The Journaling System that changed my life

let's talk about journaling and vomit this is a picture of me at 18 here's me at 25 and here's me now now these three guys they don't have a ton in common but there is one thing this druggy little teenager this quarter lifee crisis dude who's losing his hair and this sober happy Suburban Dad they all Journal journaling is one of those things that massively changed my life but there is a problem with it there is a lot of hype but there isn't that much instruction the general message is journal and it will change your

life and so you sit down at a blank page and uh now what should I start with dear diary do I talk about my day do I talk about my childhood am I allowed to use this for a shopping list what are the rules if you've ever wondered why journaling isn't doing that life-changing thing that it's meant to or even if you love journaling and you're looking to love it more then I made this video for you but first I should probably explain the title The vomit system to me journaling is vomiting so you know

when you're really really sick maybe you got windy roads maybe you got plasted last night I don't know for whatever reason you're just not feeling good and then you vomit and you kind of do feel good in the moment vomiting is pretty gross but just after you're like oh I feel better I think that was what I needed now I've journaled for 15 years which means I've tried hundreds of techniques some are great others not great but the good stuff stays with you and in this video I want to take you through that good stuff

my all-time favorite journaling techniques and the system that I think about them in the vomit system all right let's do it so what is this that's probably the question that you got right now what this is is the five main reasons that I journal the five things that I use journaling for one reason starts with v another reason starts with o then M Then I then T and the entire topic starts with j so if you're playing along with the alphabet superet this video is J now let's talk about vomit I feel like I'm going

to keep saying that first reason a journal to vent I've also made this the first reason because this is how I started journaling and it's how I start a lot of journaling sessions I'll show you what I mean vent write what makes you angry this is a quote from the writer po Bronson who said whenever he has writers block he just thinks of something that you know makes him mad and it's not that he's trying to write a rant it's just that rants come pretty easy you know it just rolls right out of here I

start with whatever makes me angry and that usually gets me over that hurdle of starting now as much as venting is a tool to get us into the flow it does have some practical benefits one of the big ones is the Mind dump effect so come on red so before journaling I kind of see my mind like that [Music] afterwards it's like that it's this indexing effect things are chaotic up here things are not chaotic up here there's this quote that I like I don't know what I think until I write it apparently Jan didan

and like 30 other people said that it's one of those ones where there's like a think piece on where did this qu originate but regardless of its origin I really like its meaning cuz basically what we're trying to do is get all of this mess and put it on paper and paper it's finite it's trivial it's clean we can sort of see what's going on the thing that I liking it to is looking for your keys if you were looking for your keys in a dark room probably wouldn't find them soon as you turn on

the light you're like boom got them this is when the lights are off I have no idea what's going on up here this is when the lights are on and I'm like oh there's that nasty thought there's that cognitive distortion maybe I'm not a train wreck and that is vent the first thing that I like to journal for now now we have oh obligations yeah specifically to make sure our obligations aren't just Rogue intrusive thoughts that just bug us throughout the day and also to get them done this step is similar to venting in the

sense that we are mind dumping but the big difference is we are not just mind dumping our thoughts but our responsibilities our to-do list we're just trying to I'm going to say it again vomit it onto the page the idea here is that we don't want to use our brain to store problems that was smooth we want to use it to to solve problems and in order to free out that space we want to put all of our problems onto the journal also if you want to explore just how far you can take this indexing

idea just taking your thoughts and putting them somewhere else check out Thiago Forte's concept of the second brain super fascinating stuff all right let's get into actionables when I am using journaling for obligations what I do is these four things so firstly I'll start with an obligation dump this is where it's like anything that could remotely be considered an obl everything from I need to write this chapter I need to get this film developed I need to clean the kitchen I need to write back to this email I need to update my license I want

to buy a boat everything everything from the Monday into the grandio just get it all on the page next I organize it I draw some buckets here that's fun in terms of actual buckets I usually just split this up into like broad categories you know like family Finance Health work now we get to step three prioritize I've drawn a boat here you probably know the story it's this UK rowing team that won Gold one year and when the coach was asked what the secret formula was he said I just gave them all one guiding question

doesn't make the boat go faster do you want to eat broccoli or a cake what a crossroads right what a normal decision but for example sake I'll roll with it broccoli or cake which one are you going to eat for breakfast buddy instead of having to mul over all of the pros and cons the team would just encouraged to ask one question will it make the boat go faster therefore pick the broccoli sorry Kake so in terms of journaling and organizing all of these obligations and the to-do list I usually run up past a guiding

question there's a decent Tim Ferris question that I like for this it's which thing on this list if done would make everything else easier and that usually raises the correct obligations to the top and then finally I put it into a to-do list form that's what I got right here so bare minimum and killing it this is how I truncate my to-do lists I write out the bare minimum that I need to do that day what is the least amount of things that I need to do in order to make tomorrow suck a little less

and then if I'm really in the mood what could I get done I've used this split system for years and what I really like lack is it minimizes the guilt that you might place on yourself if you don't get enough stuff done it creates momentum cuz the bars set low so you do achieve stuff and it accounts for the normal es and flows of Life some days are really really hard and on those days it is really nice to know what the bare minimum that you have to do is and that brings us to M

the next thing that I like to use journaling for what could this be I use journaling for my mindset huh do you like this guy this is meant to be a brain and it's training to get a better mindset I promise this is going somewhere so I like to understand mindset in two ways the first way is with a tech metaphor your mindset is like the operating system that your computer runs and the second is something that you can train hence the SW brain but training your mindset is one of those phrases that just doesn't

sound like it's going to lead anywhere you know super vague man it's like what do you do with that what's the action that you take and this is where journal comes in here I've got six journaling techniques that I will use from time to time to improve my mindset and from 15 years of journaling I'd say that these are probably my favorites all right so the first one reframing I've talked about this so much but my favorite journaling question is how is this the best thing that has ever happened to me and I've asked that

about some deeply deeply painful things and it feels so inappropriate but the thing about your brain is it just starts looking for answers when you ask that question it's like could be this could be this could be this it's wrong every time but starts breaking your thinking and it helps train your mindset to just naturally refrain stuff next one possibility if you are struggling with like limiting beliefs or just doubting yourself might be worth checking out because statements what's a because statement Mr Boldman I will tell you don't worry I got this a because statement

is a way that we gather evidence that we are whatever the thing that we say we want to be is cuz it's not like you can yell affirmations at yourself and just have your identity change if for example you're trying to be healthier you can't just yell on a Mir I am healthy I am healthy I am healthy I mean you probably could do that maybe you'd get a sweat but ultimately it's probably not going to be that effective instead we want to build a tangible Bank of evidence that we're healthy so you write the

identity statement the one that you might want to yell in the mirror I am healthy then you write because and then at the end of the day you find a few reasons that actually validate this from your day now this works on three levels firstly it's positive cuz you do start to actually piece together the evidence and that's the thing that will cause change and actually creates new possibilities secondly I found that this will make me create evidence you know if I'm like I am sober because if I want to finish that sentence I got

to stay sober and then thirdly it can actually be a half decent reality check so if I'm like I am 6'4 because I'm not 6'4 I I it's just not going to happen the next journaling technique that I use to train my mindset is inversion for me what this is about is practicing a reaction that I want to have to problems in my everyday life and that reaction is to look at the solution but also look at what the opposite of the solution is but why why do I want that reaction well the reason that

I want this is because I find that it makes the solution to things really really obvious to the point where not doing them looks quite dumb an example would be let's say I want to draw more it's a bit of an open-ended problem to solve but with the inversion you sort of get a better Direction so while asking how can I draw more we're also asking how can I draw less to draw less I could leave my books where I can't see them I could put my pencils in the cupboards so there's more friction and

I can spend any window of time that I have on my phone immediately I realize what I'm doing wrong which I find gets me to the answer of what to do right a lot faster in a journaling prompt context this is just about taking whatever question it is that you're asking and asking the opposite next technique for mindset training is perspective M this is fun so you know that whole phenomenon that other people's problems are easier to solve than your own like you know when your friend has this conundrum and they're like what do I

do what do I do and everyone's like obviously you do this you just do this man but they still deliberate and it's not as clear as it is to everybody else and it makes sense obviously you know they're the ones who actually have to live it they're the ones with all the Nuance whereas the people giving the advice have the luxury of not getting caught in the details and perspective and that is what we can practice giving ourselves perspective so the journaling prompt here is if you were a friend who was giving you advice on

this situation right now and you really really wanted you to succeed what advice would you give we are practicing looking outside ourselves in order to help ourselves next up we have discipline this is a bit of a meta tool cuz it's it's not about a journaling prompt but just the entire action of journaling so just like with because statements discipline is something that is evidence-based you know you have to build that up in order to believe yourself that you actually are disciplined it's one of those things that you got to practice when things aren't easy

as well but man this really really helped me out a lot I made a full video on this experiment that I did where in every time I went to look at social media I switched the placement of the apps so then my muscle memory just naturally opened the notes app and then I was like well I'm here guess I got a journal and it was really cool cuz switching from something that pacifies your brain to something that gets you to actively reflect on what your brain's doing it just fastracks this entire process and yeah massively

gladed up to discipline all right final mindset thing that we can use journaling to practice the one that everybody knows gratitude easy prompt what are three things that you're grateful for today if you want to spice it up you can add a bonus prompt make the first thing you're grateful for something mundane make the second thing something that happened by chance and for your third thing L something that you made happen write them down and what's your brain get SW all right vomi that's where up to the next thing that I use journaling for I

use journaling to ideate the skill of having ideas is one of those things where I don't know there's so much messaging about it being innate and if you don't have it you can't do it it's just not true you can absolutely work on having ideas you can build that muscle up strong man and journaling I think is a really great environment to do this so let's say youve got a problem that you're trying to solve maybe it's a big problem like where do I want to live live or a creative problem like what should I

draw today or even a problem of what do I want to do on the weekend whatever it is and there's always something what I like to do is put on a timer for 5 minutes and then challenge myself to come up with 30 answers before the timer goes off you know that phrase if you want a kitten ask for a horse this is like the cognitive version of that if I want one solution I've got to come up with 30 and usually I find it's like the 14th idea that I go with but yeah one

thing that I find really important is just don't edit the list until it's over it's a quantity game the second technique that I like to use to ideate is how would blank solve the problem that could be anybody I learned this when I worked in advertising my first year I was working for this amazing creative director and every time we get a brief he'd say things like what would Nike do how would Red Bull solve this problem and every single time it would just break out thinking in the best way possible you can substitute this

with anything sort of the basis of what would Jesus do I guess and then the third technique for ideating that I like using is open the loop we like closing the loop well our brains do I guess our brains love to close the question Loop if a question is posed our brains want to answer them how many regular sized Ducks could you fit in a k Carnival I've just opened a loop it's a question out of nowhere but it still opens a loop in your brain your brain's just naturally going to the size of a

dark and then the volume of a minivan and it is just Keen to get to the answer it wants the resolve and we can use this so much in our journaling if there's a question that's on your mind ask the question just write it down and your brain will naturally try to close the loop this technique I find really good when I'm really struggling with a problem and the way that I do it is I'll write down the question just before I go to bed then I go to sleep and then hopefully wake up and

I try to answer it and for me at least it works more often than it doesn't close the loop speaking of closing the loop it's time for our final letter in the vomit system T trajectory yeah I use journaling to get a good sense of my trajectory and also to tweak it as I go all right last letter let's have a little look so I split trajectory up into d Direction and day to-day what I've got here is two different journaling techniques one's for the macro one's for the micro Direction this is a pretty well-known

prompt but here's how it goes so to make sure that we are on the right direction we have our goal up here let's say it's a financial one I want to save 1,000 bucks then you look at the day that you've just had or the week that you've just had whatever the time period is and you ask whether you're moving away from that goal or towards that goal to answer this you compile evidence so evidence for away could be like oh I got Uber Eats that wasn't wise evidence for towards could be but I canceled

like eight subscription that I've forgotten about or I resisted the urge to impulse buy whatever it is then you just adjust accordingly so if you're moving away you sort of tweak that behavior if you're moving towards just keep it up order uats delete the uat tab you can put your save money into savings you can write down what you learned so it helps you in the future if you're doing good double down and then our final journaling technique for today is about getting the daytoday hidden metrics a hidden metric all right so we got visible

metrics things like money then we got hidden metrics things like happiness fulfillment peace of mind and the problem when these are hidden is they can get ignored and this can lead to all sorts of misery pretty quick like people choosing to work a little longer instead of spending time with their kids is the dollar we can count but the quality of the relationship we can't but just because the metric is hidden doesn't mean that it is any less important but what helps with these hidden metrics is making them visible and this is where journaling comes

back in and actually starts creating change these three questions it's one of my favorite journaling prompts but basically at the end of every day you ask yourself these three question questions what excited me today what drained me of energy and what did I learn if you do this for 30 days you'll get seriously good daa on yourself honestly you'll see the patterns by like 5 days and you'll be like all right I get the idea I got to do some [Music] stuff and this concludes the vomit system yeah thank you very much for watching I

hope you enjoyed that also if anybody has any cool journaling prompts Chuck them in the comments because I really like collecting them I just I think they're fun but yeah hope you enjoyed the video hope you have a beautiful day and uh vomit catch you