131. Start Journaling Now!

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
All right, Blake, Courtney, are you ready for your closeups?

Blake Stratton:
Wow. It’s so weird to see you guys. Normally it’s just all audio, here we are.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. This has been a long time in the making, I got to say. Two years?

Blake Stratton:
It really has.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
I mean more than two years, yeah. This is wild, this is wild. We have viewers apparently now, not just listeners.

Verbs Boyer:
Wow. That’s a shift.

Blake Stratton:
Now, people if you’re listening and you’re not viewing, then I can’t fault you there, just based on my own, I’m not good at doing my own makeup yet, but if you are viewing, then I don’t know what to do with my hands.

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, what are we calling this? Is this the video eyes version of Focus on This, the video version, the visual.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I don’t know that we have a name. I mean, what do you [inaudible 00:00:58] then it’s like, the-

Verbs Boyer:
Now you see a name, because she didn’t.

Courtney Baker:
… the video podcast, we are real fancy there, we’re real creative.

Blake Stratton:
Wow. That is, yeah.

Courtney Baker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
The video cast.

Blake Stratton:
It’s inspiring.

Verbs Boyer:
The vid cast.

Courtney Baker:
Oh, but it is really exciting. I think, if I remember back, I will always have memories for the rest of my life, at the beginning of the pandemic recording this podcast in my closet, I think that will be lasting. And at that time we were like, “We should be doing video, you all see all this crazy clothes behind me.” So now we actually do have the podcast on video, so hopefully you all enjoy it. Now y’all get to see all the crazy things that you didn’t see just on audio. All of a sudden, I’m thinking, is this really a good decision on our part?

Verbs Boyer:
So today we are talking about journaling, the importance of it, the benefits of journaling, of just the whole process of getting your innermost thoughts down onto paper, to help you be more productive through your weeks, your months and your year. Blake, we’ve talked about this before on the show and you are an avid journaler. You take time, you schedule time out just to get your thoughts on paper. How did you get into the groove of making that a habit of yours?

Blake Stratton:
Because otherwise, things don’t work out so well. When you have all these feelings, verb, and they’re just like this, I’ll do this for video, this will be great for the YouTube. This is what the feelings are like on the inside. And I just start compressing, compressing, compressing, then all of a sudden, someone turns in front of me in traffic and I say words that I don’t want to say and I go, “Uh-huh (affirmative), maybe I should work on these emotions before we get on the highway.” So I kid, but only a little bit.

Blake Stratton:
I think I’ve always been into journaling just to understand what’s happening, I need to journal in short. So I started journaling simply to better understand myself and my experience of this thing we call, life. As crazy as this blue marbles just shooting through space, I’m just journaling about it to try to wrap my arms around it and understand it all.

Courtney Baker:
Wow, okay. I will just say on the flip side of that, I feel like I’m on the other extreme of that, sometimes people are like, “Well, how are you feeling about that?” Or something, and I’ll be like, “Wait, hold on.” Almost had taken it back. I was like, “Whoa, wait, feelings, hold on, I don’t even know. Give me five and let me see if I can access them.” And so it’s like, I think from whichever perspective you’re coming at this from, it can be a really beneficial practice.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. That way you don’t have to, Courtney, every time someone asks you, “Hey, how are you feeling?” You don’t have to go, “Hold on, let me watch Simon Birch and try to generate some tears and figure out where my heart’s at.”

Verbs Boyer:
So regardless of if you’re listening, regardless of which end of that spectrum you’re on, today, we’re going to talk through four reasons you should journal to live with more intent and more purpose. Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy, happy, happy, Monday.

Courtney Baker:
I love that in this moment, now that we’re on video, it’s like Blake has all of a sudden amped up antics to attend.

Blake Stratton:
No, this is what I always I’m like. You guys are crazy.

Verbs Boyer:
It’s all for cameras.

Courtney Baker:
And then I have gone the other extreme, which is like a deer and headlights, it’s just staring ahead like, “I’m not moving, I can’t, I can’t.”

Nick Jaworski:
Well, stay focused,

Courtney Baker:
Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
We’re talking about journaling today. Why it matters, why we should do it more or why anyone should do it. So we have a couple of reasons that we want to share with the audience today. Blake, help us out as our resident avid journaler and Courtney as our resistant journaler. No, I’m not going to say that, because I’m an in that category too.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, help us out with reason number one.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. We’ve got some great reasons here. Let’s start with, journaling helps us observe our lives. Journaling helps us observe our lives. So this is to contrast, we’re going through our life. We’re experiencing things, we’re feeling things, we’re doing things and this is something we talk about a lot in our company at Full Focus, is we want to live and work by design, we don’t want to drift to destinations.

Blake Stratton:
So the beginning of designing the destination or designing the path of your life that you want, you can’t really do that until you know what’s happening, until you know where you’re at currently. If you’re trying to get directions somewhere, you can’t just know where you want to go, you also have to know where you are. So journaling as a practice is a way to understand what’s happening. What’s going on in my world right now. Does that make sense?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I think this is really helpful. I feel like for those of you that are Full Focus planner users, and Verbs I’ll be curious if this is where you fall, I feel like I use the weekly preview to serve this purpose in a lot of ways, but I know in seasons, the three of us, we actually did this journaling challenge a couple years ago. And I’ve definitely felt like when I spend the time even part of my weekly preview, helps me observe what we’re doing and why I’m doing it, but to have the space to actually just write it out and spend the time free flowing ideas. I could definitely see how that really aids in that and boost the potential of that.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. I’m definitely with you on that Courtney. And I think, I don’t want to misspeak on this, but I feel like we’re not modifying, but expanding the classic version of journaling like it’s not necessarily let me go to Barnes & Noble, buy 200 pages of blank paper and then just pour my thoughts out. But it’s like what journaling looks to accomplish, the end goal of that is figuring out what best suits you, as far as how you think, the way you process and then implement that practice.

Verbs Boyer:
For some people it could be the Full Focus planner in that weekly preview, I tend to do that myself. Some people it may be the blank journal. Some people need prompts, some sort of book where they can just write things out. So I think it’s important that we just define that at the onset is… Don’t just think about it in the classic sense of, I got a journal, I do this every day, but one of the ways that you get these thoughts and process on paper, so you can observe your life properly.

Courtney Baker:
Well, it’s interesting because in the journaling that I’ve done, when you talk about going to Barnes & Noble, I end up just writing facts about things that are happening, which is not really the purpose of journaling. And so even in that, I was like, “I have to have those prompts to actually help me process my thinking.” Otherwise, I get into just like, “Who, what, when, how,” which is not really, it is in a sense observing our lives, but it doesn’t help you with the next set of reasons that we have.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. But it’s true, it could be-

Blake Stratton:
I want to, I slow you down there Courtney, because I actually think that’s more helpful than you might realize.

Verbs Boyer:
Yes.

Courtney Baker:
Interesting, okay.

Blake Stratton:
Just writing down what happened has been, now I’m pulling this out of a hat here, because I don’t have the Harvard business review article with the statistics in front of me, but in a similar way to… There’s different kinds of meditation and sometimes, oh, I really want to meditate on something that’s going to help me be more grateful or something like that. \.

Blake Stratton:
One of the most basic meditations, whether it’s a religious practice or a scientific practice or anything, is just to basically just think about your breath. To just be, they call it mindfulness meditation. And the outcome of that is simply to slow down, to observe and as an outcome of doing that, you feel more present in your life and in your situation. If that’s the only outcome you ever got from journaling, it’s still worth it.

Blake Stratton:
I think it’s really hard to stop there to just, hey, as part of your weekly review, weekly preview, you look back the last seven days, you just looked at all the things you did, because that’s all you did in your journal time was just, “Oh, I just write down what happened.” Especially for someone like you, that’s such a creative and critical thinker. It’ll be impossible for you to not get more benefits, but I think just the act of slowing down for five minutes and writing that down, at least for me, makes me feel more peaceful, even if it’s just 5%. So don’t close show.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. That’s fussing, I love that.

Verbs Boyer:
And I was going to say, I mean, even just the processing of whatever those facts are, if it’s the who, what, when and why, that’s helpful in itself as far as… That may be how, I probably tend to think the same way you do Courtney, as far as processing is, “Hey, what’s happening.” But as I identify those facts, one I’m reminded of those facts and then how I felt about those factual moments that helps me process going forward.

Blake Stratton:
Okay. Let’s shift to reason number two. This reason top journal is that journaling helps us clarify our thinking. Journaling helps us clarify our thinking. So this is extremely helpful, because if you’re like me, you don’t know what you’re really thinking until you write it out or until you talk it out. Some people are more verbal processors.

Blake Stratton:
And in fact, I’ll say this, this is something I did, I don’t know, maybe over the weekend or, or sometime last week, I wanted to get something out, but I didn’t feel like… I really felt like I had to talk it out. And so I pulled up the voice memo app on my phone and I just started talking it out verbal processing to my phone. But as I was processing, I was learning something, which sounds weird. Usually you think, “Oh, I know and therefore I talk or I know and therefore I write,” it’s not always the case. A lot of times it’s, I write and therefore I know, or I talk and therefore I know.

Blake Stratton:
So this is like next level learning. We don’t just learn by consuming, we learn by then trying to articulate what we’ve consumed and put it into our own voice and into our own words. So it’s really powerful to process stuff you’re learning. It’s also powerful just to process those events, those things that are happening in your life. So clarity is, Ooh, clarity. it’s like a warm, cozy blanket, “Oh, thank you, clarity, I feel so much safer now that I have clarity. So have you guys, do you guys, I know even if you’re resistant to it, do you ever feel like you get that clarity when you’re in a meeting, in your processing or you’re writing something down?

Courtney Baker:
This happened yesterday for me. There’s this been this problem that I’m stuck on and it’s one of those, I keep saying it’s like, “I’m trying to do puzzle here and I’m not sure what the pieces are.” It’s kind of one of those. It’s not just a puzzle, I don’t even know the pieces of it and I realized that I was trying to figure it out all in my head.

Courtney Baker:
And I recorded a video to some of the directors on my team and it enforced me to get clarity on trying to figure out those problems and in the midst of doing that video, got not all the clarity, but more clarity than I had before. And I think that is a really… Because I definitely would consider myself a verbal processor, but of like being able to do that, a whole different avenue of that, of using journaling to help do that.

Courtney Baker:
I always think with journaling, we have so many preconceived ideas about it, that it’s like, “It has to be at the end of the day and this is just a long forum we got to sit down and have…” In a lot of ways, I think I still think like a diary, it’s hold over from our youth, when it’s like, no, this can be something that we use at all different points, anytime we’re feeling stuck with something of like, “Okay, take a few minutes, write about it and it’ll help you get clarity.”

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. I think this whole idea of just getting it out of our head and getting it in front of us on paper is valuable just in general, but I’ve heard it said, I can’t remember who said this quote, “But clarity is the new creativity.” So as we talk about how do we design our life, well, we can really get clarity and we can get creative with where we want to go and how we get there just by having some practice of getting this stuff down on paper.

Verbs Boyer:
Over the weekend as well, I was trying to work something out in my head or actually the situation was I was trying to type something out on my phone, but then I kept going back to actual pencil and paper and then taking these little segments and trying to put those together in such a way to where I felt like it was clear and accomplished what I was trying to say.

Verbs Boyer:
And so I had a whole page of just scribbles and thoughts and lines, that eventually I transferred over into typing it out on my phone, but only after I worked it out on paper and that was super helpful for me in that moment, because I gained clarity and it helped me with the next step of where I was going, just getting it on paper.

Blake Stratton:
I’ll make use of journaling when the emotions are high, especially if they’re negative about something or I feel stuck, because what I’ve learned is every problem gets smaller the moment you write it down. Doesn’t matter what the problem is and it’s not that it solves the problem, but every problem gets smaller to some extent, the moment that you put it into words and write it down.

Blake Stratton:
There’s something about going from a place of victimhood of, “This is all in my head and I’m just thinking or I’m stressed.” To, when you write it down, even if it’s just 5% or 10%, you definitely take back ownership of your life a little bit. It’s a powerful step I think, to putting a problem into a perspective that becomes more manageable. So, that’s a big reason to use journaling to clarify your thinking.

Verbs Boyer:
So reason number three, journaling helps us record significant lessons. And I think we see this anytime we hop on a webinar or part of a conference somewhere where there’s some level of information, education or teaching that’s going out, that we want to record what we would call those tweetable moments, little things that we’re learning that we find are significant and actually writing down, so they’ll stay with us. But I love what it says here, it says, “Life is a classroom, bootcamp, a training environment and we’re constantly exposed to opportunities to learn.” And I think this journaling is just one of the top ways we capture those, so we can refer to them later and we could reference them going forward.

Courtney Baker:
I think this is really… I mean, even in your example, its really important of like, even if we take notes somewhere to distill those down again at a later point, via journaling, like the ability to retain that information and interpret it. In one sense, taking notes usually is more like, “I’m just trying to take down what is being communicated.” Where journaling is actually like the process of interpreting those for yourself and bringing clarity to that learning. And I think that’s really what is helpful here on just like the education, the growth side of things, not to mention just the life lessons that we’re learning constantly throughout the day. I may be learning more of those with parenting two small children right now, the normal, but I think that definitely rings true for me and the experiences I’ve had.

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely. You mentioned the weekly preview earlier Courtney, but that’s a great ritual to incorporate some journaling about this, because as we’ve told our clients, life is talking to you and it’s giving you those opportunities to learn. And a way that I’ve thought about it is, I don’t want experiences, I get to decide what account those go to, if they’re just a waste, just like throwing money away or if I’m investing them.

Blake Stratton:
And journaling to record your lessons is like making an investment in your wisdom account. And the cool thing about a wisdom account is that, it always is appreciating and you can’t really, when you make a withdrawal from it, it doesn’t go away, it’s literally just always appreciating.

Blake Stratton:
One of my favorite traditions is when my birthday rolls around, I like to just go back through all of my journaling from the last year, just going through and I’m just noticing trends and trying to, I guess, concisely trim down, I guess, “Oh wow. I talked a lot about this. I was thinking a lot about this. What’s the lesson there?” And I guess, it’s my nerdy birthday tradition. That’s how I like to party. That’s how I like to really throw down on my birthday is, I get out of a journal, I just start writing down.

Blake Stratton:
And then I love to do just share my most favorite ones, because it feels like one of the greatest contributions, whether it was a good year or a bad year, a great, I can always make investments in the wisdom account and it’s really, really satisfying. It brings meaning to even the worst of experiences, whether you feel like you’re failing, winning or losing, when you play to learn versus playing to win or lose, then it’s easier to keep going, easier to stay inspired, yeah. That’s probably one of my favorite things about journaling, it feels like I’m becoming wealthier, the more that I journal,

Courtney Baker:
Me and Verbs, what are we doing? We got to get all this journaling, asap, let’s go.

Verbs Boyer:
I know, I know.

Blake Stratton:
Let’s do our last reason. Reason number four to journal. If you weren’t already convinced that you need to get back in the habit, the fourth reason we have for you is journaling helps us make decisions. Journaling helps us make decisions. You all have made some decisions before, yeah.

Courtney Baker:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Blake Stratton:
Oh man, this is closely tied to that second reason. I think of journaling clarifying your thinking. The most basic journaling, everyone listening, has probably done some version of this. As we draw a little T on the piece of paper, right on the left we’ve got our pros, on the right we have our cons and we’re trying [crosstalk 00:22:13] to just list out. What’s that?

Verbs Boyer:
So you can just Google those now, any matrix you want to know the pros and cons, they’re right there. Before you post that thing on Amazon [crosstalk 00:22:23] you have to create your pros and cons.

Courtney Baker:
You don’t even have to create your own.

Blake Stratton:
Now journaling is one of the most efficient things you could do. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t have time to journal.” It’s like, “Okay, do you have time to feel like crap and keep repeating your mistakes, Mister?” “Listen, I got aggressive there, I threw down.” But this one, making decisions is like, “Can you make a faster decision without journaling?” Yeah, but if it’s not the right decision, or you could have made a better decision.

Verbs Boyer:
But all right. Let me last this, I’m just playing the voice of dissent now.

Blake Stratton:
Do it.

Verbs Boyer:
So if that was the goal, processing to make a decision, can I not accomplish that the same with talking out with somebody and get immediate feedback from what I’m trying to process to help me make that decision?

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely.

Verbs Boyer:
But I get the same results though.

Blake Stratton:
I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.

Verbs Boyer:
Okay.

Blake Stratton:
Even when you’re in a meeting, what I’ve noticed being in many meetings, the momentum of a meeting tends to favor the loudest voices in the room. The loudest voices, aren’t always the most beneficial or truthful or correct, they just happened to be the most confident, loud people that are external processors, right?

Blake Stratton:
And so sometimes, let’s say you were having a meeting and be like, “Hey, before you come to this meeting, I want everyone to journal out the pros and cons of the decision we’re trying to come to together, right?” That meeting would actually probably be more productive, because people wouldn’t just be following the momentum or the flow of, “Hey, well, the boss made a pretty bold statement here at the start of the meeting, so I probably should fall in line, because that person is in charge of me.” So that’s where things get a little tricky and I think still the process of journaling to make certain decisions.

Blake Stratton:
Now, that being said, I mean, I think of any major decision I’ve made with our family, absolutely, I want to talk it out with the members of my family, but I still think that it gives you an opportunity to come into the meeting or to come out of the meeting with greater clarity and more confidence of how you’re going to move forward, if you put pen to paper.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
So that’s another plus one for Blake.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
You never would’ve expected an episode about journaling to be [crosstalk 00:24:46] feisty as it as is. I’m going to write about this later. I’m going to be like, “Wow, what did I learn in that episode? Maybe I was too aggressive with them. You don’t to feel bad? That probably wasn’t good, I probably should have been more softer, even more gentle.”

Courtney Baker:
Mmmh, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Blake Stratton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Courtney Baker:
Let us know how that goes.

Blake Stratton:
Okay, I’ll let you guys in know the lessons that I learn.

Courtney Baker:
Thank you, that would be perfect.

Blake Stratton:
I like it.

Verbs Boyer:
So the good news is you no longer have to feel like you’re coasting from one thing to the next, with life just passing you by. You can live with a deeper fuller intention by journaling. This simple practice will help you observe your life, clarify your thinking, record significant lessons and make decisions. And we cannot disagree. Courtney?

Courtney Baker:
That’s right.

Verbs Boyer:
Blake has talked enough on this episode. I want to hear your final thoughts, please. This is where I look to give you a point.

Courtney Baker:
Well, I think, all the jokes aside. I totally see the benefits of journaling and I’m going to take on the challenge. So many times I feel like I’m the one on this podcast like, “Hey guys, you’re listening, try this out. Do it for two weeks.” And so I’m going to take my own medicine or I guess Blake’s medicine here, this week. And what I’m going to commit to you all, is during my weekly preview this week, that when I get through, the after action review, I feel like leads itself well into some journaling and that I’m going to journal.

Courtney Baker:
I’m going to pull out my full focused journal. I’m going to use those prompts, because you all know I need some prompts to help me through this and I’m going to journal. And then I’m just going to see how it goes from there. I mean, I think, if you’re listening and you fall into the camp with me and Verbs and maybe you have some limiting beliefs or some old beliefs about journaling, I think I’m going to start with just trying to do it as part of my weekly preview process and then examine that and see if I can add it in any other ways.

Courtney Baker:
But I think, Blake what was really powerful in what you shared today was, this can be a really powerful in different ways than the ways that I think I continue to perceive journaling. And so I think that that’s my takeaway from today. So if you’re listening and want to join me, with your weekly preview this week, when you get through that after action review, that’s your trigger, you can know like, “Hey, maybe this week I do, let me spend a few minutes journaling.” And for me, I’m going to be thinking of it as a task, because I’ve said I’m going to do it, which will probably help me get it done. Verbs, are you in?

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, you know what? After hearing you give good reason and posing a challenge for yourself, I think what I’ll do is wait to see how yours goes, but then secretly do it myself and join you on the challenge. What do you say, two weeks or one week?

Blake Stratton:
That’s awesome.

Courtney Baker:
I just said I’m going to do it this week.

Verbs Boyer:
Okay.

Courtney Baker:
And see how it goes, evaluate it.

Verbs Boyer:
All right.

Courtney Baker:
I’m going to make it part of my weekly preview process, because I think that is probably the best way for me to get it done right now. And this season of life it’ll ease in.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Courtney Baker:
All these toddlers guys, they’re not easy, okay? And so I think that’s the best way because I’ve already got that habit installed for me to add on to it. So for some of you may have different life situations. You’ve got some more time, I guess, or yeah, other constraints that you may be able to take on more, but for me right now, that’s what I’m going to start with and go from there.

Verbs Boyer:
All right. I’m down [crosstalk 00:28:43].

Blake Stratton:
I’m so proud, I’m so proud of you.

Verbs Boyer:
Let’s do it.

Blake Stratton:
Both of you. You’re going to get all up in your feelings.

Courtney Baker:
So weird.

Blake Stratton:
It’ll be great.

Courtney Baker:
So excited.

Verbs Boyer:
So thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends and don’t forget to join our full Focus community right there on Facebook. And we’ll be again next week, with another great episode, fully journaled, but until then Stay-

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
… focused.

Courtney Baker:
Stay focused.