Journaling 1,000 Words Every Day

Monday 4 January 2021 - Filed under Default

In some sense, journaling is the mother of all habits, as it can spawn a million others. Here’s what happened when I set out to journal a thousand words a day.

As we go along in life, we become fans of certain people. thought leaders, celebrities, or just interesting people. Two of my favorites share the common trait of maintaining a website where they share life experiences and views with zeal. I thought, How do they do that? Where did they find the time and what was their process?

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

Francis Bacon

At work I began to appreciate the power of the written word to drive positive change and became fond the last part of the quote above. Delving into how writing is done, I learned many authors make a habit of a daily word count, some number of words that they must write each day. The number doesn’t matter, just that there is one.

Then I picked my number and began to type. In the beginning writing was hard and it took time to build the habit but I persisted and over weeks the text grew. Scrolling through it looked like chaos nut this was the raw material from which I could extract and sharpen views of my own, so I read and edited, fixing typos, collecting questions and intentions alike.

Not long after, I realized I was repeating myself. I would write about the same idea more than once, nagging, persuading, convincing (maybe playing) myself. At some point, I had to buy my dream car. I had to quit big tech. I had to take a year to get fit and read more and now I have to publish this. People talk about a calling, and this isn’t religion but all of this came from within. It just needed to breathe.

It’s clear as day that journaling leads to a higher form of consciousness, one imbued with granite-like persistence, reliable storage added to an organ that notoriously forgets and changes it’s story. The mighty journal gives you a chance to replay the tape in a sterile setting removed from the chaotic context of original experience. It can be a lot to handle.

January 4th, 2021 – It has been worth the effort.

2021-01-04  »  David Sterry