Journaling is your superpower.

By now if you've ever tried to google "How to be more productive" or "How to become successful" you might have come across "1% a day makes you 37 times better a year" which means that if you progress even 1% every day then you'll be 37 times better by the end of the year than you were a year before.

"What? 37 times better in a year? Well, I'm gonna start from today", you might think. And you might get through one, two, three days or maybe a week of being extremely productive with your work, passion project, playing guitar or whatever you are trying to achieve, but in a week or so, you'll be sitting on your couch, giving yourself a treat because you were highly productive for a week. That one day of treating yourself will turn into months of treating yourself and you won't even realise. You might again watch some video or a blog related to productivity and start the cycle over again. Don't feel bad if you relate to this because that's what majority of people do. 1% rule might've not worked for you till now but now it will.

How to progress 1% every day?

Let's explore the superpower that most of us never tap into but is easiest to exercise. Journaling. Start journaling every day.

"I've way too cluttered thoughts". "I don't know what to write". I've heard them all and they're all very genuine concerns that every person who has ever started to write daily journals has. I'm going to discuss very simple steps which will help you tap into 70% of this superpower.

How to journal?

Divide your every day journals in two parts: planning and reviewing. Planning is something that you'll do in the morning and reviewing will be done by the end of the day.

Planning

Write three or four tasks that you plan to accomplish during the day. Tasks should be in their simplest form. For example,

• Create authentication APIs for my app.
• Create login page for my app.
• Learn Japanese.

Try to be as direct as possible while writing the task. Don't let the tasks be less than three and more than five. As you keep completing the task during the day, actively mark them done.

Reviewing

By the end of the day, preferrably before going to bed, review your whole day. Review what all tasks that you planned to do were accomplished by the end of the day and congratulate yourself for them but for the tasks that you were unable to accomplish, condemn yourself while writing journal but don't be hard on yourself and write down the reason that prevented you from completing that task. Reason could be anything external or  internal like your laziness or procrastination.

If you've anything important planned for the next day which you might forget, mention it while reviewing as it'll help you in case you forget it the next day.

Conclusion

Now, you don't have to think what you're gonna do next day, week or year. You just have to keep in mind that you have to write journal every day. So start journaling today in our FREE journaling app.

"Hey! What about the rest 30% of the superpower?" Well, this was a simple introduction to journaling which covers most important aspects of it but the rest 30% is more nuanced and not only it'll help you with your productivity but also with your relationships, philosophy, emotional and mental well being, and other deeper aspects of life. That is coming soon. Stay tuned.

[Discussion Post] Journaling is your superpower. from r/StoicHuman

That's it for this blog post and if you feel that you've something to add to this or you have a different perspective then share it and discuss it on r/StoicHuman or go to the Reddit discussion post for this blog post linked down below.

Stay healthy, Stay safe!

Follow our weekly podcast on Spotify called "Stoic Human Podcast". Also available on other platforms like Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Overcast, and more. Just search "Stoic Human Podcast".