23-02-18

“We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.”    Seneca

Dear Little P,

This one will be a little less intense, but it is something that I have found extremely helpful in my day to day life.

As I’m sure you will have noticed, if you’re reading this at an older age, I have an extremely busy mind. I work hard focusing it into good endeavors and if I wasn’t me, then projects like this or The Pride Active would never have been started but sometimes I can’t quite tell if it’s a gift or a curse. Meditation is something that I have found extremely helpful in filtering the noise in my head, but I probably don’t work hard enough on instilling the everyday habit. Never the less, it is what it is, and I try to use it for good.

One of the tough parts of a busy mind is the constant noise that seems to buzz around in my head, some good, some bad, and some completely irrelevant to anything. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks; as well as reading books and articles regularly and trying to absorb lots of little nuggets of wisdom during the day is nearly impossible for me. One of the coolest things about taking in an authors perspective is being able to immediately reflect on how you can use that situation or philosophy in your own life. I love this experience and I regularly have little epiphany’s during the day but will have lost them by night. Some stick but certainly not as many as I’d like. I hate the times that an idea would float back into my head weeks later and I’d realise that I have missed an opportunity.

I tried the notes app on my phone for a while but nearly always found myself quickly distracted by notifications or messages while I was on it. I could blame the technology but sometimes I’m just not disciplined enough and that is a whole other subject. I even tried the voice recorder on my phone as I had the headphones in regularly but that didn’t stick either. These ideas have plenty of merit and either one may work for you, I just couldn’t do it consistently. Now this next part might have seemed like the logical step but sometimes I don’t see things until they are pointed out.

I found myself reading an article by Ryan Holiday (Author of some of my, and hopefully your, favourite books: Ego is the Enemy, The Obstacle is the Way and The Daily Stoic) about his love and use of his ‘commonplace’ book. It’s kind of like a journal but for anything and everything and he describes how so many greats of history used one every day. As I was reading, I instantly knew that this was exact what I needed, the thought of physically writing everything down excited me.

There’s something different about writing your thoughts down on paper, in your own handwriting, rather than digitally that makes it seem more special, at least to me anyway.

I went and bought a cheap little journal and decided to try my hand (pun intended) at this form of thought entry.

M first entry was in July 2017 and it was the beginning of a post I was writing for The Pride Active. I’ll share that post here in the future (Memento Mori (Remember that you must die) as it will fit with this project more than the former. Since that first entry I now use this book nearly every day, for any little thing that I think I need to remember. Things like quotes, page references, podcast notes, workout ideas, to do lists, weekend plans, article ideas, life thoughts and even recipes. I no longer have to struggle to remember all of the information, if it’s a podcast for example, I just stop what I’m doing for a few moments and jot down some thoughts on what I’m hearing and how I can relate that to my own life. It has even increased my concentration at work because rather than trying to hold on to an idea and only half thinking about what I’m doing, I just take those few moments to write it down then I can go straight back to what I was doing with 100% commitment.

From there, I open it up every night and transfer any of the info from the day that I need to over to my laptop. I have sections for quotes, ideas, ‘leaving a lighthouse’ entries and everything else you can imagine that I add to everyday. It also helps me to complete or research something that was on my mind during the day but couldn’t act on it at the time.  These were the exact kinds of things that would escape me previously, thoughts that would be lost and ideas wasted. Now, also being able to remember and reflect on my thoughts, philosophy, lessons, areas for improvement, different ways to look at the world and interact with its inhabitants, I can find ways to grow as a person much quicker than before.

It’s not a dear diary exactly, but more of a physical extension of m thoughts. As a matter of fact, I am writing the basis for this entry to you in it right now, while you peacefully sleep in your car seat. You fell asleep while we dropped mum off to work so I figured I’d park the car up with a creek view and do some writing while I had some rare quiet time.

All in all, it seems like a pretty simple practice and I can certainly say that since I began, my productivity and growth has increased substantially. I couldn’t recommend it enough and I hope that one day you are writing a similar letter to your children in your own version of a ‘commonplace’ book.

Love Dad