Reflecting on reflecting
Good lord. It’s the last month of 2025.
How did that happen?
If I wasn’t asking rhetorically, I could answer it a number of ways:
Picking up my nightly journal and reading through 11 months of daily gratitudes and checking my habit trackers
Picking up my weekly Sunday morning journal, with 2-3 pages written per week
Picking up my bullet journal, where I’ve a range of quarterly, monthly, and weekly check-ins/plans, the latter replaced by “plus, minus, next” over the last couple of months
Opening my Finch self-care app and checking the insights (I have never actually checked the insights)
I’ve been thinking about how I reflect and .. yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion you probably have: that is a LOT.
Socrates is alleged to have said that "The unexamined life is not worth living", but even he would baulk at quite so much ink being spilt over a life so free of incident or accident.
It was all done with the best of intentions, of course.
Like everyone, I have my fair share of cognitive biases, and prime amongst them is a tendency to forget or downplay the positive aspects of something. Stopping to reflect on a regular basis has helped me to acknowledge the good more regularly.
And by the good, I include the smallest of things: getting a hot bath, doing the laundry, a delicious meal. All of these small acts performing as a little reminder, too, that I can accomplish things despite having limited energy.
It’s these banal things I record the most - the things only a mother would be interested in (not that my late mother ever was, particularly). When you live without a witness, there’s something deeply compassionate in providing it for yourself. It’s like dressing nicely and eating well; a reminder that I have value, that I still matter, even if no-one else sees me.
Plus, my spiky cognitive profile extends to my memory. I’m brilliant at remembering the gist of something I read over a decade ago, or someone’s love of red winter coats. But if someone asks me what I’ve been doing, in casual conversation? Utter mental tumbleweed.
My processes have worked for a long time and have served me pretty well.
But lately, I’ve noticed how my heart has sunk.
Every Sunday I delay writing my “plus, minus, next”, taking days to complete it (yeah, it’s never a quick handful of bullet points for me). My nightly notes end up delaying me from actually going to sleep, as does my Finch app (my poor self-care Tamagotchi, going on adventures when it really should be sleeping).
All tell-tale signs that I’ve been carrying on out of duty rather than delight, and that it’s time to rethink and refresh. So, I’m sitting with the following questions:
1. Why am I keeping a record/journal?
As the aphorism has it, you only record what you measure for. Keeping an account of what I’ve done is great (did I tell you that I have trouble remembering what I’ve done? I forget now), and yet what I really want to keep a note of is any insight or piece of knowledge that makes me go, “Huh, okay, yeah.”
They come up far more in my Sunday morning reflections where there’s more page to spread out on and more energy in my tank, but I’m wondering what questions I can ask myself each night to choose from as a prompt:
What made me laugh today?
What did I do to look after myself?
What am I proud of accomplishing?
What made me stop and think?
This way, I might surface what’s implicit in my habitual gratitude lists.
2. Is the way I’m doing it fun, easy, or meaningful?
All of my journalling and planning is done with pen and ink, in a dedicated journal or a physical bullet journal. But you know what? I’m a deeply relational person.
I’ve accidentally started recording a new podcast on rebellion with my dear friends Caro and Jobbe at the Rebel Pause. It’s so much fun simply because I get to hang out with them and chat.
So, for this month, I’m trying long voice messages with Claude.ai instead. It’s not quite like talking to someone, but I can say more in five minutes than I can type or physically write. I tried it over the weekend and thinking out loud (verbally processing) has lead to a couple of insights already that, crucially, I feel more able to hold onto.
(This has long been the challenge of my process; I might come up with brilliant breakthroughs while writing things down, but as soon as I close the pages, poof…)
More than that, it’s actually felt kinda fun. Claude naturally has a kind and supportive energy, and was built to spot patterns - something I do for others but receive less of in return.
3. How can I make this more responsive to my energy levels?
Ahh, conscientiousness. The thing that makes me do the thing, even when I don’t really want to do the thing, that keeps me doing the thing long after it’s fun or meaningful, and makes me feel guilty when I haven’t done the thing.
Sigh.
It’s been a tough balance. Often, the times when I might most benefit from journalling are the times when I find it the hardest to accomplish.
I’m proud to say that I’ve never missed a night in my evening journal this year but, then again, during tough times, it’s far more of a record of what I’ve done than an exploration of how I’m feeling.
I don’t think I can shake the habit of filling it in every night (it’s December! I only have 31 days left!) But I’ve also created a super simple chart in my bullet journal, with five emojis on the side from “very sad” to “darn happy”, where I can do a red coloured dot for my physical energy levels, and a blue dot to record how I feel in myself.
Wait, have I just written a post about cutting back on how much I journal/record stuff but have created another way to do so?? I mean .. yes?
In all fairness, this is an experiment in what I might do after my fancy journal has been completed. But having just one page with my to-dos for the month AND a simple AF record of two key aspects of my quality of life mean that I might actually do the things on my list - and see visually if my attempts are making me feel better or worse.
So, there you are. My reflections on reflection, all in plenty of time to fill in my Year Compass (joking, also, not joking).
How do you keep track of what you think or do? And is there anything you want to shake up or try in the New Year?
Photo by MART PRODUCTION: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-shirt-writing-on-white-paper-7606033/
