wwinks-com-bh1ouy.txt (6743B)
1 [1]Westley Winks 2 [2]Résumé [3]Peace Corps [4]Posts [5]Bookshelf [6]Weeknotes 3 Table Of Contents 4 5 [8]How I journal 6 • [9]Five points—Location, win, tension, gratitude, and values 7 • [10]Why this system works for me 8 • [11]What it looks like in practice 9 10 How I journal 11 12 I’ve had a seemingly typical journaling experience over the years: try 13 journaling because someone smart told me it’s good for me, white-knuckle my way 14 through how I should be doing it, it doesn’t stick, I don’t journal for a 15 while, and repeat that endlessly. Last year, I finally landed on a journaling 16 system that works for me. 17 18 I’ve been out of the habit for over a month now^[12]1 so I wanted to write 19 about my system to get me excited about it again and restart the habit. Here we 20 go. 21 22 Five points—Location, win, tension, gratitude, and values 23 24 I’ve tried physical notebooks, morning pages, stream-of-thought writing, bullet 25 points, and basically everything else recommended by the journaling gurus. What 26 finally stuck was a framework I learned from Sahil Bloom—[13]the 1-1-1 method. 27 I’ve adapted it for myself such that I write down five points each night (in a 28 perfect world). 29 30 • Location. The more specific the better. It’s fun to read old entries and 31 remember exactly what hotel room I was in or whose house I was staying at. 32 • One win. The highlight of the day. Something that made me smile or feel 33 proud. 34 • One point of tension. Something that caused anxiety, stress, or anything 35 else I struggled with or am dreading. 36 • One piece of gratitude. We all know by now that writing down things you’re 37 grateful for is good for the soul. 38 • One behavior that connects to my values. This is an addition that I made to 39 ensure that my [14]values and behaviors are aligned. Did I do something 40 today that I say is important to me? 41 42 Each of these is usually just a sentence but the door is open to expand where I 43 want. If something really great happened that day, I’ll savor it by writing a 44 paragraph or more. If I was feeling particularly anxious, I’ll explore that 45 further. 46 47 Why this system works for me 48 49 The thing that made journaling hard to do consistently—like any habit—was that 50 there was too much friction. I never really knew what was worth writing and 51 what wasn’t, what future me was interested in remembering and what he didn’t 52 care about. Journaling always became more of a chore than anything else, 53 something I felt like I should be doing but didn’t want to. Like eating 54 vegetables or going to the gym. 55 56 On the days when I can’t be bothered to do anything, I only need to write five 57 things. Sometimes they aren’t even full sentences—it takes me about 30 seconds 58 minimum. But this system is also flexible enough to give me space to dig down 59 when I want to. 60 61 Besides being easier to write, it’s also more interesting to read back entries 62 later on. When I was semi-consistent with just writing down what I did for the 63 day, reading them back the next month was so dull. I journal partly to document 64 my life and I don’t really care that I bought bread on May 8th, 2023. This 65 system does a fantastic job of capturing the meaningful highs and lows of my 66 life without cluttering my journal with the boring stuff. 67 68 What it looks like in practice 69 70 I’m on my computer quite a lot and typing has always been easier than 71 handwriting for me. Not to mention my abysmal handwriting that can be hard to 72 read sometimes. So, I do all of this in a digital journal. 73 74 Herman Martinus [15]wrote about the many benefits that come from plain text 75 journaling. When my journal is One Big Text File, it is easy to back up, move 76 around, search, edit, and store. I use [16]jrnl to add some “sugar” on top of 77 it, though. 78 79 jrnl works through the command line and I can just type jrnl to create a new 80 timestamped entry in my text editor of choice. Again, I really try to reduce 81 friction when it comes to journaling and this is about as frictionless as it 82 gets. It also allows templating, searching, tagging, and tools to view specific 83 entries. My favorite feature is jrnl -today-in-history that returns all of my 84 previous entries for the given day. 85 86 When I’m not at my computer, I usually handwrite my five points in my Moleskine 87 notebook that I use for tasks and notes. When I’m back to my computer, I 88 transcribe it into jrnl. In a pinch, I can also write myself a Signal message 89 to copy and paste later. 90 91 With this journaling system, I am recording, analyzing, and remembering the 92 important bits of my life in a way that is easy and sustainable for me. Now I 93 just need to go out and get started—yet again. 94 95 1. Due to a major life transition. I probably should have been journaling more 96 but it ended up on the back burner for one reason or another. [17]↩ 97 98 Created: 2024-12-13 99 100 Last modified: 2024-12-13 101 102 [18]Written by Human, Not by AI 103 104 Like my writing? 105 106 Say thanks by [19]buying me a coffee or [20]send me an email with your 107 thoughts. 108 109 [21]Email me [22] Ko-fi donations Buy me a coffee 110 111 Keep Reading 112 113 [23]How I solved an online treasure hunt 114 [24] plain-text [25] productivity 115 116 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 117 118 © 2025 Westley Winks. The content of this page is licensed under [26]CC BY 4.0 119 [27]home | [28]résumé | [29]peace corps | [30]posts | [31]bookshelf | [32] 120 weeknotes 121 122 References: 123 124 [1] https://wwinks.com/ 125 [2] https://wwinks.com/cv/ 126 [3] https://wwinks.com/peace-corps/ 127 [4] https://wwinks.com/p/ 128 [5] https://wwinks.com/b/ 129 [6] https://wwinks.com/w/ 130 [8] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#top 131 [9] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#five-pointslocation-win-tension-gratitude-and-values 132 [10] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#why-this-system-works-for-me 133 [11] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#what-it-looks-like-in-practice 134 [12] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#fn:1 135 [13] https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/the-1-1-1-method-forecasts-for-the-future-more 136 [14] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-identify-and-live-your-life-by-your-values 137 [15] https://herman.bearblog.dev/plain-text-journaling/ 138 [16] https://jrnl.sh/ 139 [17] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#fnref:1 140 [18] https://notbyai.fyi/ 141 [19] https://ko-fi.com/wwinks 142 [20] mailto:[email protected]?subject=How%20I%20journal 143 [21] mailto:[email protected]?subject=How%20I%20journal 144 [22] https://ko-fi.com/wwinks 145 [23] https://wwinks.com/p/suntup-treasure-hunt/ 146 [24] https://wwinks.com/t/plain-text 147 [25] https://wwinks.com/t/productivity 148 [26] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/?ref=chooser-v1 149 [27] https://wwinks.com/ 150 [28] https://wwinks.com/cv/ 151 [29] https://wwinks.com/peace-corps/ 152 [30] https://wwinks.com/p/ 153 [31] https://wwinks.com/b/ 154 [32] https://wwinks.com/w/