I encountered a section in in Jim Rohn’s The Power of Ambition entitled “Write About It”. I thought it was going to be about blogging or journaling, but it was so much more. I should have realized, since the section is part of the chapter on “Self-Reliance.”
It has been occurring to me more and more frequently that my particular brain is not designed for holding trivia (just ask any of the folks who get stuck with me at pub trivia) or miscellaneous bits of experience or contact information (what was your name again?). But many of these bits are important, especially (though selfishly) the ones about my experiences and progress.
Some of the tools I’ve been using to record the “trivia” of my life:
Mem.ai - a terrific note-taking and creating a “second brain”. I’ve used it mostly for work-related information, but thanks to some great advice from Srini Rao have started using it for collecting knowledge.
BestSelfCo’s Self Journal - I prefer the original (“OG”) format. I prefer the paper planner to a digital one, but use it in conjunction with Google Calendar because I have yet to figure out how to get the journal to jump off my desk and smack me in the face when it’s time for that meeting.
Diarium - A journaling app with trackers, which I use for things like “sauna time”, “blood pressure”, and tags to mark days spent working out and people with whom I’ve interacted. Available on all the platforms.
Readwise - I use this to save highlights from the books I’m reading. I’ve connected it to my Kindle and it automatically keeps track of my highlights. For book books, one of my morning routine tasks is to capture highlights from my previous day’s reading. I use the Readwise Android app to capture a picture of the highlighted text and convert that into an entry in Readwise. The image above was generated from Readwise.
So I’ve captured all of the trivia in my life (or at least I have the tools available to do so). What I haven’t yet mastered is the back-end of that work: consistently reviewing what I’ve captured in order to gain improvement insights.
Fortunately, recognizing this hasn’t tempered my consistency with “writing about it”. Maybe someday it will be put to use.
Steven Kotler describes how his new book, Gnar Country, came about. Maybe this is the ultimate destiny of the “trivia” we write about…
Early on, I started keeping a performance journal — a record of what worked, what didn't, and why. Ten months into the experiment, I was having a conversation with my closest friend and longtime editor, Michael Wharton. I’d learned a new ski trick. Michael had a few questions about my process. I couldn’t remember the exact details, but I told Michael about the performance journal. We dug it out to find those details.
Michael read that entry, then a few more entries, than a few more. “This should be a book,” he said afterward.
No one was more surprised than me. As far as I knew, I was having a very private conversation with myself. Michael pointed out that my conversation was also a blow-by-blow account of what it looks like when an ordinary person uses the tools of peak performance to tackle an extraordinary challenge. In other words, as Michael said, “It’s a written record of how the magic trick gets done.”
I don’t pretend to have any magic tricks up my sleeve, but maybe, like Kotler, I’m not seeing them yet. Best to keep on “writing about it”, just in case.