Scott H Young

The common idea of a journal is a slightly more masculine diary. A book where that stores what you did each day, and how you felt about it. While this method of journaling is fine, it completely ignores the real benefit of keeping a journal. That benefit is being able to solve tricky problems.

I first heard about the idea of keeping a problem-solving journal from Steve Pavlina, when he wrote about his system in this article. That was a few years ago, and I’ve amassed hundreds of pages in word documents since then.

Journaling to Solve Problems

If you were trying to solve a difficult math equation, which would you do?

1. Move to an area free of distractions and focus on the problem.
2. Sit in the middle of a crowd of people, turn on a television and hop on one foot, while trying to determine the answer.

I’m sure most people would agree that the first situation would enhance your thinking. It’s hard to solve a problem when you’re in a noisy environment. When you can completely focus on a problem you will get better answers.

Journaling enhances your thinking because it eliminates the mental noise. Few people would sit in a noisy room to do serious thinking. But if your mind is cluttered and disorganized, how can you expect to arrive at the best answers for tough problems?

Writing as a Concentration Booster

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. Instead of having a jumbled collection of ideas, you are forced to put down your ideas in a sequence. This added step makes it far easier to think through any big challenges you might be facing.

Writing out your ideas into a journal also gives your brain a “save” function. Normally, your short-term memory can store roughly 5-9 items at a time. That isn’t a lot of RAM for solving tough problems. Career choices, deciding to stay or leave a relationship or planning a big project may have dozens of factors you need to consider.

When I write out my ideas in a journal, I can quickly type the main points into a short list and then expand on each point individually. By writing out the ideas, I save my precious short-term memory and can think without clutter.

What kind of problems can you solve through journaling?

I use journaling as a way to solve bigger “life” challenges. Usually this isn’t fixing a crisis, but simply reorganizing my thinking on an issue. A few recent problems I’ve solved through my journal are:

• Creating an action plan for my summer. I have almost complete freedom with my time this summer. Journaling helped me think about what my ideal schedule, mix of activities and projects I’d like to take on. Without the several pages of writing I devoted to this problem, I probably would have wasted the next four months.
• Reviewing my strategy for this website. Coming up with a complete direction and strategy for this website isn’t something I do haphazardly. By thinking it through in text, I can avoid settling into bad habits.
• Keeping my finances healthy. By deconstructing my spending I can get a better picture of where I need to limit spending and places where I should stop being so cheap.

Many of the articles I’ve written for this website have been a direct by-product of writing in my journal. Solutions I’ve come up with for a particular problem I’m facing turn out to be general enough to write an article about. In fact, you could probably consider this entire blog to be a more formal version of a journal.

Journaling Techniques

If you’re new to journaling, you’ll probably start off as I did. Staring at a blank screen, rambling about your day without reaching any specific conclusions. It takes practice to start writing your ideas on paper instead of keeping them inside your head.

There are a few techniques I’ve learned that can speed up the problem solving process. Most of these methods only work when you have a source to write on, which is why using a journal beats inner dialog.

1. Split a problem into components. If you have a big, vague problem like “what should I do with my life”, I suggest starting by breaking it into different sections. Break the problem into parts: “where should I live?”, “what career should I have?”, “what am I passionate about?”, etc. If you keep applying this breakdown method, you can usually hit a root level where the problems are easier to solve.
2. Enumerate and expand. Write a list, then expand on each point. This method helps when you have dozens of ideas that you don’t want to forget. By writing out the list first, you can save those ideas so you can easily get back to them.
3. Place and sort. If you have trouble organizing your thinking, try placing all of your ideas on paper first. Don’t worry if they don’t have any order, or even if they make complete sentences. Then go through this pile and sort them into better groupings. This can be useful when a problem is large in scope and you aren’t sure where to start.

These methods are just a few of the thinking-enhancing powers of keeping a journal. If you don’t already keep one, start a word document and keep it in a place that is easy to find. You don’t need to compel yourself to write constantly, just when you have a tough problem. It’s amazing how much easier it is to think when you aren’t limited by your brain.

I write a lot about productivity. While I like to tackle other subjects, how to get things done is a main one. After two years of writing here, I’ve noticed that there seems to be two different types of people who become interested in productivity.

The first category is for people who are trying to survive. They have way to much to do, and too little time to do it all. These people are looking for answers for how to motivate themselves, combat procrastination and cut out more time for relaxation and fun.

The other group fits the people who are trying to do more. They have so many interesting projects they want to work on, that it’s a struggle to fit everything in. Productivity interests these people because it allows them to do more of the work they enjoy.

While both of these groups may become interested in productivity, I’ve noticed completely different results.

Survivors Versus Achievers

I’ll admit this is a broad generalization. I’m sure most people get involved in productivity, Getting Things Done and reading websites like this for a mix of reasons. You might have interesting projects, but you might also have boring work you want to streamline.

The point I’m trying to make is that when you approach productivity from the perspective of a survivor, you get different results. Unfortunately, most of the resources on productivity assume that these two perspectives are the same.

The Downside of Just Trying to Survive

If your only motivation is cutting back, you aren’t going to become incredibly productive. You might make headway in becoming more organized and reducing procrastination. But I think it is unlikely that you’ll reach the same level of effectiveness as someone driven by achievement. A survivor motivation can only get you halfway.

The reason for this is simple. When reducing stress is your goal, you’ll stop improving as soon as the stress is gone. Once you become somewhat more productive, your level of control will go up and you’ll stop. The effort needed to go from 75% to 95% isn’t worth the time you save.

This is why I feel books like The 4-Hour Workweek are somewhat ironic. Clearly, someone who only wants to work four hours a week is coming from a survivor perspective. They are stressed with their current, 48-hour workweek and dream of living a life that pays the bills at less than an hour a day.

Unfortunately, these are exactly the kind of people who couldn’t implement all the productivity measures that the author, Tim Ferriss, suggests. If they managed to cut back to 35 hours, there stress would go down considerably and they would stop. The pressure to be productive would be gone.

This isn’t an attack on an otherwise great book, just an observation.

Motivation from Achievement

If you look at productivity from another perspective, this situation changes. If your goal for productivity is to do more of the work you enjoy, you will be able to reap the full benefits. The time and energy you save from being productive will pour back into the projects you’re interested in. As a result there is no stopping point when reaching a certain level of productivity is “good enough.”

While I don’t rigidly adhere to all of this today, I have at different points in time:

• Stopped watching television
• Switched to a vegetarian diet to get more energy
• Started my day 5:30 am each morning
• Added daily exercise
• Cut back my internet/email usage to less than 30 minutes a day

All with the goal of trying to be more productive. I still follow most of these things today for the same reasons.

Taking on these actions seems extreme if your goal is simply to get work finished so you can relax. Why would you bother giving up television, something you enjoy, for productivity? Isn’t that backwards?

But it makes more sense if you approach productivity from the other perspective. If your goal is to add more interesting projects to your life (or just focus more on the ones you already have), these actions make sense. Productivity isn’t a way of eliminating work. It’s a way of getting more out of the work you have.

What’s Your Reason to Be Productive?

If your only goal for productivity is to eliminate work, that’s fine. I come from a different perspective, but it doesn’t make your motivation wrong. But it’s important to keep your motivations in mind when you look at productivity advice. Working four hours a week is probably unattainable if your drive comes from reducing work to only four hours.

What was your reason for becoming interested in productivity?