Keep a scanner journal...

I have a big A4 spiral bound notebook, with purple cover, that I bought ages ago and – as ever! – never quite wanted to use. Well, am very happy to be using it now!

I’ve set the book up with 2 full pages for every goal (see below), and a stray ‘future’ page at the end. There’s still more than three quarters of the book left, which is oddly reassuring.

Each page tends to just be a list. Ideas, tips I’ve read elsewhere, random noodlings. I didn’t think it’d ‘work’ as well as it does, but even just in the month I’ve been using it so far it’s amazing looking back at the first scribblings and going “Oh, yeah!” – memory really can be that bad, and these fleeting thoughts really do just… fleet!!

I’m not using the journal every day, but after my initial brain dump, I make a note as and when something occurs to me. It means I can capture the thought/idea/inspiration, without getting distracted from what I’m doing, or losing it.

New ideas also start to take some shape in there. And here, too, but the scanner journal is less… fully-formed. Putting ‘buy skirts’ on my health/weight page (ah yes, in non-43T world, I can admit more readily that a lot of G4 is about weight!) brought home the fact that clothes really are entangled in all those sorts of ideas.

I also like that it has everything in one place. Well – I still have a separate art journal, but that’s okay. Otherwise, it just gives me a sense that all these random, disparate threads in my life are sitting together somewhat!

I’m so bad for half taking up ideas from books I haven’t even read, but this sounds like a useful exercise!

I have at least a dozen ‘projects’ whizzing around my head at the moment, and while right now I’m in that heady phase of post-exam “wow! so much time!” feelings, sooner or later I’m going to find juggling everything too much. Or more likely, find I haven’t touched one thing in months and feel depressed. So I’m going to give this scanner journal idea a go, so I can scribble bits here and there, see where my motivations really lie, and hopefully balance as much as possible into my life!

• website: learn/create
• MSc: network applications
• MSc: e-commerce
• MSc: databases
• other learning: Access
• work: job hunting
• work: sucking the marrow from current job – training, secondment, etc
• health: improve diet/new recipes
• health: 4DW
• fitness: C25K
• fitness: yoga (inc. home work!) / more general
• creativity: card making
• creativity: review writing
• other: cinema – get value from pass!
• other: videos – get rid of the towering stack!
• other: just, get out and about more?

It’s not a million miles away from my (BYY) goals list, but rather than rewriting that in a more broken down form, let’s try this first.

turned the scanner journal into a regular journal with some Scanner-ish properties… i.e., permission to use as a “dreaming space” for potential careers, hobbies, etc…

in a way, it’s become like a version of my own private, handwritten 43things page, where anything goes… (well, maybe slightly less organized?) :)

(or, rather, is my 43things just a public, computerized version of my own, private journal?)

hmm…

but can’t get into the exact way that Sher describes it

I want to make more scanner entries. I realized, rather accidentally, yesterday that I was only making entries for things I thought were possible, even likely, for me to do. Which isn’t really the point. This is the one place where I can explore every idea—even the impossible ones. So I want to capture them all. I don’t care if the project would require a band of friendly fairies to complete; I still want to write about it.

:)

I keep a journal in a black sketchbook like this one. I usually pick them up at Borders stores. I’ve kept journals like this for years.

What has changed since I read Refuse to Choose is that I now keep green and purple pens with my journal. When I have an idea to explore, I change from my normal blue pen to one of the colored ones so that I can find it again.

I surprise myself sometimes—sit down to write something else in my journal, or with no specific agenda, and suddenly come up with a reason to use one of the colored pens and Barbara Sher’s instructions to explore my ideas in writing for as long as I want.

And I already brought one into fruition: take up knitting as a hobby. I’m not doing it everyday, or even close. But it’s fun when I do pick it up. And eventually I’ll get to check off knit a scarf from my list and add knit something other than a scarf.