Interval Journaling

Self-Growth Summer Lesson 1

Greetings, dear reader! You may be back in the school grind or still enjoying your hot, steamy summer, and whatever the case may be, I hope you’re doing well!

I’ve had a tremendous summer, which I’ve dubbed Self-Growth Summer. Maybe you’ve had one like this too? For whatever reason, many realizations and new habits came to me this summer, and I wanted to share some with you in case you also find them useful.

I learned five lessons, plus 10 mini-lessons, this summer, and I’m going to share them with you in the next few posts. This is part 1 of 6.

Summer Lesson 1: Interval Journaling

Image taken from Notes on Managing ADHD by Fernando Borretti https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd#introspection

All summer, I’ve been keeping a hierarchical, review-oriented daily/weekly/monthly digital journal, a practice I pulled from a document about ADHD, but frankly, I think it’s appropriate for almost everyone.

The Interval Journal Method:

1. The Interval Journal can be typed, dictated, or handwritten, but I’ve been typing it as my handwriting is much harder to re-read.

2. Using the file/organization structure pictured above, write a daily journal entry at whatever time and of whatever length appeals to you for ideally six days a week, or however many you manage to do.

3. Aim for consistency, not perfection.

4. Daily entries are similar to Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages concept, but needn’t be as long. They can be free-form. Ideas of things to include are:

   1. Ad hoc notes and thoughts

   2. Bullet journal

   3. Brian farts

   4. Emotions

   5. To-do list

   6. Big goals

   7. Gratitudes

   8. Attitudes

   9. Conversations you wish you’d had

   10. Wins

   11. losses

   12. Random ideas

   13. Whatever is bothering you

5. On the 7th day, reread your daily entries and write a weekly entry on:

   1. What went well?

   2. What didn’t go well?

   3. What do you want to change for next week?

6. Do this weekly entry 3x a month.

7. During the fourth week of the month, read your three weekly entries and do a monthly review with the same focus: what went well, what didn’t go well, what you want to change for next month.

8. Do this monthly review for 11 months.

9. At the end of the year, read your 11 monthly entries and write a yearly review.

10. Entries should be longer based on time covered, so weekly will be longer than daily, monthly will be longer than weekly, and your yearly review will be the longest.

11. In all the review-oriented entries (weekly, monthly, and yearly), keep in mind the following three questions:

    1. List the salient things that happened in the review period.

    2. List what went well and what went poorly.

    3. Reflect on how I will change my behavior to make things better.

Interval Journal Purpose

This practice identifies super-cycles, super-powers, and super-problems so you can act accordingly as you move forward.

It also helps me notice and break maladaptive patterns. I’m finding it very useful. For example, I realized that I’m way too caught up in interpersonal dramas and trying to please people who have been consistently unkind to me. Interpersonal conflict, breadcrumbers, grumpy people, and low/non-reciprocal friendships are causing me a significant amount of distraction, stress, and preoccupation. I will persistently make an effort with people who make no return effort, and this is a habit I want to break.

Now that I’ve realized the pattern, I’m adjusting who I stay in contact with and how I keep in contact with them. If I start to think or write about them, I stop myself and shift my mind to one of my own projects or novels. I don’t want people I don’t even mesh well with taking up my mental space.

Interval Journaling has replaced my morning pages habit. One problem with the morning pages for me was the overwhelm I felt when doing the suggested review process. This cuts the overwhelm by breaking the review into shorter, scheduled chunks.

I’m using Notion for my journal because I like the ease of writing and formatting on the platform, but Google Docs, Microsoft Word, a paper notebook, or any notes app could work just as well. Digital is also nice because you can easily search it. Plus, I can’t read my own handwriting very fast, so that’s another reason I’m typing.

Further Reading on Interval Journaling

The method is explained in more detail here, in this extremely excellent free book: Notes on Managing ADHD by Fernando Borretti, which I randomly discovered on X. Sometimes, the algorithms deliver!

Now You

Do you have a journaling or review practice?

If your summer has a theme, what is your summer’s theme?

Share it with my community in the comments, or shoot me an email about it.

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That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for Self-Growth Summer parts 2-6, and I wish you an amazing rest of your summer!

XXXOOO

Charlotte Dune