The Journal App Making Journal: Day 39

Topics people journal on, and continue to journal on Atomic Habits

Continue to journal on three questions everyday in this Journal App Making Journal.

1. What have I learned about app design and development today?

Took a break from coding today.

2. What have I learned about other journaling users today?

Continue to look into journal users under the #journaling hashtag on Medium.

The featured journal user today continues to be: Jackie Schwabe

> About Jackie and her 30-day journaling challenge

Discovered Jackie’s 30-Day Challenge to Start Journaling and Find Your Journaling Style in September 2019.

I would divide and summarise her ideas into the following 6 areas, and will go through each area in the next few days.

1. General benefits of journaling: Day 1, 13, 14, 29, and 30;
2. Specific ways of journaling > for productivity, planning, learning: Day 2, 3, and 18;
3. Specific ways of journaling > for imagination and creativity: Day 5, 24;
4. Specific ways of journaling > for regulating moods and emotions: Day 7, 12, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, and 25;
5. How to establish the journaling habit: Day 6, 15, 19, 20, 26, and 28;
6. Journaling tools and technologies: Day 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 27.

> Key ideas I learned from Jackie today

Yesterday, we looked at the general benefits of journaling. Today, we look at specific ways of journaling that help productivity and learning.

On Day 2, 3, and 18 of her 30-day journaling challenge, Jackie suggested the following ideas.

• Three goals to plan our day at the beginning of the day;
• Three things that went well / three big things that happened / a sentence or paragraph about the day to assess the day at the end of the day;
• Write out the breakdown of a dream goal;
• Write out select / notable experiences from the day like a diary, reflect on their meaning, lessons, importance, and why;
• Same thing as above but from our memories;
• Collect quotes and inspirations;
• Create a book reading journal to accumulate insights and track progress;
• And three things we are grateful for about our day to shift perspectives and moods.

Notwithstanding these suggestions, Jackie did acknowledge there were no right or wrong way to journal as it was always personal.

3. What have I learned about journaling products / technologies today?

Continue to look into other journaling products / technologies today.

Featured journaling system today: Implementation systems for the popular book, Atomic Habit, by author James Clear. This is a follow-up 21-day project after reviewing the Clear Habit Journal system on Day 35. It will end on Day 56.

> Featured ideas from the book > Chapter 3 on the process of habits

• In Chapter 1 and 2, we went through the importance of small changes / atomic habits, in terms of the surprising results they can produce and their impact on our identity and fulfilment in life.
• In Chapter 3, it’s about what habits are, how they work, and therefore what it takes to change them.
• What habits are? Habits are automated sets of behaviours to common problems in our environment. And automation enables the freeing of brain resources to attend to other decisions in the moment.
• How they work? Any habit / repeated behaviour is a closed feedback loop, or the habit loop, with 4 parts, a cue, craving, response, and reward.
• How to change old behaviour and create new ones? By facilitating or disrupting the flow of the each of the 4 components in the habit loop. For any new desirable behaviour, make it 1) Obvious, 2) Attractive, 3) Easy, and 4) Satisfying. For any old undesirable behaviour, the opposite.
• The remainder of the book dedicates a section of chapters to each of these 4 ideas, which collectively are the principles of ANY behaviour change.
• I am surprised and the author does acknowledge of the bold claim in the ANY. However, what is perhaps more important to get here is this works for MOST.

> Featured lessons from Habit Academy the video course > Module 2 on the process of habit change

• While the book describes the change process in terms of making it Obvsious-Attractive-Easy-Satisfying, in the video it is differently phrased and organised into making it easily Activated, Achieveable, Appealing.
• I do appreciate the different perspectives and additional worksheets from the video content.

Screenshot by Author

> Using the Clear Habit Journal for my own habit change

• I continued to use the Clear Habit Journal today to do exercises from the video course today. To think through and plan out the how of making a habit change I want right now.
• After almost 40 days of journaling, I realise journals are simply places to clarify and organise our minds. And its power for behavioural change rests in making the intangible unclear and internal, tangible clear and external.
• Consistency and intelligent structure are key to its usefulness.

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