Keeping a journal is easy. Making use of a journal is a deal more difficult. While merely writing thoughts in a journal can provide self therapy, the real benefits come later. When we reflect on our musings, we find opportunities to grow. But when was the last time you re-read your journal entries?
For some, the plan works just fine. Write a daily journal, go back and review it a week or so later, determine ways you can address the issues you previously wrote. If you’re like me, though, the re-reading part never actually happens. It goes on the planner, but like so many other items it gets overlooked in favor of more urgent matters.
In the past the lack of reflection rarely bothered me, because my journal entries provided little therapy when I composed them. In high school I journaled because my English teachers forced us. In college I used it as a way to spill meandering thoughts while bored in class. After college it was something I did to set goals for myself. In no case did real emotion, real problems, real demons spill onto the page. It’s easy to see why urgency to reflect was so low.
The nature of my journal has changed lately, as I’ve battled my own inner demons of past and present. While merely writing the entries helps get my mind focused on the right things, reflection becomes a greater key. Yet in the early goings reflection continued falling under the “important, not urgent” umbrella. My assignment was to find out how to make reflection an urgent task. The solution has been in front of me since at least 2009.
Most everyone reading this is familiar with Evernote note-taking software. The idea is exceedingly simple: create notes and notebooks, which are stored on Evernote’s servers. You can then access those notes from any device imaginable, no matter what the platform — so you can have your iPhone and I can stick with my Samsung Galaxy phones. The universal availability of my notes doesn’t make them more urgent, but it does reduce friction. No matter where I am, I have my journal right in front of me.
How do I make the task of reflecting urgent, though? It’s actually a feature baked right into Evernote. You can set an alarm on every note you create. Bingo. Immediately after composing a journal entry, I set an alarm to go off sometime in the evening a few days later. Typically around 7 p.m., when the Yankees game starts, I’m already reflecting on the day that was. With this reminder hitting my Evernote app, and my inbox, I have no excuse. At a time when I typically don’t have any work obligations remaining for the day, Past Joe is telling Present Joe to do something important.
Right there, it becomes urgent.
Of course, the full-mind realization that reflection is important allows me to feel that sense of urgency in the first place. If my journals still had the feel of those high school and college ledgers, not even an alarm would convince me to re-read them. They were inane, heat of the moment blather. Now, with a growing need for self-evaluation, the journal takes on a more important role. So where reflecting on my old journals would have fallen in the “not important, not urgent” quadrant, they are now in that hot-button “important, urgent” quadrant.
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