"To Search for Truth you must first have lost it."
Waldo Salt - American film maker.
1. What is a Personal Journal ?
A journal is a notebook (or electronic file) in which an individual writes for reasons that are personal. This process helps the writer extend his or her own mental processes. By writing and reading and thinking and by doing practical things you grow not only in tasks accomplished, but also in the capacity to conceive of new tasks worthy of additional effort. The process is not dependent on the wisdom or knowledge of any other person. Writing a journal is a method of "deschooling" yourself, to use Ivan Illich's term. The journal should be used in my view as a tool to help you integrate yourself with real world events. Give your journal a wide focus, and use it to develop your own mental outreach.
To be deschooled is to free yourself from the opinions of experts and to learn to trust your own experience and knowledge. The journal you write will be your own, quite unlike my journal, or any other. Many people lack mentors in their lives, a mentor is someone older, wiser and more experienced who might help you avoid pitfalls, and give you connections into a wider world. A journal can be a mentor substitute. The journal should be used to gather the wisdom and knowledge of other people so you can make better progress. If you are an innovator, a scientist, an inventor, if you are any type of creative person, the process of journal writing can be your tool to discover what is important and "real."
Pages 72 and 73 in my journal written in 2008. Note the dozens of tags on pages as I've tried to mark pages with significant ideas for a project I was working on at the time. Re-reading and re-processing the material in the journal is an important value that is possible only because the original record was written.
For the businessman, researcher or scientist, "the search" is a for a new understanding of what are mostly "old facts." These facts are revealed in a new way by some idea or method or instrument discovered by working on our projects. Over and over we hear stories from scientists who point to errors in their thinking that prevented them from making quicker progress. Facts alone don't provide us with solutions, it's in being able to consider a group of facts and to understand how they relate to each other, that we are able to build improved concepts.
The form your journal will take doesn't need a conscious decision. If you begin to write, preferably in an exercise book so the format is relatively unstructured, you will soon be writing something you find interesting and useful.
The most common method of writing a journal is to record "today's events." This form of journal writing has never interested me. In history, the accurate recording of day to day life has been very valuable as a counter to the headlines which tend to carry the propaganda of the elite and misrepresent life as most people live it. It's also been important in the form of bench notes or observation notes, when used by people as diversely separated as scientists and actors. Your daily diary, if that's what you'd like to write, can certainly be a useful tool. Except for brief periods I've not written in that way.
It is difficult to create out of "nothing" and each day one's own life experience adds very little that is "new". If you are going to write every day, what you imagine, what you plan to do, what you hope for, must become a good part of what you write about. Most of us feel what we are doing is of little importance, and that we can remember it easily. In fact our memories are very faulty, and written records are our protection against our own mis-remembered data.
In my own case if I've got nothing to write about I don't write. I might read a book, or go running, or dancing, or work on my web sites. Keeping a diary is the most common form of journal, the WWW is full of advice about how to write every day. Other people can tell you about that, it's never been an objective of mine.
2. Why Write A Personal Journal?
Only individuals can think of innovative ideas. Even in a group situation, ideas come from individuals, not from the team although a team can be helpful in refining and developing an idea. One of the hardest things to do, is to transfer a NEW idea to other people. That is why each of us MUST be responsible for our own "idea development," it's too important a task to be entrusted to other people.
Good ideas cannot be purchased by the tonne, or even by the gram, at any price. Bad ideas, the ideas other people don't want, on the other hand are easily purchased and are freely offered. The good ideas you seldom hear about. Don't give you ability to think to someone else. Among the 1000 good ideas you'll have in a lifetime, there is one idea that will make your fortune and your reputation. Your journal will give your the best possible chance of recognising your opportunity when it comes. Opportunity is the prize that goes to the prepared person, and your journal work is your preparation.
This was a special purpose business journal I started in 2004. On pages 8 and 9, the topic is sharing ideas and networking. All tags, the highlights, and the two lines of text written in red, were added during working with the material in later years.
When I think back on my journal and how I keep it and use it I see that the reason for the practice has changed over time. My journal has given me self assurance. Faced with difficulty I can always find some directions by doing some research in my journal. You can judge for yourself. I've put quite a lot of my writing into this web site. I think I've developed a fresh and progressive viewpoint. A community changes one person at a time, person by person, one on one. When you begin your journal that's one more person clearly starting a journey that has the potential to change your life. How that potential develops depends entirely on you.
3. The Goals of a Business Journal Writer
A journal doesn't need a purpose or a goal so much as a driving force that comes from the need of the writer. In many cases this is just the desire to collect the evidence and solve the mystery. In some cases this will be a search for truth. Your work or your life can provide a surfeit of clues, and part of the task is to decide what clues are evidence and what is irrelevant.
When you are ready, you usually discover what you need to know. The process of getting ready is hard work. When you "already know the answer," you can only get on with the task. But in the face of repeated failure, you will begin to doubt what you know. Then you may be ready to discover what you need to do better. There's no shortcut. The path to knowledge runs through the wilderness not through a cultivated garden.
Suggested Specific Objectives
1. To improve your self knowledge.
2. To increase your knowledge in any field of study.
3. To keep a record of your experimental work.
4. As a planing book. For menus, house plans, business plans.
5. As a history of some special project in your life.
People who are trying to achieve things in the real world are faced every day with the discipline of reality. Your journal can help you cope with that reality. You must find a way for your own life to develop in harmony with what is possible. In today's rapidly changing world your own data is your protection against being trapped without options. You may not "know what to do" but you will have new directions to explore. You will have the opportunity to become an expert in your own area.
The Benefits of Journal Writing
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