Note: this is an unedited excerpt from my personal notes. There might be grammatical errors or incongruentes.
Write one sentence to one paragraph jotting down an idea or a thought. Do not go into too much depth or give more than 1 example. The objective is to be brief and thoughtful, not verbose and flowing.
Rationale
For folks with wandering minds, journaling is an onerous task. If capturing your thoughts takes too much effort, then journaling becomes infrequent and (ultimately) not habitual.
This method forces you to be brief by requiring you to condense your thoughts into a small number of bite-sized sentences.
Categorization
Journaling should follow a 3-step plan:
- Capture
- Categorize
- Act
Capture your thoughts as they come. Let them ruminate a little bit before committing to paper, in order to avoid noise.
Categorize your thoughts. Are they ideas, observations or actions that you need to take? Or a question youโve yet to find an answer to? Avoid making journaling a task-focused exercise; instead focus on creative thought.
Act on your thoughts, as appropriate.
Beauty
The beauty of this method is that it constrains you to brevity. It makes simple to share your thoughts with others, whether itโs a new startup idea or just an insight.