What is the storyworthy thing that happened to me today?
I heard this from Ali Abdaal’s recent webinar sharing about his productivity systems. And I keep coming back to it because I think it embodies what I’ve been trying to capture the last few years with journaling.
While I haven’t been the most consistent journaler in my life, it’s something I’ve been trying to do more regularly. This is because I’ve found that life was happening so quickly—especially with kids and I wanted to be able to capture my thoughts, memories and feelings around events in my life.
My daily journaling habit looks like this, everyday I have an automation in Shortcuts that creates a new entry in Notes with the current date.
Then throughout the day I record things in that entry. The nice thing about having the entry automatically created for me is that it is one less barrier. And since Notes is on all of my devices, my digital journal is likely always with me.
I’ll admit, there are days that I don’t write anything. So once every few days I’ll have to do some cleaning. But on the days that I have a story-worthy moment, I’m able to capture it easily.
That’s been super valuable for me.
Since Ali sharing about the storyworthy tip, I’ve been more mindful of my day. The question will pop up in random times of the day because I want to be aware of things that I find important.
Like last week on a no-meeting day for me, I sat with my first born while he was doing virtual school. He had a verbal math test and I was so nervous for him. I wanted him to do well and there were times I wanted to help him but I knew if I did, I would be taking away from his education. When the test was done, he told his teacher that I was also with him and she shared that he marked at a level above his current grade.
I was super proud of him!
If you’re having a hard time with a regular journaling cadence but want to create a better habit. Why not try starting with a question you ask yourself daily?
What is the storyworthy thing that happened to me today?
Simply answer that question and see what happen. You might find yourself being more aware of your day which could in turn motivate you to journal.