I was feeling pretty demotivated and down when I wrote yesterday’s post. Seeing that I wrote it at 3am, and that the post started with “I couldn’t sleep”, you might have figured that out.
Writing always calms me down. After getting it off my chest, I felt good enough to go to sleep. (I was quite wired and buzzed before that, with caffeine, stress and adrenaline).
When I woke up today, I was still feeling demotivated. I spent the first hour of my day editing yesterday’s post. Over breakfast, I finished reading Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And then I summarised the last two books I had read in my Bullet Journal. Positioning was one of them, finished minutes ago. The other was Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Both great books packed with insights and good advice. I learned a lot while reading them. During the journaling I scanned through both books again. I wrote short notes on everything I thought was interesting.
I read that many people take handwritten notes not to refer to them later, but to remember them better. That’s exactly what I do. I have been taking notes forever that I never refer to, starting from preparing for high school exams. But the act of writing them down by hand leaves strong impressions in my memory. Also I write them in my own shortform sentences. It doesn’t always make sense but it’s okay because nobody reads them, least of all me. Before I can write anything down, I have to understand the concept in my mind. I do a lot of my learning this way.
After all that, I went out for a work-related errand. Bought a coffee on the way back. By the time I was ready to start doing “real work”, it was already sunset.
But doing all the writing and journaling put me at ease. I had calmed down. Stopped feeling so out of control. I was ready to put in some serious work.
We had an early dinner. Then I spent the next five hours in a productive marathon work session. I stopped for several minutes-long breaks play-breaks with my daughters.
My early posts talked about which habits I chose to incorporate and why. I never got around to Habit 3, which was to post four blog posts a month on this website. The objective of the habit was to get me writing on a consistent schedule.
And the above story illustrates the power of writing for me.