Thoughts on Journaling

I would like to blog more but when I sit down to write, I feel that maybe I’m just writing a journal entry and it’s not something that anyone else will find of value. I already do journaling of my own but my journals have changed over time.

Now I have a Thinking Journal and a Bullet-list Journal. I don’t really write a journal entry, I think by writing in my thinking journal. Then, every once in a while, I go through my thinking journal and I take what important lessons I’ve learnt and save them as a bullet point in my bullet-list journal. Sometimes I also extract little pieces that are philosophical in nature and save them in my philosophy notes to develop further. The rest I delete.

I can then go through my bullet-list journal from time to time and remember all the important lessons I’ve learnt and decisions I’ve made. But there are no journal entries tracking my journey.

So I’ve decided to give in and write posts here that are kind of like journal entries. These posts will begin with PJ# for Personal Journal. I’ll not email these posts to my subs but they’ll be there on the blog if someone does find them valuable, and when I feel like taking a look back at my thinking from a while back.

Personal Journal 1

So, in this first personal journal, I want to talk about the new project phase I’m starting. It started with trying to figure out how to manage my time and how to develop a natural routine.

I realized that I need to think in terms of projects. Pick one thing; a philosophy essay, a new song, a series of illustrations; and do only that for a short period of time. Have something finished at the end of the project, even if it’s mediocre.

I tried doing this but it didn’t quite work. Then I realized that I could do something slightly different. I can assign the next few months to a series of projects. It’s like a project phase. It has one or two main projects and a bunch of smaller goals and it lasts for a fixed time which is long enough to do something meaningful but short enough so that it doesn’t feel like a big commitment to pursue a particular direction in life.

So, I’m starting the first project phase from tomorrow. It lasts 5 months or 150 days till 5th January 2027. It was originally going to last till the end of the year but 145 days are so close to 150 that my OCD got triggered and I extended it to nice round number.

I have two main areas of focus in this phase:

1. Fitness
2. Philosophy

I had started getting quite fit by running 5k three times a week but I got knee problems and since then fitness has kind of declined. I want to make it a priority for these 5 months. That means, I workout consistently and regularly without fail. The main task of each day is to get that day’s workout in. And I’d also like to improve my diet as well.

The other main focus is philosophy and especially learning philosophy through the course material I’ve downloaded for IGNOU’s bachelor’s and master’s courses. I’m aiming to finish the bachelor’s material but if it goes well, I’ll try to finish as much as I can.

It’s not that I’m trying to do a bachelor’s degree in 5 months. I just go through the course material to understand how philosophy has developed over time and what ideas have been developed over time. I’m just trying to get a detailed picture of the landscape and perhaps a reading list of books that interest me.

There are some other smaller goals that I’d like to achieve during this time:

• I want to experience what it feels like to completely stop consuming all visual content. So that means no YouTube, no shows, no movies, no sports.
• I want to read more fiction and listen to more music instead.
• I also want to make it a habit to draw daily and play my guitar daily. If I can do a proper study session, that’s good, otherwise, just do something for fun.
• And I want to blog more often and hence these new personal journal stype entries.

The theory behind this decision is that 5 months is small enough to not feel like I’m committing too much to philosophy and not enough to other interests, but still long enough to make a big enough dent in both main areas. I hope to be able to see clear gains in both fitness and my understanding of philosophy by 5th January. Of course, I’ll record how this project phase is going here on the blog as well.

---

Cover Photo by Gia Oris on Unsplash