Table of contents:
- 1. Creative ideas
- 2. Big wins
- 3. Signals and signs
- 4. Important questions and discoveries
- 5. Challenges and experiments
2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
This simple exercise will help you increase your productivity, improve your quality of life, and understand yourself.
Thousands of thoughts visit us every day. Some of them are useless, some relate to immediate tasks. But there are some that would be very useful to us in the future. These are ideas for improving the workflow, creative ideas, things that we would like to do.
The only way not to lose these reflections is to fix them in some form. After all, this is valuable information that will help in making decisions and improving the quality of life.
Here are five types of thoughts to write down every day. It's good if you manage to record at least one item of each type, but if there are fewer of them, it's okay. For convenience, ideas of different types can be marked with different symbols: triangles, squares, spirals, checkmarks, and so on.
1. Creative ideas
It happens that dozens of interesting ideas come to mind during the day. It's worth writing them down. Richard Branson, one of the richest people on the planet, is confident that his success is largely due to the habit of capturing all the unusual thoughts that pop into his head.
If you like, you can include other people's inspirational quotes or ideas here as well. But choose carefully. Be guided by the question "Can these ideas inspire me to make some important or brilliant decision in the future?" If the answer is "Yes", then they have a place in your notebook.
2. Big wins
This point is especially important for perfectionists and people who always feel that they are not doing enough. Write down your biggest accomplishments of the day. For example, you have collected a package of documents for a visa, finished a complex project, did the cleaning, went to the gym for the first time, or finally met a friend whom you have long wanted to see.
Even just recording these things is nice, but these notes will be most useful if you reread them once every couple of weeks or even more often.
You will see that your days do not go by aimlessly, your self-confidence will increase, and your anxiety will decrease.
3. Signals and signs
During the day, many events and situations happen to us that affect our emotional state, productivity, way of thinking, and so on. Sometimes we may not notice these changes, but they always have signals - emotions or behavioral traits that differ from the usual.
For example, you suddenly realize that meeting with a friend hasn't been fun lately. This means that something has changed in your relationship. After analyzing the situation, you understand that he has become passive-aggressive and communication does not go well because of this.
By noticing and recording such signals, you can find a cause-and-effect relationship between your living conditions and your psychological state. This means that you will know what needs to be changed so that life becomes better, and you - happier.
4. Important questions and discoveries
Sometimes we suddenly realize some very important things about ourselves and our life. We suddenly realize that we don't want to work in our current field anymore, or we wonder what prevents us from being happy. Such thoughts also need to be written down.
Perhaps some of them are just fleeting trends that do not reflect your real desires. But in any case, they are useful for self-knowledge and self-development.
You need to periodically remind yourself of the meaning of life, values and aspirations so as not to go astray.
5. Challenges and experiments
In this category, you should write down not routine work or household chores, but those tasks that will help make life better. For example, the changes that you decided to make based on the signals you noticed. Or unusual productivity techniques you'd like to try.
Actions that bring you closer to an important life goal are also suitable here. For example, if you want to move to another country, write down "see the cost of renting a house." Even small decisions carry weight because they help you achieve more.
To make the desire to complete these tasks stronger, you can mark them with squares. You will subconsciously want to put a check mark in them every time you re-read the entries.
Recommended:
How to get your thoughts and feelings in order: 6 techniques to calm down quickly
How to calm down when you have a difficult exam, an important meeting or a deadline ahead? Learn about techniques to help you get your thoughts in order
How to do it right: put it down or lay it down
The life hacker studied the dictionaries and recommendations of academics and found out which option - to lay or lay down - is used by literate people
Write like Mark Twain, lying down
Guest article by Alexandra Galimova about how lying work can be comfortable and quite productive
Pause app helps you calm down and put your thoughts in order
Pause is not a substitute for healthy sleep, proper nutrition and exercise, but it will give you time to be alone with yourself
How many unproductive thoughts get in your way every day
Regrets about the past, dreams, doubts and other rubbish take space from really useful thoughts and prevent you from managing your life