Louis' Learnings 6 - The Benefits of Frequent Journaling
You Might Wanna Take Some Notes On This One
Greetings from Henderson, Nevada ☀️
I hope you are having a great start to your week!
This is the sixth edition of Louis’ Learnings, a weekly newsletter I use to share what I’m learning and to help cement my writing habit through social accountability!
Thanks so much for being here.
Last week I shared four ideas for deliberate improvement, things you can do to get better on purpose.
This email discusses the merits of journaling.
With 2021 just ten days out, I’ve started my annual planning and reflection and I couldn’t help but share a bit about my passion for journaling.
I’m hoping this email inspires you to consider trying the practice for yourself!
But First…
A Few Major Things From Last Week
Got my wisdom teeth yanked out
Invited three marketing interns to joining the podcast team
Did so many cold plunges (honk if you love Wim Hof)
Interviewed David Oakley for The Louis and Kyle Show
Recorded 5 Summit Interviews (Lauren Armes, Nicholas Bayerle, Bilal Zaidi, Chris Williamson, and Ellen Twomey)
It Always Starts With a Question
What self-improvement habit do I most recommend?
Without hesitation: daily journaling is my go-to answer.
Sadly, your email provider doesn’t give you enough cloud-storage for my full thoughts on the matter, so I trimmed this email to just cover the key points.
I define journaling as a solo-dialogue where you deliberately ask and answer questions.
What does that look like?
Deliberate Improvement - Part 2
Tony Robbins is credited with saying that the quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. I completely agree with Tony on this one.
Journaling with quality questions will uncover good ideas and expose areas for improvement.
Here’s an example:
With 2021 just around the corner, it makes sense to go through this series of questions to kick off the new year.
While this can be useful on any interval (quarterly, for example), my core argument is that journaling frequency makes all of the difference.
Frequent journaling magnifies your ability to capture the benefit of asking good questions by taking advantage of two of my favorite concepts: iteration and compound interest.
Hello, old friend
We met iteration last week through the example of two podcasters: one who makes 100 episodes in a year and one who spends the whole year on one ‘perfect’ episode.
This is how they did:
The iterator’s progress far outpaced the perfectionist. Through trial and error, the iterator continually improved their podcast, week after week.
Each episode exposed some area of improvement, and after 100 episodes, the iterator produced a wildly better product than the perfectionist.
We can model this same thinking to our journals.
Frequency Matters
If you go through my 3 questions on December 31st, you’ll probably have a really productive new years day—Congrats!
Then what? A few weeks into the year, you’d have integrated the new ideas as habits and begin to plateau.
If you went through my 3 questions every month, you’d have fantastic single digit days, but by the time the tens came around, you’d be standing still yet again.
You can probably see where this is going, but I thought a chart would help.
If you assume every journal entry reveals an opportunity to improve by 1%, the outcomes look like this:
Monthly journaling: 1.13x better at the end of the year. (1.01^12)
Weekly journaling: 1.68x better at the end of the year. (1.0^52)
Daily-ish journaling: 7.96x better at the end of the year. (1.01^(360*(4/7))
Daily journaling: 37.78x better at the end of the year. (1.01^360)
The chart is oversimplified, but the principle should be apparent: frequent journaling wins, and the disparity comes from compounding.
Integrating each new 1% improvement isn’t addition, it’s multiplication.
Each 1% improvement capitalizes on all of the accumulated preceding improvements, hence the compounding returns and exponential growth. Yet again, we are borrowing awesomeness.
At the end of the year, the daily journal looks like Shaq compared to the competition.
Just Get Started 🏀
I hope this illustration helps get the ball rolling for your journaling practice.
I encourage you to ask good questions, implement your answers, and repeat often!
Content I Published This Week
Leverage, Environment, and Books: I wrote a short article explaining three of the main lessons learned from running the podcast during the academic semester. If you are perceptive, you already know what they are.
LK Podcast #46 with Dee Murthy: Dee chats with us about how to build and maintain a network, launching big brands like Young and Reckless, becoming famous on purpose, connecting Nas to Ben Horowitz, and working with Kanye West.
3 Quick Content Recommendations
(1) Book 📚 : The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential
If you aren’t familiar with Wim Hof, you are in for a real treat. Wim is a world-record holder for a ridiculous array of cold-related challenges. His book is an extremely compelling sales pitch for trying his cold-exposure and breathing techniques. I binged it in 2-3 days.
(2) Podcast 🎧 : Gary Vaynerchuck on The Danny Miranda Podcast
Danny, who is joining Kyle and me for episode 50 of our podcast, released an interview with Gary Vaynerchuck! If you are a Gary V fan, this is worth the watch.
(3) Quote 🧠: Jack Canfield
“When the world says no, you say next”
I heard this in an Evan Carmichael video and was moved by it. It’s a concise mnemonic for dealing with rejection.
Photo of the week
I exercised the donation muscle this week & it feels good to have made physical space.
I find taking a picture of old things is enough to preserve the memory.
Snap a picture and declutter!
Closing Thoughts
Thank you for reading!
It’s a beautiful week to make some progress 🎉
Until next time,
Louis Shulman
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