I tried it. Success! Not perfect, but better than typing in terms of accuracy and speed, and I need to do major editing on my writing, anyways. Genius.
12/10/2024 What lessons can I take from this story? Many.
There is always an easier way. We may not see it right away, but it's there.
Look again. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes, fresh perspective to identify what we, who are too close to the problem, can't see.
Think outside the box. How can existing tools be repurposed to suit our situation? Or what tools are needed to be created to do the job?
Persist. The way forward may not be readily apparent, but with time and experimentation, something will work eventually.
Don't hide your challenges. I could have just told my friend that things were going well and I was making progress and left it at that. But in being honest about where things were hard, I gave opportunity for her ideas. We both feel better for having this solution: she for giving it and me for implementing it.