Focused - 198: Revisiting Journaling

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my co-host, the intrepid Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? I am doing excellent and we are talking about one of our favorite topics today, journaling. I feel like there might be a drinking game related to journaling and the Focused podcast. It comes up often, especially with guests, I find.

But we haven't given it its own show in a long time. I know my workflows have changed. I know yours have too. And I thought, let's spend some time talking about journaling and make the case and share some workflows. What do you think? Sounds great. Let's do it.

So let's start out with, I guess I guess we should mention, you know, we have the, the bonus show. If you want to, uh, subscribe to deep focus, you get the ad free extended version. That's it, man. No ads and more focused. And then this week on, on deep focus, Mike has created the world's coolest minimalist home screen. We're going to be talking about that. So that's gonna be what you're gonna get today if you're a member of DeepFocus. You can learn more about that at relay.fm slash focused.

But getting back to journaling, I wanna talk about the idea of journaling and why we keep banging on about it. We do get email from some of you saying, why do you guys talk about journaling? What does that have to do with staying focused? Mike, why is it important to journal? Well, there's lots of different approaches to journaling, but the one that I think is

most relevant for the Focus podcast is that it's really important for personal growth. And there's a couple elements to that journaling for personal growth, which really make it an essential tool, not just something like you should try this. There's a lot of advice out there like the Pomodoro method and use this when you're battling procrastination and try these things and see if they work. Journaling is one of those things that I feel like everyone needs to incorporate some version of this because it's just such an effective tool for bringing your focus back on what really matters. And there's a whole bunch of benefits that go along with that.

One of them is the 25% people who keep a gratitude journal specifically are 25% happier, according to Robert Emmons, the gratitude guy. As we talked about in the last episode, that your happiness and your joy are really important in terms of actually moving the needle and taking action on the things that are meaningful and important. Yeah, I mean, that's my elevator pitch, I guess, for why you should journal because

that's going to be a big boost to your mood and it's going to ultimately be a big boost to your productivity. Yeah. I feel like it even helps you identify problems that you don't otherwise see. I mean, have you ever had a friend that had a problem? You know, they pick your problem. We all have friends with problems. And it's so obvious to you that they have your problem. We all have friends with problems and it's so obvious to you That they have a problem, but then have you ever noticed how hard it is to see the that same list of problems that you have?

like you don't realize Problems that you have things that you're struggling with although people on the outside can I feel like journaling gives you that people on the outside perspective of your own life. So I came to this, I started meditating when I was 22, now I'm 56. So been doing it a while. And that was the thing for me, right? But meditation is about building an intentionality muscle, at least the way I do it. You do get some personal insight out of it,

but I thought I didn't need a journal because I meditated. I'm like, I don't need you to do that. I meditate, I get it. I know what's going on between my ears. But then I started journaling and I really found that it gave me more insight than I was getting out of meditation.

Meditation really scratches a different itch for me, but the two practices go together really well, by the way, but we're not gonna talk about meditation today. But what I found with journaling is that over time, when you read your journal entries, you discover things about yourself that you don't notice on a daily basis. Like a good example for me was at the end of the year of 2023, I was journaling, as

you do. I had a really good run at the end of the year. I got the productivity field guide done and I took care of a bunch of things that were long on my list. I was very congratulatory toward myself, but I also thought I was kind of exhausted and I wasn't sure what was behind that. So I started going back and reading all my journal entries for spot checking throughout the last year. And I realized that the daily struggle of customer support stuff was getting me down. So with my Max Sparky business, some people pay for some of the stuff that I sell them.

If their payment doesn't go through or if they have a technical problem with the product or whatever, that's the thing I worked on basically every day last year. I realized how much time it was taking and how much I was journaling that that wasn't work I really wanted to do. I wasn't obvious to me until I read the journal entries. I'm like, oh, this is like a chronic problem for me. And I decided to go get help. But it took kind of the journal for me to notice it. I don't think I would have noticed it on a single day. I know that sounds silly. But when you go back and you look at, oh, this isn't just something that's on my mind

today. It's something that's been on my mind for a long time. And that's what you get from the journal, then you can take action on it. I just think as humans, we're not good at noticing trends in ourselves and journals give you that. I 100% agree that the trends that you notice, though, when you are going back and reviewing your journaling are really sort of qualitative and not quantitative a lot of times. It's like those insights that you're noticing there. You don't have a specific number of times that that has to appear before you say, okay, I guess this is a trend. That's one of the things that I think holds people up sometimes with journaling. I know it's tripped me up in the past, is that you're looking for a specific system for when this happens,

then this happens. And that's not really what journaling gives you. But by getting that outside perspective that you talked about, getting some distance from the entries themselves, that's what allows you to kind of see the forest through the trees, so to speak. And I think that's the biggest value from this. Now there's different types of journaling and we'll get into our specific workflows. And I do have some quantifiable data inside of my journal entries. But it's, again, it's not like this is how many widgets I cranked.

It's more just how I'm feeling about things. And there's two points where that's helpful. The moment when I capture it, and there's a lot to be said just for like stream of conscious journaling and processing your thoughts by writing them down at the end of the day. But for me, the real value of the journal comes later. So it's almost like when I am journaling, I'm not really worried about what I'm capturing right now. The real value for me comes when I review those and you do have to have a regular reflection process

where you go back and you look at those things in order to get that second layer of benefit there, but that's wrapped up in the quarterly retreat process for me. That's kind of what I'm looking forward to when I'm dropping the marker in the first place. And then when I get to that point where I look back, I can kind of see how those things connect

and I can tease out some of the larger themes. And it's always kind of amazing to me how that stuff just kind of jumps off the page when I look back at it later and it's hard to see it in the moment. I've never done professional therapy, but I always feel like my journal's my own little therapist because it's always giving me insight to myself that I wouldn't otherwise notice. Another thing I'd like to mention kind of as we head into this, and this is something

I often talk about with respect to journaling because I think when you get into journaling, you need to think about the motivation for your journaling. There's two that really stand out to me. There's the idea of an improvement journal and there's an idea of a vanity journal. Vanity journal is the thing you write in that your grandkids read to get all your pearls of wisdom, which is okay. I don't have any problem with that. I think if you do something like that, you should get a fancy leather book and write it down in good script.

But that's not the kind of journal I'm particularly interested in. I like the idea of this self-improvement journal of where I'm completely honest with my failings and my motivations. That's another benefit of journaling, frankly, is I like to journal when something happens that's weird. I try to pick apart, well, what was I thinking? What was driving me at that moment? Was it a desire to seem like I am better than I am? Was it vanity? Was it sincerity? Look in your motivations. It's only in the moment or within a day that you can properly journal that, and then you can see later things that you may want to work on. But it's just the idea of writing down, being completely honest,

giving yourself that feedback that you can improve upon. And I write the journal really with the intention of nobody ever reading it. It's not a vanity journal. It's a, how do I make myself better journal? I agree. I call it journaling for personal growth. But there's a couple of things that are important to me as part of my journaling practice that I feel like are going to help me to get more out of that practice over time. The first thing is to shift out of negative thinking. I don't know if anyone else struggles the same way that I do with this, but I can be pretty negative.

So I need a mechanism which is going to help me find the things that are going right because I will instantly attach to the things that are going wrong. So journaling helps me to do that and specifically finding something to be grateful for. And this is really powerful even outside of a journaling context. When I was at the day job, we incorporated this positive focus. We called it at the beginning and the end of all of our team meetings.

And it was really helpful in terms of building relationships with people on the team. And it freed us up to discuss ideas openly and honestly without attacking people. It really is important. My wife and I have incorporated it into our date night routine even. But the thing with journaling is it instantly helps me feel better about where I'm at. And that kind of gets into the whole concept of the gap in the game, but we don't need to go there quite yet. The TLDR here is that it really helps me focus on what really matters.

All of the other things that are trying to vie for my attention, I can give in and focus on any one of those, but essentially the question I'm trying to answer with that is like, how is this helpful? And recognizing how something is helpful, and how I'm able to use it to move the needle, move in the right direction is really important. And it's easy for me to get distracted. And it's not even like, I'm getting all these notifications and all these things are popping up out of nowhere. My brain just kind of naturally gravitates towards these things that if I get that

outside perspective, I'm like, well, that's not really helpful. I shouldn't just be brewing on that. Let's go find something that's a better use of our time, energy, and attention. And then the other thing, as I mentioned, is I want to measure my progress. So I do want to drop some specific markers.

This is where I was, This is how I'm feeling. And that's the thing that really gets into the gap in the gain piece, which we've talked about before. So maybe I should just touch on it briefly, but it's human nature to measure like where you are right now against where you want to be. And this is why I'm not a huge fan of like smart goals and you break them down into all the individual steps, because no matter how great you are at accomplishing those goals, they're never gonna be fast enough. You're not gonna make the progress you want.

And then you get frustrated because you feel like you should be further than you are. But what journaling does is it allows you to look back and you can see this is where I started and this is where I am now. Oh, look at all the growth that's happened. And then that creates motivation to keep going. In the big picture, that's another huge benefit of journaling is it does allow you to see improvement over time. Mike and I use slightly different systems. I have that role system and

I find that looking back at my quarterly reviews from years, and the problems I was struggling with then in myself are now solved problems. And it's very satisfying to see that, right? It's like, okay, so you can get beyond the problems you're facing now, and in a few years, you'll be working on entirely new ones, raising the level even more, chasing the RTA, is what I think of it.

So I think journaling gives you a placeholder in time to see how that's going. It's, there's just a lot to it. We've been dancing around the idea of gratitude journaling and we're gonna get into our journaling workflows, but I just wanna add to that, that I really feel strongly that gratitude journaling is very beneficial. I didn't start out initially that gratitude journaling is very beneficial.

I didn't start out initially with my journaling practice. There was a book that came out about it about five years ago. What was that, Mike? I'm sure you know the name of the book. What was it again? Well, the guy that I heard the statistic from, Robert Emmons, has a book and I think it's called Thanks. So I'll grab a link to that and share it in the show notes.

But full disclosure, that is actually a book I have not read. Oh, really? Wow. I can't tell. I mean, that's his book and it's very much on the topic. So if you want to dive deeper, that's probably the resource I would recommend. But I haven't actually gone through that myself yet. It's on my list. Well, I mean, that put it on my radar because people were talking about it. And like you, I also haven't read the book, but I immediately did put a gratitude journaling practice in place.

In mine is every morning, I write something down that I'm grateful for, and I try to make it different every day, which is fun, right? You know, coming up with something else to be grateful for the day. But that's the beginning of my journaling practice every morning. And I, I really dig it. I feel like it does put you in the right mindset. You know, you're playing a little bit of a trick on your brain, right? Let's just focus on something positive to get the day going. But that helps because there's so much negativity being thrown at us

these days. Yeah, and you mentioned something that is worth double clicking on, picking something specific and making it different every day. That's important because if you just start picking the same thing over and over and over again, you start to lose the real appreciation for it. It just becomes, oh, this is part of the default. And by picking something unique every time, you're kind of like discovering new sources of joy in your life. And so that's the thing that really makes the impact in terms of your mood when it comes to gratitude journaling.

I think getting started with the journaling practice is intimidating for people and it doesn't have to be. I did an interview with Jean McDonald in the Max Berkey Labs, because she's tried journaling many times. And I told her, well, just go for 60 days and make like one entry a day. And that was like a year and a half ago

and now she's doing it every day and she really likes it. I feel like if you wanna start journaling, give yourself an easy on ramp. Make it one sentence a day if that's all it is or one picture a day. But start giving yourself some point of reflection and it will grow on itself. You're gonna hear later when Mike and I talk

about what we do. Mike has a very data-driven journal. I have a very journal-driven journal. It's a lot of journals. But yeah, I think it kind of grows on itself. The trick is just to get a little momentum to start with. Don't go crazy, but just see if you can make it a thing you do every day.

And can we talk a little bit about why that is the brilliance of Apple's Journal app? Because it makes it so incredibly easy. It gives you the suggestions, you can pick the time, and it's seven o'clock in the evening. It's going to say, hey, you were at this place, or you had this conversation with this person, want to drop a note about it, and it makes it really, really easy. And I don't know if you spent much time with the Journal app because I know you use different apps and so do I, but I did do a screencast online module about it,

so I played around with it quite a bit. And the prompts that they give you in there, I think are pretty great too. So it kind of brings all this stuff together, and it's a great place to start with your journaling practice, plus it's free on your iPhone. So you can always go to a more complicated system later,

but I feel like if you are an Apple user, or someone with an iPhone specifically, and you've never given journaling a shot, that is the place to start. I think it gives a very good general overview. You can kind can figure out which sort of prompts you really like. It just gets you in the habit of looking back on what happened in your day and thinking through, what can I take away from this?

Yeah, we did a journaling episode on Mac Power Users recently where we focused in on the Apple app and we talked about it at length. If you're interested in that, I'll put a link in the show notes. It's episode 726. But yeah, I think Apple, there are some shortcomings to it, but particularly if you're getting started, you know, it's right there. It's on your phone. You don't have to spend any money and you throw a switch and your journal. Yeah, it's a good like a sampler, I guess.

You can kind of figure out what figure out what really clicks for you, and then you can evolve it and make more complicated systems from that. But I think the first hurdle you have to get over in terms of journaling is that first aha moment, the first insight you get from the reflection process. That's really what starts the momentum with the practice. Yeah. You get, I feel like it's a no-brainer that you get compensation for your time. People listening who haven't done it are like, I don't have time to spend time journaling. You'll get your money's worth if you do even just the simplest of journals. And if you do it for 60 days, you're going to start seeing benefits from it that soon. And I don't know many people who've gone through the experiment

of trying to for 60 days and don't keep journaling. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by ZockDoc. Go to ZockDoc.com slash focus to find the right doctor right now. You shouldn't have to feel awkward talking to your doctor. The good news is ZockDoc is the place where you can find and book doctors who will make you feel comfortable

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ZockDoc checks all the boxes, giving you access to a doctor within your plan that's actually good. So go to ZockDoc.com slash focus right now and download the ZockDoc app for free. Then find in book a top rated doctor today. That's ZOC, DOdoc.com slash focused once again, zocdoc.com slash focused and our thanks to ZocDoc for sponsoring the focused podcast and all of relay FM. So Mike, we made the case for it. Let's talk about what we're doing. And before we do that, I think this section needs a disclaimer.

Both Mike and I have been journaling for many, many years. I've got day one increase now over 10 years old. And so our journaling practices have kind of grown on themselves. And if you're listening to this and you're getting started, you do not need to do all the stuff Mike and I are doing. So I tried to explain the last segment. You can get started very simply. In fact, I'd recommend that.

But if you wanna hear what two nerds do with journaling after they do it for a while, this is the segment for you. Yes, yes, indeed. Do you wanna go first? I feel like yours is maybe a little bit more sane than mine. Well, that is a relative bit more sane than mine. Well, that is a relative term, I'll say. Mike's journaling is fascinating.

And it's like, it's very Mike Schmitz. I'm just going to say that upfront because it's very data driven. You know, mine is more hippie than yours, but, but it's been, I've been on a journey myself, frankly. And we've talked about this kind of often on the show over the years, because I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. And so I started when day one was a baby app. When it first got announced in the app store,

I downloaded day one. And that is really the beginning of my reliable journaling system. I've got books that go back decades over the years where I had started and stopped journaling. I'm sure people listening have had the same experience. Someone gives you a leatherbound notebook and you fill in the first 10 pages

and then nothing happens after that. And that was kind of my journaling life until day one arrived. And day one is such a great tool for journaling because it makes it so easy. And just like the Apple Journal app, it's on your device and you can journal anywhere. And if you got it on your, you know, the Apple app is only on the iPhone at this point. I'm sure it'll make it to the iPad and the Mac, but day one is everywhere. And like I was writing in it this morning on my Mac. I was dictating into it last

night on my iPad. It's just very low barrier for entry for creating entries. Day one has been around a long time, so it's got a very thorough feature set. Just as an example, they just added a new feature called shared journals. Both Daisy, my wife, and I have paid accounts for day one. So now we have a shared Disneyland journal, because both of us go often. We've started making entries every time we go, out of few pictures, make a few notes. And once we get enough entries in there,

I'm gonna print a book, because day one has the ability to say take everything in the shared Disney journal and print it into a hard back book. And we can put it on a shelf. And when we're old and gray and drooling on ourselves, we can flip through that and look at all those trips we took together. So that's the kind of thing you can do with day one. It's just a very powerful application, but it can also serve as that self-reflective journal I was talking in the last

segment. And the trick to it, in my opinion, is just to have multiple journals. Like you can have the Vanity Journal in there if you want, or the Disneyland Journal, but you can also have the very self-reflective journal. And that's the thing only you see that doesn't get printed into a hard copy book. Everything is also end-to-end encrypted, which really is important to me. I feel like if I'm telling you to be honest with your journal, you need a journal that is in its digital. It needs to be encrypted in a way that someone with access to the Day One website can't just start reading your journal entries and they can't because it's end-to-end encrypted. So that's kind of the starting point is day one.

And in day one, I have, as of a few days ago, this number is no longer up to date, 5,614 entries. So like I said, I think it's about 12 years old now. I'll have to go look what my oldest entry is, what the date is on it. But I've been just adding to day one constantly over the years when we have family events, whatever, but also doing a lot of self-reflection. All my quarterly reviews and monthly reviews for the most part are in day one. And it's got the ability to create templates. So like, for instance, just as we record this, it's Tuesday on Sunday, I opened up day one and opened up my weekly template. I do a weekly review and it has all the prompts for me to go in there and answer them. It's just the application just makes everything super easy. One of the things I like about using day one is dictation.

I like being able to just talk and have journal entries created. I find that when I talk, more comes out of me than when I write. I edit myself when I write as opposed to talking. So that's a bit of insight I got out of this, but I think I've been talking a long time. I guess you can tell I'm a day one fan.

Well, I am too, to be honest. I started off in day one and left it only when I had a specific thing that it couldn't do for me. So it's definitely a great app. The team behind it is great. They keep pushing the ball forward with journaling. Like the shared journals is a really cool idea. And it's not enough to get me back into it, unfortunately. Yeah, well, you've been done.

Yeah, but I think for what you're doing, it's really the perfect app. I mean, you can have all these different journals, you can have all these different categories. And for the type of journaling that you're doing, where you're grouping these together based on the type of entry or reflection on something that happened. I mean, it's the perfect thing for that.

You can have 100 different journals if you want. In fact, you've got quite a few. Yeah. Well, just to give you some ideas, I have a journal for each role. We talked about in the Productivity Field Guide episode how I believe in this RTA in roles. I made separate journals for each role, husband, father, brother, uncle, friend,

Max Sparky, on and on. And so I keep track of progress in those things in journals specific to the roles, which is, it's a little weird, but if you go through the kind of the, my RTA role system, it makes perfect sense. But then I have other ones that pop up like gratitude. We talked about, I have a separated gratitude into a zone journal. Now you could in day one just tag something as a gratitude entry, but I

like, I've got a template every morning that says I'm grateful for. And then, you know, dot, dot, dot new line. And I just hit that template every morning and I write something. And the gratitude and by putting in his own journal, I can go back and just read all the things I'm grateful for. I did at one point, and I guess I should just talk about this for a minute. I have experimented with other formats. Like I spent time journaling in obsidian because obsidian is also

into an encrypted. And I like the idea, like if I mention a journal entry about the husband role and I hyperlink it with Obsidian the way you can, then that would give me a way to kind of link everything together very organically. And I did that for about six months, but I found I wasn't really using that benefit out of it and I was giving up so much with day one.

Like one of the things I like with day one is I also journal events, like a kid's graduation or whatever, we'll take pictures. And then that journal entry will go in and the picture gets added to the journal that looks really nice. The journal event is updated to match the pictures date. So there's just a lot of things, of journal-ly type things

that day one does that obsidian doesn't do. Now, I know Mike has thoughts on that. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. But that, so I did make an experiment day one, ultimately came back. But one of the things that got out of it was, I did like the idea of hyperlinking and having abilities to get things like just gratitude. came back. But one of the things that got out of it was I did like the idea of hyperlinking and

having abilities to get things like just gratitude. So that's when I decided to make gratitude its own journal. And if you go through my journal list, there's a lot of stuff in here. I have, for instance, when we did the Personal Socrates book, I made a Personal Socrates journal. And every time I read another section of personal Socrates I write my answer in that journal Can we can we stop there for a second because that might sound weird to people? Like why would you create a separate journal for one specific book? But that book is unique in that every I don't know how many chapters are there's a bunch and each one gives you a specific question to think about So actually that's perfect because they're giving you the prompt and then you a specific question to think about. So actually, that's

perfect because they're giving you the prompt and then you're basically responding to that prompt inside the journal, right? Yeah. Keeping them together, you know, there's so many here. I have some that are work related, like I have podcasts and Max Sparky and that's stuff where I journal, that's more of a like, I'm working on projects and thoughts on them kind of thing. That's not as introspective, but it's out of those journals sometimes that I catch problems, like the fact that I'm not enjoying doing customer support and it's taking too much of my time. So it's just, you know, I've got all these different, I've got one called travel. Every time I get on an airplane and take a trip, I just take all my journal entries on the trips there. So I could just go back to the travel journal and look through them to see places I've gone and pictures I took and things like that.

I've got one called task cards because I use these Uggmunk cards. And because I am crazy, I take a picture of it and just put it in the journal every day and see how it went same thing with my my block scheduling that I've got one called time blocking where I Take a picture of my calendar in the morning And I take a picture of my calendar at night and it gives me the contrast of what how the plan went versus the execution None of this stuff takes long if you're listening you're thinking this guy's gone over the deep end but stuff takes long if you're listening, you're thinking, this guy's gone over the deep end. But I do like it.

Like, and then I have some related to hobbies, like I've got one related to woodworking. I call it craft. And, but like, when I'm working on a project, I take pictures of the project throughout the process and I can go back later and look at it. And I even put like notes and thoughts on it. Same thing with music I'm playing.

So as you can probably assume, there's just a lot of different things in here. In addition, I have some that are not so introspective. They're more just kind of like get the work done kind of stuff. With household and personal business, sometimes I'll take pictures of things and put them in there just so I've got an easy way to access them. I've got one for the dog because not only do I put pictures of the dog in there,

I put pictures of the vet bills and stuff so I can see what procedures she's had. So, you know, I really, my, my day one is constant companion. And I've just become really, um, reliant on it over the years. If it went away, I'd be very sad. But by breaking it up into all these journals, it gives me the ability to slice and dice. And I think you have to have a paid account to do that. But if you want to really go down the deep end with day one, it's worth paying for it. 100%.

Can I ask a couple of questions about some of these journals that you have listed here? Sure. All right. So what's in the music journal? Is this like specific songs that you listened to like, oh, that was really cool. And I liked this part of it. So you're capturing like a text based note on that? I listened to a lot of jazz.

I like to play jazz standards. So like, I was playing like the last entry in here is about Dexter Gordon solo in three o'clock in the morning. And I wrote thoughts about it and I started transcribing it. And I took a picture of the sheet music that I transcribed. So that's an example of the last entry in it. So it's about music, you know, The music I make more than anything else. But I will write

things down. I'm working on another one for a solo for One Day My Prince Will Come, and I've got thoughts on that. So it's just like, it's just kind of an ongoing resource as I try to expand my craft of being a musician. Cool. Then what is the daily metrics? Is this for your business? Is this personally? That one I got from listening to Cal Newport. It was an experiment.

I just started like last month and it didn't stick. He has in his focus planner or whatever he calls it. At the top it says daily metrics. And I don't put that there because I was always doing it. I've got one called daily time blocking. And at the end of it, I usually put a screenshot of my timer-y time tracking for the day, which, which breaks down for moving the needle time between different things and roles. So it does a really good job of that. And I thought, well, maybe I'll put it in a separate one called daily metrics and that didn't stick.

I need to delete that one. Well, I don't know that you just necessarily need to delete it. I mean, looking at the list here, I can tell there's a couple of things here that were from experiments and maybe you don't use them anymore, but still having that historical data can be helpful even if you don't have that practice. Yeah. Another one of the things I have is on the news. I try not to let the news govern my feelings about the world.

Sometimes I think people, especially today, the news is engineered to get you wound up. But if something happens in the news that gives me feelings, I'll just write an entry about it in here and then kind of like turn the page and move on. It's a way, it's kind of a method of turning the page. Nice. I've got one called Max Sparky Love when people send me particularly nice emails or say something nice about something I've made.

I forward it to a magic day one email address that drops it in there. And it's kind of nice to have that. And I look at that as another kind of deposit for the future to make me feel good. Let's talk about that one for a minute because I feel like we just glossed over the very deep importance of something like that. As a creator, I think it's easy to get focused on the people who will leave you the negative reviews and the complaints that you'll hear. That's why you don't read the comments on YouTube that that advice is out there.

So I think that everyone should have some version of this, whether they're a creator or not, when you just like hit rock bottom and you're like, what am I even doing here? Having a few things that you can go back to and you can look at them and that can be wind in your sales. I've had a few of those that I've collected over time, like people sending me emails back

in the day about, you know, you did this thing and I've been in that place before where you feel like you're at your lowest point and then you go back and you read that email that somebody sent you and they said, hell, that thing that you made that completely changed my life. That can be enough to get you through sometimes. So having a collection of those where you can go dip into that as needed, I think that's a really great idea. And that's honestly why I went on this journey, ended up back in day one. Because in addition to spending time in Obsidian,

I also spent a significant amount of time doing paper journaling, just getting some notebooks. I did a real serious experiment with that, kind of the second half of 2023, because there's so many people out there saying that, analog journaling is where it's at. And people listening to us may find that that is the case for them. But it wasn't for me.

I tried multiple times. I bought some nice notebooks. I tried the Levenger system. I tried different systems that do analog journaling. But ultimately for me, the convenience of day one meant that I made better entries in day one. I mean, just as an example, as we record this last week was my birthday. And on my birthday, I do kind of an annual checkup on myself. And it just so happened, you know, I didn't have any appointments that day by design.

And my wife works at Disneyland, so I drove her to work and I went into the park and I sat at a nice table in the shade under the Millennium Falcon. And if you know anything about me, that's a very happy place. So I sat there all day, you know, with breaks for bathroom and food, but I sat there all day and just wrote.

And when I was getting ready to leave, there was a part of me that said, bring a paper journal, you know, because this is Naval Gazing Day. You really should do this in paper. But because I've kind of been on this path, I said, no, I'm just gonna do it in day one. I brought my iPad with a keyboard.

And that was the right decision for me. Because as the day went on, I started identifying things I wanted to work on. and it just is so easy to move the text around and just kind of like organically develop this annual review of myself. If I had done it in paper, it would have been just a mess. Maybe that's okay for some people, but it's not for me. So it just didn't work. And my decision to like fully invest in day one was renewed. I will say, however, I'm not beyond writing things down, but if I do, I take a picture of it and I put it in day one.

Or if I really want to use a paper and pencil, I can also digitally do that, like with an app. You know, good notes is a great example. Good notes you can export to day one, and then you've got a handwritten entry that you created digitally. But I use all the formats to get data into day one. I dictate probably is my most frequent method, but I also type digital handwriting, analog handwriting, you know, scanning documents, importing

pictures. They even have a thing now where you can have a text, you know, point it at a page and then it'll grab the text off of it and digitize the text, you know, basically as OCR in the app. So they've got so many different ways to capture text. I've also done entries like Captain Picard where I sit and talk to it, and it records my voice. So I've used all the formats. And ultimately, that's the thing. You got to find the approach that works for you. Journaling is a very personal thing, and you can't just copy what somebody else is doing. It's really gotta click if it's gonna stick, and that's the most important thing,

is that you do it consistently. Yeah, that was one of my observations of myself, is that I like playing with tools, but I'm gonna be very careful this year about switching tools, if that makes sense. Like, I can spend time with another task manager so I can talk about it, but I'm not going to move house into it, you know, and, and I'm going to just stick with my, my defaults for that so I can get the work done and actually spend more time experimenting on things without having to move

house every time. And with journaling is a good example for that. I am just day one is the one I've made my decision. I don't mind experimenting with how other apps work and ways you can do it, but when it comes to my personal journaling, it's just gonna go in day one. Another thing about day one, by the way, is that they got purchased by automatic. The way I heard this story is, and Automac is a very big company,

which means day one has a healthy future. The way I heard the story is the automatic CEOs, dad was dying and he downloaded day one to journal as he was going through that process with his father and liked it so much that he bought the app. But they, you know, they've done, it's a good steward. They're not going to make it creepy. And they're gonna, they've done, it's a good steward. They're not going to make it creepy. And they're gonna, they've kept the same team

and they just, they're just, you know, they just have a good financial footing now, but they're continuing to do the same kind of work. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Vitaly. Go to vitally.io slash focus for a new era for customer access productivity and get a free pair of AirPods Pro when you book a qualified meeting. Customer success teams today are facing a problem. How that combines your customer data with all the capabilities you expect from today's project management and

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So if you're a customer success decision maker, actively seeking CS solutions, working at a B2B software as a service company with 50 to 1,000 employees, and you're willing to explore changing customer success platforms if you already have one in place, schedule your call by visiting vitaly.io slash focused

and get a free pair of AirPods pro. That's vitally.io slash focused for a free pair of AirPods pro when you schedule a qualified meeting and our thanks to vitally for the support of the focus podcast and all of relay FM. All right, Mike. So where do you do your journaling? Everybody already knows where I do my journaling. That is obsidian. But the real question is, how do I do the journaling in obsidian? And for that, dear listener, we must go down the rabbit hole.

We are about to get very nerdy here, if that's okay. on the rabbit hole. We are about to get very nerdy here if that's okay. So let me just start, I guess, about why I do it in Obsidian. I agree with everything that you said about Day One, and it just never completely stuck for me, but there's a certain type of person. Day One is absolutely perfect. Do not do what I am about to describe. However, the advantage of Obsidian is that you can craft your own system, and you can, it's kind of set up for journaling because there's a core feature called the Daily Notes, which is not unique to Obsidian. There are other apps that have this sort of thing, but that's basically home base for everything that's attached to that day. And basically what I've done with that

is built my journaling workflow on top of it and nothing else really gets added to that daily note unless it ties into that journaling practice. So the things on my daily note, and I've got a bunch of different pieces to it, but they will be things that I'm going to look at at the beginning of the day and then at the end of the day. And then I've got a whole bunch of workflows on ways to get things on to that daily note in an efficient way so that I can, as part of the personal retreat process, go back and view that stuff later. So, I've got, let's just start, I guess, in order of complexity here.

He talked about the different types of entries and all the different journals that you have. I don't have them broken down that granularly, but I do have a couple different types of entries that I will capture to my daily note. And so I've got essentially these are third level headers at the bottom of my daily note with sections for wins, journal entries and gratitude. So gratitude specifically, because that one, as we talked about earlier, is tied to my mental state helps me maintain my positive focus. So that's worth breaking out on its own. All of the entries around, this is something that we did and I want to remember this event.

Those will go under the journal entries and then the other thing that I sometimes have trouble with, which is why it's up front in my face all the time, is capturing my wins. I tend to just, when I accomplish a goal, move on to the next one. What's the next thing I should be working on? And I think it's really important in terms of motivation and avoiding burnout to recognize, you know, hey, you did the thing.

Good job. Let's celebrate a little bit. And it sounds stupid to say that, you know, jotting down a sentence or two about doing the thing is enough to maintain that motivation, but it really is. I think that is a point I'd like to emphasize, that the idea of celebration of a win. I watched the Super Bowl over the weekend. I don't watch much sports, but we had family and blah, blah, blah. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl and they won it last year. After you win the Super Bowl, they get up on the stage and get the trophy and it's

their celebration. But almost every person that got on the microphone said, we won this, now we're going to three peak, you know, three peak means they're going to come and win next year. There was never a moment where they said, we won this. And this was an amazing accomplishment. And let's just appreciate that for a second. It was shocking to me how their immediate reaction was, well, we have to win it again next year.

And they were, all they could talk about was three peating. And I told Daisy, I said, do you think if they win it again next year, they're going to get up and say, we won this. Now we have to for Pete. I mean, at what point do they, do they acknowledge that they've done something remarkable? I just thought, I think a lot of us humans, we do that. Like you, you, you get something good. You do something good. You finally get to the top of the hill and you start looking at the next hill.

And I think that's a good thing, right? We should always be striving for more, but I think a journal can help you maybe stop and smell the roses a bit too before you start the next march. Absolutely. And the basis of this for me, I'm not going to go crazy with the personal retreat process because we talked about that in different episodes, But the first time I did a personal retreat, I remember going, it was in the fall, and I didn't do it for the previous 90 days.

I did it for the previous part of the year. So it was like nine months. And I remember going into it, I get there, and I'm all frustrated because I feel like I really haven't done anything this year. And then I just spent some time thinking through what did I actually accomplish? What did I actually ship? And I made this huge list and I was like, this is a killer

year, and it's not even over yet. So that is the feeling I want to be able to reproduce when I do my personal retreats. And having this section of wins makes populating that list when I think about, you know, what did I accomplish, what went well, what could have gone better, that kind of stuff makes populating those lists really easy. So again, I'm kind of doing this with a future focus, but also the benefit of it is in the moment where I am able to celebrate the win as well. Yeah. The way I do that is because I have templates for weekly, monthly, quarterly reviews that

I go through pretty religiously, and there's a segment of that dedicated to wins. But I don't have an actual wins journal. When you talk to me, it sounds like I might, but I don't. That's just part of those templates. Yep. Yep. And so everything that I do in this daily note is designed to have some sort of future use. The journal entries, the gratitude, these are all things that when I add these, and the wins also, I have a bullet and then I have the text and then I have a tag.

And with Obsidian you can do these nested tags, so I have one called journal and then underneath there are sub tags for entry gratitude and wins. And so I'll use a hashtag journal slash entry when I add a journal entry, journal slash win, journal slash gratitude, et cetera. And I also have with obsidian there is a plugin called quick ad, which allows you to, with a command, so basically a keyboard shortcut can trigger this prompt from anywhere. And I can just type the text.

I don't have to worry about the tag, I don't have to worry about the bullet. It'll say like, what's going on? Or what are you grateful for? Hit Enter, and then that will apply the tag, apply the bullet, and stick it in the right section under today's daily note. So I'm trying to eliminate as much friction as possible when capturing these types of things.

And these I'm trying to capture kind of in the moment. At the end of the day, I'll add them if I need to. But the best version of this is when I think about something in Obsidian, I can capture it quickly so i don't forget about it. In the future and i'm not perfect with this i struggle with this in fact the winds of journal entries in the gratitude this is not something that i do every single day. The thing that i do every single day is the daily questions which will we'll get to in a second. in a second. But these are things that I want to be able to look at these lists of wins, journal entries, and gratitudes. So by applying that tag, essentially what I can do when I do my personal retreats, and I review my entries, as I look at those tags, I click on the tag

in the sidebar, and then it does the filter, the query for everything that has that tag, and then I can review that stuff for the last 90 days. Any other questions before we get into the daily questions piece? Well, one of the things I want to talk about is the plug in you have when you open your journal. Mike showed me his journal when we did the Obsidian Field Guide, and it shows him the amount of days he has left. I thought that was kind of awesome. I think a lot of people are rubbed wrong by that, but I love the sentiment of it. Tell us about that. Sure. So essentially, I have this daily notes template, which is kind of crazy, but I really like it. And the thing you're talking about is this BementoMori code. And I've actually

put this inside of a call out now. So it has like a custom icon of a skull because Memento Mori is essentially remember you're going to die. And then a progress bar you put in your birthday in the code and then it tells you how much of your life based on an 80 year normal human lifespan has has a what's the right word here has, what's the right word here, passed by. So you essentially like, you have this reminder of your time is limited. And people can be rubbed the wrong way with that. But for me, it's basically a reminder that every day is a gift and that we've got, we've only got so much time on this earth. So make the most of what you've got available. But that doesn't mean crank more widgets,

that doesn't mean get more done necessarily. But really it's a reminder that every single day, do the stuff that's really important. The whole idea behind the Focus Podcast. Yes, I completely agree with it. And I talk about death often in that regard because I think we do, you know, none of us are getting out of this alive is this thing I like to say. And

that's true. So if there's something you want to get done, that's important. You should do it now. And you get that reminder every time you open it up. I haven't done anything like that, but I am very aware of Momento Mori and I think it's a healthy thing. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. If you have the right perspective. Now, that part of the daily note, I should probably mention that I do have a YouTube

video where I walk through how I set that up. And so I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but I also have what's called a starter vault that I have put together over time. And basically every time I do a YouTube video and I mention a template or a resource, I add it to this starter vault that people can download for free. So in that starter vault, I have the daily note template that I use with all the callouts and all of the codes. And then with the YouTube video, it shows you how to set it all up. I've also got callouts for some of the other stuff I do, like the Chronological Bible Reading Plan, my habit tracking, the tasks that are due that day.

So if you want to play around with it, then go download that and there's a bunch of resources in there. A lot of the stuff that I'll be talking about, if you want to actually see it, you can download that file and follow along instead of me just describing it. Give me some more. All right. The other things that really are a little bit nerdy, but essential to my quarterly retreat process are the habit tracking and the daily questions. Let's talk about the daily questions first

because this is more related to actual journaling. So a while back, I was doing journaling in day one and I was completely happy. And I had this template that I was using and I was asking myself these prompts every day. And eventually I just stopped checking in regularly. And the reason was my prompts were all outcome focused. What did you accomplish today?

What did you create today? All that kind of stuff. And I realized after I kind of thought about it a little bit, yeah, the reason I don't want to go check in is when I have a bad day and I'm focusing only on the outcome, I don't want to have to put that I had a bad day in my journal, which maybe sounds stupid, but there's this other version of journaling

which was created by Marshall Goldsmith, and I read about this one in the book Triggers, where instead of focusing on the outcome, you focus on the intention. And so with daily questions, you basically are asking yourself, did I do my best to, and then you decide which questions you want to rate your intentions on a scale from one to 10.

So I made my own daily questions, and mine are, did I do my best to grow spiritually, love my wife, love my kids, be a good friend, learn something, create something, and exercise. Those are kind of like if I do my best in those particular areas every day, then I feel good about the direction that I'm going and the outcome is going to take care of itself. So I have all these habits and things around this, but really what I wanted to do was just kind of check in every single day on these specific intentions. And I have a bullet list, again, under this section,

a third level header, daily questions. I do my best to, and then those bullets, you know, grow spiritually, love my wife, love my kids, and then there's a tag associated with each one of those. At the end of the tag, daily questions slash spiritual, daily questions slash wife, et cetera, I have a colon and then a value right after that on a scale from one to 10. So that's basically daily questions in a nutshell. You rate your intention on a scale from one to 10.

And the numbers are completely arbitrary. There's no outcome associated with this at all. Did you make an effort? Okay, so that is the thing that allows me to go in here every single day and give myself a score because this score means nothing except to me. No one can judge whether this score is right or not. There is no good or bad with this score. It's really just, did I do my best?

Did I make an effort? So I'll rate myself from one to ten and I use another plugin called Tracker, which will basically plot all of those values from the previous quarter in a dashboard in canvas. This is going to get a little bit hard to describe. So I'm actually going to share some links in the show notes to some images and I'll drop these in messages for you too, David. But here's the one from the Daily Questions. And it's only showing my scores from the beginning of the quarter. And again, these are my scores based on my intentions. So like they mean nothing to anybody else. what it does for me is it it kind of shows you know, there are some days where I didn't I Struggled with something and I'll go back to that daily note and kind of figure out why or I'll see some trends here

Like in the one that I showed you I've been a little bit busy this last quarter And so my exercise habit has kind of fallen off a little bit and I Recognize that I feel a little bit out of shape. I feel a little bit heavier than I'd like to be. So what I do when I do the personal retreat is I'll look at these things. I'll do the wheel of life. These are tied to that wheel of life, by the way, not directly like one to one, but they all touch on the same areas that the wheel of life touches on.

And then I consider, you know, am I happy with these different areas of my life or what changes do I want to make? And so based on these and based on the wheel of life, on. And then I consider, you know, I'm happy with these different areas of my life or what changes do I want to make? And so based on these and based on the wheel of life, then I'll set intentions, you know, maybe I'm going to reestablish the exercise habit. Uh, one of the things that, that came from that for me back in 2020, when COVID hit, was I recognized I was unhappy. I was in a negative mental state like the rest of the world and getting outside really helped. So I, I was going to go for a run or go for a bike ride every single

day. And I did that from March to October in Wisconsin. That is a pretty major accomplishment, but it definitely had a positive effect. And so that showed up every time I did one of those reviews. I have to admit though, I always look at these and you don't have a single entry. I actually take that back, you have a couple of sixes, but most of them are seven to 10. I always feel like there's too many numbers on your system.

I feel like I would make it like a one, two, three, or even just a binary. Did I do my best? yes or no and And like almost like a checkbox is zero or a one But that's just me. I don't like to me I would get hung up on the one to ten like I'd be well is it a seven or is it an eight? I don't you know, I have to simplify something like this

Sure, and I get that. I think you could make the argument that I could simplify it, but the one to 10 scale just clicks for me. And it's completely arbitrary. So you could make a one to five scale or a one to three scale. I just chose one to 10.

And those are the ones that I plot. And just the fact that I'm thinking about these things every day is why you don't see stuff that's down in like the one, two, three. I mean, if I just went through an entire day and I never, ever thought about my wife and how I could actually help her, I would give myself a zero. But with five kids at home, that does not happen.

Yeah. And at this point, you have years of data on the scale. You really can't switch. But the, but yeah, this is- Well, you could because what I do with this is I only look at the last quarter. So every single time I go to a personal retreat, I update the date ranges for these charts, and it only shows me from the beginning of the last quarter. I don't want to see everything from the beginning of time.

I'm only concerned about this last period. What can I learn from what I went through here? Maybe there's value in going further back, but I don't know. I'm just looking for some high level trends. I'm not looking for real nitty gritty specifics here. So all that data really would just reinforce the general feelings that I have, or it would just make me feel overwhelmed more likely. So I just, you know, this is good enough for me.

Do you do any journaling of like event journaling? I guess I would call like today we went to Disneyland and we went to dinner at this place and we had fun, blah, blah, blah. Here's a picture. Do you anything like that? I do. Those will show up under the entries that I capture in the bullet list. They're not going to show up on the dashboard. Obviously, there's no quantifiable data with this, but I do have those lists of things,

and then I'll go back and I'll read through those as part of my personal retreat. Like one that I dropped, one that comes to mind is last Saturday, I'm helping coach the Varsity basketball team that my son is on, and they're basically like a JV team. They have a lot of younger guys, not a lot of big guys,

and a lot of seniors graduated last year when they won state. So they're playing a lot of the teams that they beat last year, and now they're just getting trounced. So you look back at that and like, oh, it's not fun, but then you can pick out a few things. Like my son had this really cool move that he did against these guys.

And I was really proud of him when he, when he did it because like that confidence is something that he's had to build over the year. And so like that was a kind of a tipping point that I recognized. And so I'll, I'll journal about that. And I'll add usually about a paragraph inside that, that journal entry then. So I can go back and I can relive those moments. But I'm not doing it, like I said, I probably should do it every day,

but I don't do it every day. It probably is a couple times a week. There is more to this though, however. Not with the daily questions, but the other thing that is on my daily note, which I think pertains to journaling, is habit tracking. Now, I'm not tracking every habit. These are habits that I am trying to ingrain.

So, at this point, I have my morning routine, I have my evening routine, the stuff that's on there, I don't need to track anymore. I read my Bible, I pray, I do that, I stretch. Those things happen every single morning at this point. So checking those boxes does me, it doesn't give me any sort of insight. But I have a section on my daily notes called habits where I'm trying to get in the, I'm trying to just kind of crease this.

I want to write, read, and plan every single day. And so these are just check boxes. These are not tasks, but they are check boxes underneath a call out called habits. And I've got the little neuron or an atom sign, I guess, because of the whole atomic habits idea. And I check those boxes when I do those things on those days. And then I have another

canvas dashboard sort of a thing where I will look at these month views. And it will plot out basically the whole idea behind habits is you don't want to don't break the chain. Well, what this does is it shows basically these chains of writing, reading and planning. And then below that, I've got another version of that code block, which is basically my longest streak, my current streak, stuff like that. So I can kind of see at a glance

how I'm doing with these different habits. And then also just like the daily questions, these get reset every personal retreat. So it's only showing me data from the previous quarter. I'm not full disclosure. I'm not doing these things every day. That's why they're on this daily note. These are things that if I was doing every day for an entire quarter, I would stop tracking it. But if you look at these charts, you'll see quite a few days where the thing hasn't happened, specifically with the planning one.

That is the one that I struggle with the most. And I do it more often than not. And this is just kind of a reinforcement to, hey, you should really do this thing. But this is something that I check the boxes as I go throughout the day. And I'm doing my daily journaling. But then at the end of the quarter, I kind of take a step back and I think about how did I actually do with these things? But these are the things that I feel like

if I do these every single day, they make everything else I do work wise easier. So a lot of my creative stuff is based on a writing habit. And if I can write consistently, then I basically never run out of ideas. I always have content that is ready to be created. Reading is another one of those things, which is the influx of the ideas.

And then planning is the time blocking practice where I have the plans that I set for the day and do I stick to it. And full disclosure with this one, the reason that one is on there is because when I went independent, I fell into the trap of that 10 minutes that I would take to create that time i could be doing something else. And that got that took root a little bit and that's kind of tied to a deeper issue that i struggle with every morning you know i wake up still trying to get this thing off the ground in my initial thought is well time to get to work.

And i have to fight that like, you gotta do the morning routine first because that's gonna set you up to be more productive overall. And it sounds stupid, I have all the data. I know all this stuff, but still in the moment, I struggle with it sometimes. So these are just kind of little nudges to keep me on the right track in terms of my intention.

Does anybody, Mike, find it easy to do the planning? Like I do it as part of my intention. Does anybody find it easy to do the planning? Like, I do it as part of my shutdown and I struggle with it too. We all know that it makes 100% difference, you know, I mean, or maybe 500% difference, and we all avoid it. I think this is a universal law, that it's just really hard to do the planning work. That is true. That is true. So, yeah, I mean, that's just really hard to do the planning work. That is true.

That is true. So, yeah, I mean, that's one of the things we've kind of camped on with focus from the very beginning is that we're fellow travelers on this journey. We don't have it all figured out. We all struggle with this too. Don't believe the gurus who say that they never do and that it's easy. But that's kind of at the heart of the whole thing is that because I know what to do and I sometimes don't do it,

I'm trying to do all of this stuff that I've just described here with as little friction as possible. And you're thinking, you just described this really complicated system that would take me an entire day just to set it up, let alone use it. How can you possibly think this is simple? Well, basically, as I mentioned before, the consistency is the most important thing. So when I started with Obsidian,

I just did the daily questions stuff. Then solely over time, I've added other elements on top of it, but I've created that habit already and I add those very slowly so that it doesn't get to the point where this is too much for me to maintain. One of the things that I've done to make it more seamless is not even having to go into Obsidian, for example, to do the daily questions. I got another YouTube video which I can put in the show notes for this, but I used an app called Actions for Obsidian and I created a shortcut, which basically takes those values

and allows me to insert it in my daily note at a placeholder. So I have a placeholder, which you can do with like the 2% signs. And then that is the spot that it takes that text and it drops it into my daily note. So at the end of the day, I don't even have to open Obsidian.

I can just run that shortcut and it drops it in there. And that shortcut is in the Obsidian University starter vault too. So links to all that stuff in the show notes, if you really want to geek out about this. But essentially what you want with your system is something that is as simple as possible, but no simpler. And this is kind of the version of that for me. But I totally recognize, as you said, it's very Mike Schmitz.

And don't blame anybody if they decide that this is way too much. Yeah. I mean, I toyed with some of the stuff you're doing here. And I thought it was a good idea. I liked the quantification of data. But ultimately, day one was the answer for me. But just like the warning label at the beginning of the last segment, Mike and I both have been journaling a long time and have developed these workflows over time. And over time, you do get a little more complex, but to get started,

you don't need to do any of this stuff. Open the journal app on your iPhone and to start using it and then decide how deep down the rabbit hole you really want to go over time, adding piece by piece. I didn't start out with 25 different journals. Mike didn't start out with his journaling app telling him how many days he had left to live. This stuff happens over time and be okay with that. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com slash Focus

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You need Indeed. And our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and Olive Relay FM. A couple of things on journaling as we wrap up the topic is a couple of questions. First is digital versus analog. I mentioned it briefly when I was talking about my journey. I think you should definitely give some thought to analog journaling, if that is at all interesting

to you. I know a lot of people these days are just into the digital tools and don't care, but there's something to be said for the process of pushing a pen across a paper. It forces you to go slower, forces you to think more. I think there's a lot of good arguments to do analog journaling, just because ultimately, it wasn't really the answer for me, doesn't mean it isn't for you. And if you're gonna go down this road,

and that is at all interesting to you, get a little journal book and just try it for a little while and see what works for you. There's nothing wrong with a little experimentation. And there's a lot of good resources out there if you want to analog journal. Ryder Carroll was a guest on the show and the bullet journal method is very good

and can accommodate a lot of this stuff. But that's also kind of a task management system in a habit system. It's kind of like what Mike has done with journaling but the analog version of it. One other resource I'll throw out there, I think this is actually a great place to start journaling in general,

let alone if you are interested in an analog resource, but there's this concept called the five minute journal. And again, the basis here is eliminate as much friction as possible because the consistency is the most important thing. So it's a two-page spread, and the first page, I believe, is the morning journaling, and then the second page is the evening journaling, or maybe they combine both of them into a single page now.

I can't remember. But it's a nice book with a bookmark, and then it gives you just a couple of very easy prompts. So I know a lot of people who have gotten into journaling specifically because they bought the five minute journal. Yeah. And then one other resource is another guest, former guest is Matt Ragland. He does a lot of bullet journaling videos on YouTube and has a lot of good ideas on it too.

So I would say there is no right or wrong answer on the digital versus analog question. Just find what resonates with you. Like it took me a long time to really, you know, figure it out because day one was the first app that actually got me journaling. So I probably should have taken that as a message to stick with it the whole time.

But I did get curious and happy feet and I went into some experiments with Obsidian for some time, I did analog stuff for some time. But ultimately I realized day one is the right solution for me but like I said, just go out and try some of these things out. And you can do little experiments and learn pretty quickly what's right for you.

The other one we didn't mention is the idea of daily versus interstitial journaling. Um, daily journaling is like you pick them, you know, every morning or every evening you do your journaling. Um, because day one is so simple, I use what I would call an interstitial journaling technique where like I, I will probably journal this podcast as soon as we finish recording. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show.

I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show.

I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show.

I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm a big end of the day. I feel like capturing it in the moment for me a lot of times is more effective, but that's because I've made a very easy capture system. I can just dictate to it or whatever. But that's another kind of vector you may want to explore. I don't know, Mike, do you have anything to add to that? I'll just add that if you're going to do interstitial journaling in Obsidian, it's really easy because they have a template for the timestamp. So that's essentially what you do is you put the time and then you put the entry. And yeah, just anchoring it all to the daily note, it's a very effective way to do it. But I actually don't do this a whole lot.

I capture the journal entries, but I'm not so concerned about what time specifically something happened. Yeah. And with day one, it captures the time when you make it. So you don't even have to do a time stamp. It's just there. And then the other thing I would say, if you're still listening, do a 60-day challenge like Gene did. Try it for 60 days. Figure out a simple system and give it a try and let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear if you hit some challenge points or if you find it effective. This is a very powerful tool towards intentionality and making yourself better.

And I think something that anybody listening to the focused podcast should be interested in. 100%. All right, Mike, shiny new objects. I've got a doozy I've been waiting for this one. Go ahead. Yeah, so I am in possession of an Apple Vision Pro a very fancy headset that you strap onto your face and adds a Augmented and virtual reality to the world

This is anybody listening is aware of this device that we did all episode of Mac Power users on it. But I wanted to talk about the focus angle of this device because there is one. I am a big fan of the idea which we talk on the show occasionally of contextual computing of putting yourself in context in a way that allows you to really focus on the work you're doing. The extended mind by Annie Murphy Paul who was a guest on the show was're doing. The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy-Paul, who was a guest on the show, was a very influential book on me, and there's science behind the idea

of putting yourself in a space. And I am making efforts to turn this very expensive piece of gizmo into a Extended Mind device. So a couple of things I'm doing with it is I have created a writing environment it's your somebody valley. And when I go there the writing app comes up and I have a keyboard in my lap. And nothing else you know focus modes are keeping the world from interrupting me you can hear the wind blowing in your somebody valley. You actually feel colder it is amazing with these immersive environments due to you physiologically. Like it feels cold.

Like, you know, I was, I, I'm in a room that's perfectly air conditioned. And I go in Yosemite Valley, I feel a little colder because it's snowing there in the, in the immersive environment. So it really does trick your brain to think you're somewhere other than your normal space. And just after a week, I'm already finding some benefit to just going to Yosemite Valley to write. So I'm building this connection in my brain between this environment and a specific activity. It works. Nice. That was the thing I thought of right away when I heard about the environments is like they're cool, but if you can attach those environments with specific modes of work that

could obviously have some major productivity and focus benefits. I'm really intrigued by it. There's no way I can afford one right now. Maybe version two or three. I can afford one right now. But maybe version two or three, I can't wait to play around with this. Yeah. Another workflow that I'm working on for focus is I like the idea, and this was another thing I got out of the extended mind, was the idea of like a, she wrote at one point, like one of the most beneficial tools you could have is like a whiteboard that's 10 feet

high and 20 feet long, just a visual thinking space that you can go and walk around and write on and think about. And I always, that stuck with me because I was building indoor studios at the time I read the book. And if you've seen pictures of me here, I have this big wall behind me that's got this kind of wood texture treatment, so I can use it as a backdrop for videos. The other candidate for that wall, there's no windows on it.

It's a south-facing wall. I didn't want the sun to come through when I'm shooting. The other candidate was just to put up a big glassboard, like fill the whole wall with a glassboard like she talked about. There's a part of me that wish I had done that, but what I did was the right decision because I shoot a lot of video in here and it's great looking. It would be nice to have an actual glass wall that fills the whole wall. I'm creating that right now with Freeform. Freeform is an app Apple makes.

It's kind of like a diagramming app, but you put it in Vision Pro and you can locate it right on top of the wall and make it as big as the wall. And then you can get up and walk around it, just like it was a big glassboard. The breaking point is you can't write on it like you would a glassboard. You know, if you just had a little marker and you could start scribbling on it. You can pinch your fingers together and write in theory,

but it's not accurate enough to, you know, to match what you could do with your hands and a physical board. So my solution to that is I'm using an iPad that has the same freeform board up and I can write on the iPad with the Apple Pencil and then it immediately shows up on the wall. So it's kind of a little bit of a disconnect, but I do get the benefit of having a wall-sized

glassboard when I put this headset on. And I'm trying to figure out if that's something for me or not and a workflow and a develop. But yeah, I think there's a lot of focus use for this thing. And as we record this, we're only a little over a week after release and I know there's a lot of apps coming that'll even make it easier. I hope Apple makes more environments though, because like I want to use the environments.

I want you so many to be writing. Maybe I was thinking while we were talking earlier, maybe I have a journaling environment. I like to get these location specific contexts so I can put this thing in go there and really focus on work. Right. Very cool.

How about you? I have a, not quite as impressive shiny new object, but it's one that is- Mine is a doozy, like I said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did get this thing which is going to be helpful for me. I have a little bit of traveling coming up.

So we're actually going on vacation next week. I'm going later to the Focus Course live event. I'm going to go to Craft & Commerce this summer and my iPhone 14 Pro no longer charges via the Lightning port. So I have a MagSafe charger at home, that's fine, but I needed to figure out a different solution for traveling and I shouldn't say it doesn't charge at all,

but basically I can't trust the connection on the Lightning port. I could take it to an Apple Store, and they could take a look at it. But the closest Apple Store is two hours away. And it just hasn't worked yet. So I've had to make do. And as long as I can use the MagSafe charger, it's fine.

So I bought something that Rosemary Orchard had recommended when I recorded an episode of the MacVoices gift guide before Christmas, this ESR 3-in-1 charger, which folds, it folds flat and it's about the size maybe of a deck of cards, possibly even a little bit slimmer. But then the top part basically pops up and it gives you like an easel, like a stand that you, it has a MagSafe, so you can put your phone on that and that charges. It opens up another MagSafe spot right behind that,

which can charge your AirPods Pro. And then it also has a plug-in that holds vertically like nightstand mode for your Apple Watch. So you can charge all three of these things at one time. And when I saw it, I was like, that looks cool, but I don't really have a use for that. And then when I needed something that I could travel with, I was like, what was that tiny little thing

that Rosemary showed me? And this I think is perfect for travel because you can charge all three of those things with a single USB-C cable. I'm really looking forward to bringing this thing with me and taking out a few of the, the cords that are in my little snake charmer bag for my Tombin backpack. I think it's going to actually make it so that I don't have to bring quite as much with me when I travel, which is a, which is a plus.

This is really clever. So it looks like the watch charger like plugs in after you unfold it. Yeah, it's like an add-on sort of thing. It comes in its own box, but the whole thing actually fits in this little case. So you can have the charger, the the cable, the the add-on for the Apple Watch thing. But yeah, that's a it's essentially this thing that plugs into the the base of the the thing behind the the Apple Watch thing. But yeah, it's essentially this thing that plugs into the base of the thing behind the easel where you would put the phone.

And it puts it at a 90 degree angle. So the port is basically just like sticking straight up. And then that thing plugs in almost like, what's another example of that? It's about the size of like an old iPod shuffle. But it's got the plug, So you plug it into the, the hole in the, the base and then you can use it as a Apple watch charger and it charges all three of these things without

any, any issues. I kind of thought, well, yeah, you have three chargers, but maybe it'll like the, the iPhone won't charge very fast or you can only use the iPhone and the AirPods or the iPhone and the Apple Watch, but not all three. It just works. I'm not quite sure how, but they made a pretty awesome little travel charger device. If you're needing to charge a watch, AirPods and, and a phone, and you wanna bring one cable, one device that can do it all, this'll do it.

And it also puts your phone into the nightstand mode, like when you're in a hotel, so you've got the clock on its side next to your bed. Because it takes up. Yeah, you can do that, but one of the things I actually liked about this is that if you turn it sideways, you get the nightstand mode, but if you leave it in the portrait orientation, the screen is just off.

Yeah. So I never actually messed with any of my nightstand settings, but I did notice that when I turn it sideways, I get the nightstand mode and I don't actually want to see a clock in my hotel room in the middle of the night because then I start getting anxious, well, you should be sleeping right now. It's 2.30 in the morning. So I generally have to turn all that stuff off, but the ability to just put it in there in the portrait orientation, I think, is a benefit as well. I have this set. There's a setting in Night Sand that you can say only light it up when

there's movement in the room. And then also you can say just put it in the red color so it doesn't light up the room. And I find that useful, but yeah, teach your zone. But this is nice for travel. Very, very nice. Although I still like my Vision Pro. I wonder how many Vision Pros are in one ESR tri-stand. So after taxes, Vision Pros like $4,000. And how much is this thing like $70?

Yeah, I think it was like $70, $80. I may have had some Amazon credit that I threw at it. I don't remember, but it wasn't super expensive. Just so we're clear, you could buy 57 of these before you got to Vision Pro. So yeah, that's quite a few. What are you reading this month, Mike? Well, I am currently reading a book called Six Thinking Hats by Edward Devano.

This is an interesting book that I wish I had read a long time ago. These Thinking Hats all have different formats, and they can be used strategically in meetings, specifically in a business. I feel like this has a lot of value because, for example, the white hat is just give me the facts, just the information. So no judgment with any of these facts, just what are the actual facts? The red hat is the emotions. So you can't separate emotions from the decision-making process, but if you're in a meeting and things can get heated, you could say, okay, I'm going to put on my red hat for a minute,

you know, and you decouple a personal attack from the thing that you are about to say. So there's lots of different ways that you can use this, but I can definitely see it being helpful in terms of just more effective communication in a meeting context. I'm about halfway through this one right now and I'm really enjoying it. We're gonna be covering this one for Bookworm shortly. So if people want to get the full story, I guess check back in a couple of weeks.

And looking at Amazon, Edward Devon has a lot of interesting books. So there may be more, right? Yep. What about you? I read a book over the weekend, the personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tony Ann DeMaria. And I'm a Kanban fan, as you know,

but I saw this book and I thought, well, I'll get through it. It's a quick read. I didn't get a lot out of it because I already knew quite a bit about Kanban boards, but it has the history of them and the different things you can learn from them. They talked in the book at length about the benefit of an analog Kanban board as opposed to a digital one.

I do use digital Kanban boards to track my current work in progress, but they inspired me to try and experiment. I just set it up a few days ago. I've got a little whiteboard in the studio here, and there's enough space on it that I could use sticky pads and just have the Kanban categories. And as I've got different projects in different phases, I just move the sticky pad. Just set it up a few days ago, just kind of experimenting with it, but I'll see how it goes Nice I've tried this before and it's never really stuck for me, but I like the idea And I know one of the things because we've been talking a little bit before this that you're working out right now Is the the stickiness of the the post-it notes?

Did you find something that would would actually hold as you move them from column to column? Yeah, I had some cheap ones and after using it a day, they were falling off. But I ordered a 3M has extra sticky pads. You know, they're the people who invented the sticky pad and for I think $10 you get a big box of ones that are super sticky and they seem to be solving the problem. The question for me is because I have digital combo on boards, do I want... I'm never really

comfortable having multiple versions of the same data because then they get out of sync, right? And I can go in my digital common board and see where things stand. But now like what if, do I have to, when I fix it on the digital one, do I have to get up and walk across the room and do the sticky pad too? I mean, do I get enough benefit out of having it

as an analog tool in addition to a digital tool to make it worth the trouble? And that is an open question. I just started this a few days ago. Um, I can tell you my inclination is probably going to be, this isn't an experiment that's probably not going to last. Uh, if I worked with other people, I think an analog one makes a lot of sense because it's kind of a source of truth that other people can see too.

But because I've got this stuff digitally and I'm such a nerd, you know, to reference my whole conversation about day one, I don't know if this is going to work or not, but I'm trying it. Yeah, hard to automate that. All right, well, we'll wrap it up there. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you want to hear about my crazy iPhone home screen experiment, stay tuned for Deep Focus. You can sign up for Deep Focus, get extended ad free episodes at relay.fm.focused. Thank you to our sponsors today. That's our friends at ZocDoc indeed and vitally.

And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.