how to journal like a philosopher (to change your life)

This Is The Life tracker system a simple journaling method to track and optimize your life there's a monthly page to track your habits goals and highlights followed by your entries in the pages after in the previous video I shared how to set up the monthly tracker but in this video I'm going to talk about what to actually write about in the entries after and how I journal for mental Clarity this video is part of the life tracker Series where I'll be making a series of videos talking about the life tracker system and how to journal so if you want to see more of that make sure to subscribe one book that has been really influential for me in changing the way I Journal is this Japanese book called The Power of memos memo Naru it was written by this Japanese notetaking expert and entrepreneur who founded multiple successful companies and he credits that to this similar note- taking method after journaling for 6 years now and filling six notebooks this is one of the most sustainable ways I found to make journaling easy and practical it hasn't been translated to English but I'll share with you the main idea in the journaling section of this video If you want to get right into the format you can skip to this time stand right here but first I also wanted to share one useful tip with journaling so if you're new to journaling or you found it difficult to keep up with it consistently in the past one thing that's been really helpful for me are journaling prompts I basically have these journaling prompts that I try to answer every single year which captures my state of mind and I also have these journaling prompts that I've collected from different books that I've read it definitely makes it easier to just start writing because all you have to do is just to respond to a journaling prompt and it often leads to unexpected insights and even memories that I thought I forgot so I definitely recommend checking out some journaling prompts I created created a notion template with 100 of my favorite journaling prompts that I've used over the past 6 years and it's sorted by different categories you can get it on my website or this link that I put right here it's on sale for $5 which helps support the channel there's a FAQ and also some other resources in the template and I also made it so you can just respond directly in it if you prefer to track your life digitally for me having journaling promps was one of the keys to finishing my first Journal cover to cover which I think is one of the most satisfying things you can do maybe you're thinking why even Journal at all one of the biggest benefits I experienced after journaling for 6 years was an ability to structure my thoughts and articulate them clearly because I journal on pen and paper it's forced me to learn how to structure my thoughts logically and linearly compared to journaling on the computer I can't really just move paragraphs around or delete paragraphs or entries that easily so I really have to be more mindful when I'm writing in my journal I definitely think it's a really good practice and has helped me be a better thinker and speaker overall also there's been times where I feel overwhelmed or even lost like what path I should go down but because I have this journal that can go back to it's helped me be able to essentially think through writing and figure out some action plan that would help me this was especially helpful when I graduated from college and I wasn't sure what I was going to do next I think the skill of being able to articulate yourself clearly and expanding your thoughts in long form writing is something that's slowly being lost today especially with more and more consumerism and the temptation to just be a consumer not an actual producer and so having a journal helps you become a producer and to be able to express your thoughts to yourself it's really interesting to go back and flip through my different journals for every year of my life and see what I was doing and what I was thinking in response to sometimes even the same prompts like I can see that my perspective has changed significantly over the past few years so it's helped me not get too stuck in a certain mindset and be open to different ideas and experiences so I think it's really valid and really rewarding to keep a journal all right but to actually show you the format that I journal in it pretty much looks like this so you have to date The Prompt or topic and the response which is separated into two sections so with the date I was wrri in this same format you have the actual date like June 22nd 204 24 and the day so like Saturday and the actual timestamp which you probably might think is not that important but it actually provides a lot of context about the journal entry so if you think about writing your Journal at 2: a. m. versus writing your Journal at 10:00 a.

m. you'll probably have a very different state of mind and so your response will be really different yeah like at 2 a. m.

you might have some like weird thoughts or deep philosophical thoughts whereas like at 10: a. m.