Just found out my article was mentioned in Moleskinerie. So, welcome – readers from Moleskinerie!
I find that it’s almost impossible to do anything without penning down my thoughts in a physical diary or journal of some sort. I now have about four ongoing journals I keep notes on, and I didn’t think it was necessary to put everything down, but now I do.
Why Blogs Don’t Always Work
My initial reluctance to keep a journal was driven by the fear that I wouldn’t use it – simply because I would end up putting my notes on a blog, or on a wiki, or on twitter, or on little text files that I could sync across multiple computers using Dropbox (you can see where this is going)… and that would cause my £14 moleskine left there to collect dust – a thought that just drives crazy.
So, I initially toyed around with the idea of having a blog take care of that. Except that I have more than one blog, each addressing specific types of interests I have. Sometimes, the stuff I think about doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. Also, they need to be organized and polished a bit more before it comes out as a blog post.
Then, there’s the issue of private thoughts. Stuff I don’t want people to know. Or stuff that I’m still sorting out in my mind and I’m not quite done with them yet because they’re quite ephemeral and end up forgetting about them. A public blog won’t be good for that. And I don’t like the idea of protected posts.
So, I opened a private blog. But that didn’t work either, because I needed a computer to do that – and worse, a blog format is almost always linear – and trying to do doodles, sketches and arrows all over the place on a blog is possible, but difficult. I realized that my thoughts were pinging back and forth so often that writing it out as a blog post wasn’t always the best way to express what was going on in my mind.
Minimizing the Paralyzing Fear of not being able to control your own Destiny
Then I was about ready to give up, except that I often worry a lot about life so much that it gets me depressed, and there was just too many things I was trying to sort out in my mind, so I finally got down and started writing stuff down on paper. And doing that just solved my problems.
It wasn’t that I needed to write it down – but getting my thoughts out and putting it on somewhere permanent like a piece of paper was so liberating, it was like a huge burden being lifted off my chest.
And it didn’t just work for personal stuff, either. In fact, a lot of the stuff I worry about is about ideas. Like, how best to communicate something to my boss, or planning the next steps for my next sideproject, or calculating the cost of financing my dream home or something like that. Stuff that gets you depressed when you try to sort it out in your mind without any kind of external assistance, even if they were fairly stimulating when you first thought about them.
The Right Tools for the Job
I drew up a simple diagram (actually took me a good hour) that describes how I view the different tools come into play, and how they help my thinking process, in general. While I still blog a lot to get my thoughts out, there’s a certain threshold I find myself struggling to get past, and this is how I end up using different tools to support my “thinking” needs.
Where I start really depends on what kind of message I’m trying to convey, and what type of output I’m trying to produce. If it’s something public, that I wouldn’t mind feedback on – then a blog or a public twitter message does the job nicely. But if it’s something more conversational (either with myself or personal friends), then I tend to use closed-off communities, or a private blog. Then, there are just other things that are way too complex to be pushing around using blogs or comments on social networking sites, then I ought just to pull out a piece of paper or my journal and start sketching or scribbling notes.
Other folks might do it in different ways, but this sort of works for me for now, and I intend to stick with it. I am starting to believe that writing unpolished scribbles and doodles doesn’t mean that I’m disorganized or incapable of communicating my ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that it’s actually part of my communication process, and that it’s a skill that gets better over time.
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This has been my personal problem the past 3 or 4 years. I love it. A basic Personal Information Management system is just not that simple… keep simplifying and cleaning edges to your system. Good luck!
Dude,
Great Post! Someone explained this to me years ago, but it is always good to hear it from someone else. “Everything begins as a thought” and all thoughts need to be written down….or else you will forget them and the world will suffer for it.
Thanks Again!
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get it on paper and you’ll never lose it. put it into digital form if needed (use a camera to snap a pic). I started this while working for a pre-IPO for legal reasons and have never looked back. (work journal
…dave
Before I started blogging I tried to use a moleskinerie to keep track of my thoughts. But I always felt I had more to say and the little booklet was way to small and my hand writing is way too messy. So once I discovered blogging this past summer I took the leap and I’m currently testing it out. Blogging is tough sometimes though, for many reasons: so much advice out there (must have a focus, “show you are an expert”, etc), difficult to think through ideas so that other will understand, getting people to read the damn thing, etc. But I think your point is that blogging isn’t enough. That’s why I plan on breaking out the little notebook again and track my little odd thoughts everyday and make sure to reflect. Good blog, I plan to subscribe via google reader.