In a previous post I wrote about the importance of journaling to help us be more aware of our behaviours, our surroundings, and lessons learned. I do journal once a week, writing around 300 words per session — this is the time where I go deeper in the rabbit whole, describing various details of past week’s events, taking note of the status of my goals, and also use it to plan my week after.

But besides this weekly session I also try to have a short daily session as well: Every day I try to write a few notes — lets say 3 to 10 bullet points — about my day, which takes me less than 5 minutes to do.

Because if we improve the different areas of our lives just a tiny 1% every day, over time those small gains will add up to remarkable improvement.

This routine is nothing original. Many interesting figures of our society, as Benjamin Franklin, Marcus Aurelius, Charles Darwin and George Lucas, used to make some kind of daily reflection. For example, Benjamin Franklin tracked 13 virtues and asked himself “What good shall I do this day?” on a daily basis.

From reading some examples I stole bits here and there, and created my own framework:

3 Questions

The framework has 3 questions for me to answer, which are:

“What and how I could have done better?”

This is where I put more effort. This is where I think about the things that I haven’t done as well as I think I should be doing. This is where I hope to get some kind of 1% improvement every day, and thus help me grow the most.

Notice that the question is “What and how I could have done better?”; not “What I did wrong?” or “Where did I fail?”. This is very important because of two aspects:

I don’t want to just list what went badly — I want to also think of how I can do differently so that it doesn’t happen again. Some things may not be a failure in the real sense, but there’s always room for progress in everything in our lives. I want to focus on this constant improvement.

“What I did well?”

We often hear that failing often is the best way to learn, which is true. But that’s in part due to us not taking notice of what we’re doing right when things are going well — we don’t reflect enough about them as we do when we fail. That’s why I have the “What I did well?” question in my framework.

“What am I grateful for?”

Finally, even though I’m usually an optimist, I think it’s positive to remember ourselves to appreciate the small things in life. This question is stolen directly from Tim Ferriss’ own daily 5 minute journal. These can range from taking note of how lucky you are for having such mother and dad, to appreciating how great the sun is today. I believe it’s important for us to not forget the good things of being alive.