Adam Pittenger

If you do any research on how to increase productivity or how to “win the morning”, you’ll no doubt come across the benefits of journaling. I journal myself — it has incredible benefits.

However I fell victim to an all-or-nothing mentality. For some reason I felt I had to journal at least once a day — the ideal being once in the morning and once at night. As someone with a busy schedule, it quickly becomes clear how that’s not always realistic.

Of course there’s the “you don’t have 5 minutes to spare?” argument. But a question like this requires a simplistic view of life. Sure, I could carve out 5 minutes. But often those 5 minutes are better spent on something else.

Taking that a step further … if you were to carve out 5, 10, 20 minutes for every productivity hack out there, you wouldn’t have any time left in the day for actual work or relationships.

In 2018 I’ve been working on my focus. And, as a consequence of focus, I’ve been working on ridding myself of that all-or-nothing mindset. Of the pursuit of clean perfection.

That’s taken form with my blogging. With my reading. With my work. With my relationships. It’s a reality that I couldn’t bring myself to think of in the past. But now that it is my reality — I’ve seen how freeing it is.

You don’t have to finish that book. Had enough of it? Put it down and pick up the next one. You don’t have to write the perfect blog post. Get your thoughts down and publish. You don’t have to journal everyday. When you do, you’ll find it’s great. And when you don’t — that’s okay too.

I love to journal but I now love to journal even more because it no longer feels like a chore. Something that I have to do or otherwise I haven’t “won the morning”. Now it’s something that I choose to do. Something that I enjoydoing. And you know what? My day can be great regardless of how I spent those 5 minutes. It’s a matter of how I spend the rest of it and my outlook on it all.

Ironically I started writing this blog post about journaling and how I’ve found it beneficial when I do it. Then it morphed into something completely different. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.