I just published the latest journaling template update.

This update includes:

• A more concrete “Stats” section near the top, giving additional examples of health & productivity statistics tracking in plain text
• Optional Activities like art and collage journaling, to help get those feelings out
• A simple, plain-text scheduling template
• Minor wording changes here and there

The template does pull in my personal calendar and some other outside sources automatically, so there are references to that in the file.

Using this template lately has also helped me design a couple new keyboard shortcuts:

• Typing “wk (Tab)” will insert my weekly goals, stances, etc. This has been really, really helpful for tracking and staying on top of big-picture items.
• Typing “ak (Tab)” will insert my current work projects.
• Typing “intt (Tab)” will insert a short list my interests, randomly selected from a larger list. This shortcut gets a lot of credit for keeping my days fun and interesting lately, as opposed to dull and wearying. The full list of interests is up over 600 now, so there’s always something in there that calls to me. In other words, it’s like a catalog of my own life-giving archetypes. Chances are, some of them are ready to give more life, if that makes sense. (Yes please, more life please.)

I also have some other changes planned:

• I want to spend more time drawing out a variety of inner voices, the aspects of the inner world that can help bring more variety, flavor, and creativity to the outer life. So I have started to outline new keyboard shortcuts / scripts that will force some of that flavor into the journaling template (probably more on this later). A lot of this work focuses on narrative-generation.
• I would like to integrate even more sensory freshness and feeling. I’m thinking about things like doodling cues and music-creation cues.

As always:

I continue to use this template myself, and find that it has become one of my most useful tools for near-instant stress relief. Over time, this habit also tends to build a pool of documentation which can be used for knowledge capture.

Filed in: Productivity /119/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Interests /111/ | Technology /41/