155 lines
6.6 KiB
Plaintext
155 lines
6.6 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Westley Winks
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[2]Résumé [3]Peace Corps [4]Posts [5]Bookshelf [6]Weeknotes
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Table Of Contents
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[8]How I journal
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• [9]Five points—Location, win, tension, gratitude, and values
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• [10]Why this system works for me
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• [11]What it looks like in practice
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How I journal
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I’ve had a seemingly typical journaling experience over the years: try
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journaling because someone smart told me it’s good for me, white-knuckle my way
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through how I should be doing it, it doesn’t stick, I don’t journal for a
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while, and repeat that endlessly. Last year, I finally landed on a journaling
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system that works for me.
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I’ve been out of the habit for over a month now^[12]1 so I wanted to write
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about my system to get me excited about it again and restart the habit. Here we
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go.
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Five points—Location, win, tension, gratitude, and values
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I’ve tried physical notebooks, morning pages, stream-of-thought writing, bullet
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points, and basically everything else recommended by the journaling gurus. What
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finally stuck was a framework I learned from Sahil Bloom—[13]the 1-1-1 method.
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I’ve adapted it for myself such that I write down five points each night (in a
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perfect world).
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• Location. The more specific the better. It’s fun to read old entries and
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remember exactly what hotel room I was in or whose house I was staying at.
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• One win. The highlight of the day. Something that made me smile or feel
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proud.
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• One point of tension. Something that caused anxiety, stress, or anything
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else I struggled with or am dreading.
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• One piece of gratitude. We all know by now that writing down things you’re
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grateful for is good for the soul.
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• One behavior that connects to my values. This is an addition that I made to
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ensure that my [14]values and behaviors are aligned. Did I do something
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today that I say is important to me?
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Each of these is usually just a sentence but the door is open to expand where I
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want. If something really great happened that day, I’ll savor it by writing a
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paragraph or more. If I was feeling particularly anxious, I’ll explore that
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further.
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Why this system works for me
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The thing that made journaling hard to do consistently—like any habit—was that
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there was too much friction. I never really knew what was worth writing and
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what wasn’t, what future me was interested in remembering and what he didn’t
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care about. Journaling always became more of a chore than anything else,
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something I felt like I should be doing but didn’t want to. Like eating
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vegetables or going to the gym.
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On the days when I can’t be bothered to do anything, I only need to write five
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things. Sometimes they aren’t even full sentences—it takes me about 30 seconds
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minimum. But this system is also flexible enough to give me space to dig down
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when I want to.
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Besides being easier to write, it’s also more interesting to read back entries
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later on. When I was semi-consistent with just writing down what I did for the
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day, reading them back the next month was so dull. I journal partly to document
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my life and I don’t really care that I bought bread on May 8th, 2023. This
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system does a fantastic job of capturing the meaningful highs and lows of my
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life without cluttering my journal with the boring stuff.
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What it looks like in practice
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I’m on my computer quite a lot and typing has always been easier than
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handwriting for me. Not to mention my abysmal handwriting that can be hard to
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read sometimes. So, I do all of this in a digital journal.
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Herman Martinus [15]wrote about the many benefits that come from plain text
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journaling. When my journal is One Big Text File, it is easy to back up, move
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around, search, edit, and store. I use [16]jrnl to add some “sugar” on top of
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it, though.
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jrnl works through the command line and I can just type jrnl to create a new
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timestamped entry in my text editor of choice. Again, I really try to reduce
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friction when it comes to journaling and this is about as frictionless as it
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gets. It also allows templating, searching, tagging, and tools to view specific
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entries. My favorite feature is jrnl -today-in-history that returns all of my
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previous entries for the given day.
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When I’m not at my computer, I usually handwrite my five points in my Moleskine
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notebook that I use for tasks and notes. When I’m back to my computer, I
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transcribe it into jrnl. In a pinch, I can also write myself a Signal message
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to copy and paste later.
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With this journaling system, I am recording, analyzing, and remembering the
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important bits of my life in a way that is easy and sustainable for me. Now I
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just need to go out and get started—yet again.
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1. Due to a major life transition. I probably should have been journaling more
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but it ended up on the back burner for one reason or another. [17]↩
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Created: 2024-12-13
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Last modified: 2024-12-13
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[18]Written by Human, Not by AI
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Like my writing?
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Say thanks by [19]buying me a coffee or [20]send me an email with your
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thoughts.
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[21]Email me [22] Ko-fi donations Buy me a coffee
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Keep Reading
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[23]How I solved an online treasure hunt
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[24] plain-text [25] productivity
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Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant
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© 2025 Westley Winks. The content of this page is licensed under [26]CC BY 4.0
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[27]home | [28]résumé | [29]peace corps | [30]posts | [31]bookshelf | [32]
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weeknotes
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References:
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[1] https://wwinks.com/
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[2] https://wwinks.com/cv/
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[3] https://wwinks.com/peace-corps/
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[4] https://wwinks.com/p/
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[5] https://wwinks.com/b/
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[6] https://wwinks.com/w/
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[8] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#top
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[9] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#five-pointslocation-win-tension-gratitude-and-values
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[10] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#why-this-system-works-for-me
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[11] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#what-it-looks-like-in-practice
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[12] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#fn:1
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[13] https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/the-1-1-1-method-forecasts-for-the-future-more
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[14] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-identify-and-live-your-life-by-your-values
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[15] https://herman.bearblog.dev/plain-text-journaling/
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[16] https://jrnl.sh/
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[17] https://wwinks.com/p/how-i-journal/#fnref:1
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[18] https://notbyai.fyi/
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[19] https://ko-fi.com/wwinks
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[20] mailto:westley.stood549@passmail.net?subject=How%20I%20journal
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[21] mailto:westley.stood549@passmail.net?subject=How%20I%20journal
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[22] https://ko-fi.com/wwinks
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[23] https://wwinks.com/p/suntup-treasure-hunt/
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[24] https://wwinks.com/t/plain-text
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[25] https://wwinks.com/t/productivity
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[26] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/?ref=chooser-v1
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[27] https://wwinks.com/
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[28] https://wwinks.com/cv/
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[29] https://wwinks.com/peace-corps/
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[30] https://wwinks.com/p/
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[31] https://wwinks.com/b/
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[32] https://wwinks.com/w/
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