As I’ve said several times, my journal is important to me. I think of it as an intellectual toolkit that helps me think thins through. I’m not always good about keeping it up, but I know I should.

I ran across this article about journal writing and decided that while I apply it’s basic points differently, they still are meaningful even in my context.

My journal is an important part of my work and a lasting record of my thoughts. I’ll draw in the book, do mind maps, diagrams, notes, snippets of code, design patterns, use cases, UML diagrams, or whatever. I’ll also take notes there when interviewing and notes when I’m studying a problem I’m trying to solve. I have journals that go back as far as the early 1960s. There are plenty of gaps, but I always come back to using a journal because it’s so useful to me.

• Get the Right Tools - Working in a journal needs to be about what you’re thinking and not the tools. You need tools you’ll be comfortable with. I don’t use top-of-the-line quality, but I work on good paper and with writing instruments that feel good in my hand. Currently, I’m using notebooks I picked up at an Office Max with pretty good quality paper. I splurged some years back and purchased a leather cover for my journals that the notebooks fit in nicely.
  

  Along with it, I purchased a leather pen holder which can hold 6 pens. In it, I keep a Black, Blue, Red, and Green pen (currently Pilot G2) and my pen & pencil set. I do my initial work in Black and use Blue, Red, & Green to annotate and add to the basic entry.

• Make it a Habit - I spend time writing in my journal daily. As a minimum, I try to capture major events during the day. There are days where I’m so involved in something that I completely forget the time and everything else. I’ve slipped into a Flow state and am oblivious to everything. When that happens, I’ll probably not get a journal entry that day because I usually don’t snap out until someone gets ready to turn out the lights and say it’s time for bed. I realize I’m so tired that I just can’t think and off I go. I may have a bunch of notes in my journal or my popup wiki, but they’re associated with whatever I’m working on and nothing else. I DO try to make it a habit though and put an item daily on my task list for the journal.
• Fire Your Inner Critic - Once you start putting things in, turn off your inner critic for a while. Let yourself go and just start dumping. Go free form whether you’re using a mindmap, doing a freewriting exercise, or whatever. Sometimes the best, most creative stuff comes out when the inner critic is off. There’s a time for being critical, certainly before anyone sees what you’re doing. But the journal is private and just for you. What you put there is yours alone, so open up and get it down.
• Use your Journal for Mental Food - the article actually said ‘article food’, but I use it for food for all of my mental & intellectual pursuits. It’s my notebook when I’m learning something. It’s my dumping ground when I’m trying to test what I know. It’s my source for what I’m doing whether I’m writing my blog, a program, or a proposal. My journal is my source, my playground, and the place where I keep everything I want to think about. When I’m on my laptop working like this, it’s inconvenient to write in my paper journal, so I use a popup wiki that I can add thoughts to easily to capture what I want to remember.

Journal writing on a regular basis gives you fodder for all the things you do. Right now, I’m working on a Ruby/Rails project, reviewing some material and testing things. I’m doing rough notes and diagrams in my journal, getting things out of my head. When I see my rough notes on paper, I find I can think about them better and my journal never forgets.

I’d extend the list a bit too

• Keep it or something to write on with you all the time - I always have some way to take notes with me. Even when I’m driving, I have a small portable recorder near by because sometimes I get good ideas when I can’t stop and can’t take my eyes off the road. So I speak it into my recorder. At night and whenever my journal can’t be near, I have a ‘Shirt Pocket Briefcase‘ always at hand with a small pen or pencil. I have two, one which I carry with me and another which has a pen loop on it that stays by my bed.
  

  I have specially printed cards that I keep in them which include the normal stuff on a business card. I can write a note and hand it to someone or keep it for myself. Later, I can transfer the notes to my journal and throw away the 3X5 cards.

Categories: The Basics, Tools
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Learning is a big topic and one that a lot of disagreement still exists over. Unfortunately, but the time there is general agreement, we’ll already be dead, so to get practical about it, we need to use what we know now as effectively as we can.

I wrote a piece called ‘Learning to Learn‘ that I’ve made available for download. I plan to extend this to talk about Online Learning, but this is a good place to start.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications, Skills
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SECOND - Mindmapping - Mindmapping continues to be a major tool in my arsenal when it comes to initial work on topics or problems. I worked with several tools in the course of this project and don’t see a way to get rid of any of them.

My Journal - Mindmapping in my journal is essential to me as i start making sense of something. I can get high level information together, find links between different pieces of information, and develop my understanding.

As I read or study a piece of material, I mind map it in my journal. I normally use a two-page layout for major mind maps with lots of information and one-page for high level overviews. I also use my journal for mind dumps to get out what I know when I’m starting to read.

Mind Mapping Software - I find that there is a definite advantage at some point of shifting to software to work with the information. The point in this project where it started to make sense was just before I started writing. As I was gathering information and sorting out my sense of the situation, I used my journal to mind map informally, but as I got near to needing to put the information into a meaningful linear format, I used mindmapping software to 1) dump everything I could remember about the specific piece I was working on. I did this for each lesson. 2) I reviewed my mind dump and determined where I had holes. I indicated this by putting questions into the mind map which I wanted to answer. 3) I found answers within my research material for the questions I had on the mind map. 4) I did additional research as necessary to answer the remaining questions. Finally 5) I organized the mind map into an outline to order my thoughts for linear presentation. In some cases I would have liked to use a non-linear presentation, but the format required linear presentation for the material. It would also have taken time I was not given to translate the course into a non-linear format.

One piece of software I used extensively in this process was the freeware FreeMind. For example, this is part of a dump I did on NVIS propagation in the final stages of writing a new lesson:

I find this is a very good way to get all the information out and organized so I can get ready for the actual writing.

Categories: General Thoughts, Practical Applications, Tools
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As I finish up a major project updating some online training material, it’s time to reflect on the tools I’ve used and what they brought to the effort.

FIRST - Scrivener - This was my first major project where I used Scrivener to support the project from beginning to end. I played with it and used it for portions of other things, but this time I started with it to start the project and finished with it as well. So on reflection, was it useful or not?

I have to say that Scrivener was of major use to me during the project. I setup my research in different folders, identified and drafted the lesson units, and brought everything together easily. It’s ability to open two document windows allowed me to see what I was writing at the same time as I had a piece of research available online.

During the writing, I reorganized several times, shifting research materials and building new categories as folders in which I placed other folders. My biggest problem was keeping my references straight. If I kept the full web page as I needed to, I had to download the page first to edit and get rid of extraneous stuff in the page. If I let Scrivener bring the page it, it brought the whole page including embedded ads and such, but it kept the reference to the page straight. Eventually, I developed the habit of recording reference information as part of every research document, but it took some time to sink into my head.

… More later

Categories: General Thoughts, Practical Applications, Tools
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I was recently reading the book ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Clear Thinking’ looking for information on learning:

In the process of reading it, I ran across the following “Rules for Making Your Case in Written Form”:

• “Remember that you’re not speaking face-to-face”
• “In e-mails and memos, make sure your subject line accurately conveys what will follow”
• “Avoid mixing personal with professional written communications”
• “Keep private matters separate from public ones”
• “In the e-mail world, observe netiquette”
• “Take the high road”

All of these are very good things to keep in mind, but to me the first is the most important. Remember, you’d NOT speaking face-to-face. Body language, facial expressions, and voice inflections aren’t present in your writing. Different authorities quote different numbers, but most of any communication happens through one of these modes. When ALL you have is the content, you’re handicapping yourself.

Even worse is that you’re not there to explain or answer questions when someone reads what you’ve written. Whatever you’ve written has to stand on its own. Once it leaves your computer or typewriter or notepad, whatever you’ve written takes on a life of its own. People who read it will bring their own experience and knowledge to interpreting what you’ve written, so you must be sure that you’re really saying what you MEAN in the clearest possible terms.

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I mentioned in an earlier post that I was trying these applications to see how helpful they are. I have to admit, I’ve become dependent on them. I work on them daily and they’ve become my standard places to work on things.

Scrivener

Scrivener has become the place that I go to build the stuff I write. The more I learn about it, the better it’s become as a tool for me. I use it to manage writing projects by:

• collecting my research on the topic
• organizing my drafts as I work through them
• roughing what’s being written
• managing my references

I’ve modified my workflow now so that I usually work on something like this

FIRST - I start sketching out ideas in my Journal using mind maps, drawings, or any other way of feeling out the topic
SECOND - As soon as I’m ready to start looking ANYWHERE, online or off, I open a Scrivener project for the topic and start collecting information
THIRD - As I collect my material, I’ll start drafting parts of my piece, reorganizing as needed to find something that makes sense
FOURTH - When I have what I think of as a FINAL draft ready in Scrivener, I’ll export it to WORD and polish it. Most places I need to deliver things to want WORD format, so that becomes my final stop.

Scrivener is available from the Literature & Latte web site for $39.95.

MarsEdit

MarsEdit has become the way I manage my blogs. I find it very easy to use and more than capable enough to handle what I need to do. At least, I haven’t been limited by it except in handling comments. MarsEdit is only available at the MarsEdit web site for $29.95.

I’ve also experimented with Windows based editing tools for blogs inluding Blogdesk, BlogJet, and Windows Live. I know Microsoft’s entry gets a lot of good press, but I think I prefer Blogdesk at the moment.

Categories: General Thoughts, Tools
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One of the things that turns off a lot of technical people about journaling is that nearly everything you can find about it focuses on topics that most techies just aren’t interested in, at least not in the soft way they’re treated. A lot of what’s written about journaling is introspective, examining your life or other people’s lives. More like a young girl’s diary than a journal.

If you go into a store to buy a journal and look at what they offer, you’ll see covers with flowers, and jewelry, and all sorts of other things associated with femininity and not with technology. I have yet to find a notebook offered as a journal with pictures of computers on the cover. :o)

That being said, a journal doesn’t have to be about self-exploration or keeping a record of life-events. I’m afraid that I learned to keep a journal more in the spirit of the stereotypical 19th century gentleman scientist. It’s a place to record notes, observations, sketches, or whatever associated with what I’m working on. As Steve Pavlina discusses in his recent post Journaling as a Problem-Solving Tool, it’s also a great place to think about problem solving. This alone makes it an ideal tool for making your ideas clear.

I learned journaling by keeping lab notebooks in college. I expanded to using notebooks for all my courses and eventually for all of my learning as well.

Using a notebook for problem solving was best expressed in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“When you’ve hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, “Okay, Nature, that’s the end of the nice guy,” and you crank up the formal scientific method.

“For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get. In scientific work and electronics technology this is necessary because otherwise the problems get so complex you get lost in them and confused and forget what you know and what you don’t know and have to give up. In cycle maintenance things are not that involved, but when confusion starts it’s a good idea to hold it down by making everything formal and exact. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.”

Categories: Practical Applications, The process
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There are so many ways of keeping a journal, that any guidance given won’t make sense to someone. The blog Inspired to Journal talks about a number of tools people use to write their journals. All I can do is talk about what I use and ways I’ve tried.

Let’s start with my tools.

• Notebook - I use notebooks approximately 6″ X 9″ in size. I prefer lined pages with clean white paper. I buy the notebooks in a variety of places, often under the title ‘Composition Notebook’.
• Pens - I usually use a black pen to write or draw in the notebook. I usually use whatever is at hand when I want to write, but I particularly like the Pilot G2 pen to write & draw with. I keep a set of Black, Blue, Red, and Green pens handy. I use Black the most, closely followed by Blue, then Red and Green.
• Notebook Cover - I purchased a leather cover for my notebook which makes it look good when I’m in high level meetings. Since I move from the front-line to the board room at times, making my notebook look good is important.
• Large White Sticky Labels - I keep a set of large white labels to paste on the front of the journal. On this label, I put my name and the dates covered within this volume of the journal.

There are lots of other ways to keep a journal, some of which I’ve tried and some I haven’t. Any way that makes sense to you is worth using. For example, I’ve tried:

• Keeping my journal in my dayplanner - I found this to be a problem, mixing things. Eventually, I decide that my dayplanner is for scheduling and short notes, the journal is for more extensive writing, researching, and so forth.
• Keeping my journal on the computer - General applications - I’ve tried using Notepad, Word, and other general applications for keeping a journal. It just didn’t work for me. I’ve got too much I want to put into my journal and sometimes, my computer just isn’t available.
• Keeping my journal on the computer - Journaling applications - I’ve tried several journaling applications. Unfortunately, these didn’t work for me because they weren’t available when I wanted to make entries. Further, I couldn’t make all the kinds of entries I wanted to. The application I liked the best was LifeJournal which introduced me to a number of very interesting journaling techniques, but it did require me to be at the computer to use them.
  
  
• Keeping my journal on the computer - Special notebooks - I tried keeping a journal using OneNote & Outlook on Windows and NoteBook & Entourage on Macintosh. All of them were good, OneNote and NoteBook especially came close when using them from my laptop. Unfortunately, I lost many of the files when moving to a new computer and no longer had OneNote available.
  
  
  
  
  

  I love both of these applications. I did A LOT with OneNote, but when I moved to a Mac laptop, it was no longer available. Since it had come preinstalled on my Windows Laptop, I couldn’t transfer it to another Windows workstation, so I lost it. On the Mac, NoteBook has turned out to be an exceptional application, but not for Journaling. I’ll talk about it some time.

Over time, I’ve developed my tool set to support the following needs:

1. I like to have the notebook with me all the time and add thoughts to it anywhere.
2. I like to record quick notes about what’s going on during the day that I want to remember
3. I like to draw freehand at times and the notebook keeps these scribblings together
4. I often use colored pens and highlighters to draw attention to things. I found shifting colors and highlighting awkward on the computer. In my dayplanner, the colors distracted from the purpose of the dayplanner which is to keep me focused on what needs to be done today or this week.
5. I have a strong negative reaction personally to people who use laptops in meetings. Too often you find them with their head buried in their laptop instead of participating in the meeting. One fellow I used to work for would be chatting with people through the Internet while in meetings. I resolved to never do that myself.

Categories: The Basics
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Over the last several days I’ve done a number of things with my journal that have led me to say something about how important a journal can be to your writing and speaking … in fact to everything that you do. I’m going to use the next several posts to discuss my journal and how important it is to me and the many ways I use it.

My journal is a notebook, roughly the same size as the composition books you may have used in school. I stick to a size around 6 X 9 inches. Some years ago, I purchased a leather cover in that size to make it more acceptable in high-level meetings. I keep the journal in ink and use multiple color pens.

Some of the things that I do in my journal include:

• Writing letters that will never be sent - in order to help me decide how to vote, I wrote a letter to John McCain which will never be sent. In it I expressed my thoughts, frustrations, and the issues as I saw them. it helped me to decide on my vote. I’ve done the same thing in the past with letters to bosses and others to get all my ideas out and review them before I actually try to communicate. If I don’t take the time to do this, it’s easy for me to literally trip over my words and miscommunicate what I really mean.
• Organizing Impressions - I’ve been working on a case study about HP Printers. I took a 2 page spread in my journal and started mind mapping everything I knew and then started filling in holes that I found in the mind map by researching additional material
• Mapping Concepts - when you are writing or speaking, you need to be very clear on the concepts you’re using, not just for yourself but for your audience. Mapping the concepts and their definitions in my journal helps me to be clear and communicate well
• Meeting Notes - When I’m in a meeting, I normally take notes in my journal. This gives me a record, taken during the meeting and carefully preserved in my journal, that I can go back to to make sure I’ve got things right. The 6 X 9 inch page size gives me enough space to record what’s important.
• Organizing Notes - After a meeting, I’ll take a different color pen and add to the meeting notes as I gather information on important points. I’ll use a highlighter to mark commitments made during the meeting.
• Planning Projects - One of my first steps in organizing a project is to create a list of what needs to be done. I do that in a mind map in my journal.
• Laying out Lesson Plans - I’m working on course notes for an online course. I’ve mapped the important points in my journal as the basis for additional research
• Blog Post Notes - The start of this post is a mind map that started with the central idea ‘Keeping a Journal’. Several other blog posts are in various stages of development in my journal as well.
• Notes on Books I’m Reading - One of the most powerful ways I know to learn is to take notes on the material, ask yourself questions to answer during your reading, and relate the material to things you already know. I’m doing this now on a technical book I’m working through right now.

Seems like a lot doesn’t it? It does, but each of these are taken from pages in my journal starting on the 1st of November, just a few days ago. Some of these pages were written in the middle of the night when I woke up and couldn’t sleep without dumping something out of my mind. Others were written while reading or in meetings. I find that I need to get ideas out on paper when they come to me, so my journal is always with me for just that purpose.

Over the next several posts, I plan to discuss my journal, the mechanics of how I make it work for me, and why I think a journal is an important tool for making your ideas clear. Tentatively I plan to split the discussion as follows:

• Journal Mechanics - how I make my journal work for me
• Journal Tools - notebooks, pens, and other tools I find useful in journaling
• Alternate Journal Formats - keeping it on your computer, online, in your day planner, or in other ways that are convenient for you
• The Journal Process - my journaling is integrated into a daily process I’ve tried to make into a habit so it happens automatically
• Practical Journaling - ways to use a journal
• Thoughts on Journaling - other thoughts about journaling and its benefits

Categories: Practical Applications, The Basics, Tools
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