Today, I started and finished "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon which I received as a Christmas present. In it, Kleon advocates keeping a daily log.
This has also been mentioned by my good friend Patrick Rhone:
My daily log is where I record the things I actually did and note important things that were/are not on my calendar.
It's easy to remember the bad things that happen each day, what upsets us, what we can moan about; instead, Kleon quotes the novelist Nicholson Baker:
If you ask yourself "What's the best thing that happened today?" it actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about.
It's positive framing, a way to focus on the good stuff which, for someone like me who is inclined to dwell on the negative, can only be a good thing:
- What did I do?
- What did I enjoy?
- What did I see?
- What did I hear?
- What made me happy?
- What did I make?
- What ideas did I have?
I got a Moleskine Product Red notebook for Christmas a couple of years ago which has lain unused ever since; I now have a use for it - starting today. One of the front matter pages in the Moleskine says the following:
Every morning when we wake,
we have an entire day ahead of us.A day to think,
act, create and do.A lot can be achieved
in one day.
The trick is remembering it all!