Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

Journaling for me is an essential tool for emotional regulation and self-knowledge. This wasn't always the case because I learned in school to write for someone else. If I'm not writing for someone else then who am I writing for? I'm writing for my future self, but who is that? My future self is determined by the thoughts and experiences I am having now, so if I can understand through writing where I am now in the world then I can make better decisions about where I am going. In effect, writing is a way of programming myself. If I am to be captain of my own ship then I need to keep a log to better learn from past experiences. I've found writing is the best way to collaborate with other parts of myself as Huxley says

If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.

- Lao Tzu

It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down

- Philip Glass

I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do

- Gertrude Stein

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only it's noisiest passenger

- Aldous Huxley

Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition

- Robert Henri

Memory is the major element in cognition, in everything that we call the humanities. If you cannot remember, then you can't think and you can't imagine, and you can't write, and you can hardly read

- Harold Bloom

The characters in my novel are my own possibilities that were not realized

- Milan Kundera

>If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place. > - Lao Tzu

FYI, I hate to be that guy, but I don't believe that's a Laozi quote. It doesn't really sound like anything in the Dao De Jing, and google seems to link it to a English translation of a supposed oral tradition of the Huahujing, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual pieces of the Huahujing we've found.

I think the historically correct quote is:

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

To question the premise of the quote as well, an approach that I've found to be helpful to address procrastination/negative moods is to start with action if I can, rather than trying to motivate myself or change my thoughts.

Psychiatrist David Burns summarized this [1]: "Most procrastinators think that motivation comes first, followed by productive action, but this is an illusion, because you’ll probably NEVER feel motivated to do some awful task you’ve been putting off. If you’re waiting for motivation, you’ll be waiting forever! [...] highly productive people know that ACTION comes first, followed by motivation. In other words, you have to get started on some task before you’ll feel motivated."

A more liberal and charitable interpretation of the quote could be to classify starting with action as a way to correct the mind, though I figured it could be helpful to provide a less thoughts-centred approach to living a better life.

[1] https://feelinggood.com/2018/02/12/075-the-second-simple-way...

This aligns with prof. pychyl's "motivation follows action" and "just get started" https://www.procrastination.ca/

An interesting corollary is that passion does not precede action. Action (and seeing positive results) leads to passion.

I used to verify all my quotes but it's really not clear in many cases because there's a lot of misattribution. I resign myself to thinking it's the thought that counts. Otherwise I'd be all day fact checking.

I can't find it on quote investigator so someone probably made it up. I have experience that it is true and that's what counts for me

https://quoteinvestigator.com

The emotional regulation part looks promising to me. How does that kind of journaling look like to help with that?

not op but, I consider the journaling I do to be complementary to the mediation i do. mediation trains the regulation and journaling gives the vocabulary and memory for the present experience

In the qorst situations of my life.when I felt alone, devastated, forgotten, hurt I always started to write a letter to someone, either my partner, the person who hurt me, a good friend, whatever. Where I nwed ro explain the whole mess I am in, why I feel the way I feel, what got me to that point how I imagine it will go from here, what I actually want — this kind of stuff.

I never sent one of those letters. The writing alone made me feel so much better or gave me a resolve to act that the letter would have been outdated by the point I sent it.

President Truman did this, as well. Apparently, some of them were absolutely scathing and full of language that he never would utter in public.

I've taken a course in Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) so part of my writing is to practice it

Many different ways to go about it. I preferred the short-form, almost structured tweeting to myself (how do I feel and what's happening) that I built in an app called iFeelio[0] (now defunct).

However, some prefer longform, written or typed, different apps and such.

What I found helped me was trying to focus more on how I was feeling and less on what was happening, as I think it's easy for me to rationalize and become more and more distant from how I'm feeling. Darn, now I want to revamp the app.

[0]: www.ifeelio.com

How do you deal with the privacy implications of noting your deepest thoughts, insecurities, actions, desires, etc. in a presumably single place?

Keep it offline or realize that probably nobody cares about reading your journal anyways

It's not perfect but encryption should keep most people honest assuming you practice good opsec.

I had that concern when I first started journalling, and invented a secret script (neography). I stuck to it a week or two before I realised nobody really even cares about most of the stuff I write about, so why make the effort. Mind you, I'm young and don't live with a partner, so I don't have to worry about them finding my journal.

A partner who is an ethical person typically would respect boundaries, and avoid snooping (e.g. reading journals and going through unattended laptops/phones). However, as a failsafe (e.g. the person has a lapse in judgement, they're drunk, or is typically great to be with but struggles with snooping), just don't commit anything offensive or relationship-ending to long-term storage.

For example, if you're having doubts about a relationship or feel concern about a sensitive subject to the other person, you can write your thoughts to work it out on a separate piece of paper to securely dispose of after, or (similar to a suggestion elsewhere in the comments) a text file that isn't saved or gets deleted after.

Some may argue for great openness about thoughts in a relationship, but I think it's often useful to work things out on your own to clarify your thoughts and position, before a crucial discussion.

Does writing on paper work better than typing into a text file?

I like writing on paper much more than typing after years of being mostly paperless, though experiences may vary depending on personal preferences.

The main benefits include the flexibility to easily draw and write formulae if thinking about a technical topic, the ability to recall what you write easier than what you type, and enjoyment of the feeling of writing on paper. The feeling is actually really nice, and I believe it even inspired essays by Japanese authors about the feeling. The Guardian interviewed some researchers about the differences at: https://theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/16/cognitive-benefi...

The main drawback is the ability to search, though I personally rarely look back at past entries (the main benefit is during the act of writing). When brainstorming about something work-related, though, I do scan the related pages with my phone. Digital handwriting (e.g. Surface or iPad) with an app that does hand recognition is an alternative, though the feeling of writing with a good pen on quality paper is much nicer than a stylus on the display (even with screen protectors that simulate paper).

If you’d like to try, you can get an excellent setup for less than $50. You can get a nice pen (Pentel Energel, Zebra Sarasa, or Uniball Signo) and notebook (Rhodia, Midori, or Leuchtturm1917) and try it out for a few weeks. r/pens and r/notebooks talk about the differences, and also suggest other alternatives for writing tools.

In my journaling I realized the process of writing was valuable, but I rarely referred back to anything. So for personal / stream of consciousness things I either write on paper and put it in the shred pile, or to something like an ephemeral vim buffer.

For when I'm feeling very self conscious I have a script that turns off echoing to the terminal and streams everything I write to the clipboard (in case I decide I want to review/save after all)

Same. I've never read back any of my entries. I don't see the value in it

I've written my own program that loads and saves my files with encrypted zip files. C# and .Net make this a breeze to implement. I use a long password so even if someone gets the file it will be hard to crack. I don't encrypt that many files, but sometimes I need the option.

Put it in a unmarked box with a basic lock, assuming nobody has the trifecta of knowledge, skills and motive to uncover.

To double down on obscuring the knowledge that the journal exists, if a person hasn't yet started a journal, a very good habit is just not to tell anyone you have one.

If anyone occasionally happens to see you writing in a journal and asks about it (though preferably it's best to save writing for private moments), you can just describe it as note-taking or brainstorming. If one considers these lies by omission, a more direct way would be a description of "personal notes." Then, the notes sound far less interesting for most people to look into.

Often you reveal more to your friends and coworkers when you don't journal it out.

Thank you for those! They are fantastic!

Thanks. Part of my journaling is collecting quotes I come across if they are particularly thought provoking or mysterious. I forgot one of the best. I know it's the best because Eastern and Western thought both start here:

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom

- Aristotle

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