How I Journal and Take Notes | Brainstorming + Focusing + Reducing Anxiety | Tim Ferriss

hey guys Tim Farriss here wanted to talk about note-taking I have what you might call hypergraphia which means I write all the time so I have hundreds of notebooks so I feel like I'm in a pretty good position to talk about what the hell to do with lots of notes you need a systematic way of filtering the best stuff to the top of your attention at least in some fashion so I'll show you a few ways that I do that it's pretty straightforward but the key to all of it is multiple passes for almost all types of note-taking and I'll describe a few different types of note-taking that I do regularly the key is multiple passes and constantly asking in effect what did I think was important to cool that isn't that important or cool and then only selecting the absolute and distilling the absolute best so let's take a look at something really small all right this is the type of notebook that I would put in a pocket a back pocket and this is from an event it was actually a very good event which was a Vanity Fair event in San Francisco many years ago I want to say around 2013 and I'll show you one of the exercises that I like to do when I'm feeling overwhelmed or feeling like I need a reset which I do certainly around New Year's and there are certain seasonal times and I like to reflect so I made a list and the the top is very simple craziest things I could do or eliminate or a limb in parentheses so I wrote this very quickly and part of the point of the exercise was to write quickly and come up with all of the craziest things I could do that might alleviate stress now shut down blog was one the next one because this is on multiple passes stop all social media scheduled for three months question mark sell all homes stop using money stop eating for 30 days cut off feet turn out not to be something I want to do so I didn't cut off my feet give away all money buy one house with all money live penniless for one year volunteer in a retirement home okay so the the volunteer in a retirement home requires a whole lot of explanation but I thought that it would be invigorating and karmically wonderful to do that particularly with ideally a dog like my current dog Molly nonetheless I did not cut off my feet I did not stop eating for thirty days over there later did multiple ten-day fasts the point of this whole list is to come up with lots of crazy ideas they can be bad they should be absurd they should seem absurd and then perhaps out of all those terrible ideas you'll find one that will productively stretch your mind enough that you find a solution would have considered otherwise and in this case stop all social media schedule it out for three months was the one of the the entire list and the list goes on that end up choosing and it completely changed how I related to using social media and now that is a regular component of taking off-grid time to recharge and scheduling things in advance using many different tools whether that's buffer Edgar or zapier like happier not zapier I said that for automating a lot of this is also very helpful from say Instagram to other platforms and so on in any case that is one example of note-taking and then reviewing so the boxing and circling was a second pass say a week later after the event then the highlighting was yet another pass say a quarter later I don't know the exact timing on this because I did act on it quite quickly but there is a schedule for reviewing so you're not just spewing onto the page and then forgetting it with the exception of the next thing that I'm going to show you so this is the expedient in the pocket brainstorm type of notebook and I'll show you one more I'm going to cover it up a little bit just to protect names you can see here I've got Vanity Fair event I have a couple of names at the top that we're interesting to me Graydon walter isaacson who I much later ended up interviewing on the podcast who is a brilliant guy incredible writer and then a bunch of quotes so playing the ratings game prevents you from taking risks it's tedster and us now Seinfeld took four years to find an audience Mad Men was turned down sixty-six times by buyers I highlighted these they made three passes because I felt like these were incredibly inspiring reminders that overnight success is rarely our overnight successes and then the bottom right it is action steps that I've listed and I create these boxes in the bottom right-hand corner I'm right-handed might be easier on the left for lefties I don't know but I create a box in the bottom right hand corner of all these pages so that I can put down potential action steps the other thing that I'll do is I will number these pages and a lot of this I can't show you guys so but suffice to say if you see that you see page 39 it's kind of hard to see but I will number the right-hand pages so one two three four five and then I create an index later which I probably can't show you either it's just too much top-secret stuff but I'll create an index in the beginning of a notebook much like the index that I would use in books that I'm reading so that I can find highlights later and you might ask well what about the pages that don't have numbers that's easy that's 0.5 all right so if the number on the right hand side is say page 2 if I flip it over on the back of that page in the index would just be 2.5 so that's how I keep track something like this the the next type of writing that I'll describe is morning pages and I'm not going to show you this page morning pages popularized by Julia Cameron introduced to me by a fantastic writer and friend Brian Koppelman of rounders Fame The Illusionist co-creator of billions really fantastic guy who's given me a lot of feedback on my writing helpful feedback on my writing introduced me to morning pages as a superpower of sorts for many of his high achieving creative friends who are professional writers producers etc and the purpose of mourning pages is not to write down a bunch of stuff that you will then vet 17 times the purpose of mourning pages is very different as Julia Cameron who wrote the artists way might put it they are acting these pages as spiritual windshield wipers so you're taking the anxiety that you might feel the distraction your monkey mind and trapping it on paper so that you can get on with your day and sometimes there are gems that pop out but very often it's really taking a nebulous fear or a nebulous discomfort or fidget enos whatever it might be and putting it on paper first thing in the morning hence the name of mourning pages she recommends three long hand pages and I'll just give you an example so this is from July of last year and I'll put the location and so on and there is a morning pages workbook that I really like but I just I just did it in a notebook I haven't have here's what I said I'm worried and anxious about the notebook the irony why well I have for six weeks maybe a bit more based on the agreement what's the worst that can happen really and then I made a bunch of bullets spend the summer working on it and dot dot I have to push the deadline - fine cancel the book and return the advance fine I could still put it on the blog next bullet make it super short and only great stuff meaning only include great stuff say it straight then say it great that means getting the facts down almost like a computer or if I get iPad instruction manual and then trying to improve the prose and say it more cleverly put it more cleanly later next I'm feeling uncertain about what to do next or first each day and then a bunch of bullets just get it all in one or fewer places so gathering from notebooks from digital from Evernote all into one place order the main chapters write an intro and conclusion question mark remember the humor can include ridiculous stories such as ABCDE etc you can see and you can hear this is not good writing and it's not intended to be good writing it's intended to be brain vomit and that's the whole point so morning pages I've found incredibly helpful for stress reduction not principally for insight or structured thinking it is unstructured trapping of your neuroses and anxieties in the amber that is the written page so those are morning pages and last but not least we got this guy five minute journal and I will actually read an example because the format is very straightforward and I can show you what it looks like this is what the this is what the format looks like and I'll get you a quote let's find a good quote cereal so here's the basic format you got the date at the top of the page you get a quote sometimes good sometimes not doesn't really matter but some of them are fantastic then the prompts so for the am doing this say in the morning I'm grateful for one two three what would make today great one two three daily affirmations I am blank blank then after it is complete say before dinner before bed three amazing things that happen today one two three how could I've made today better one two now this might seem simplistic it might seem hokey but it is first and foremost simple and complexity fails if I've learned anything that is certainly one of the things that I've learned and I've used the five-minute journal for years in different capacities and I am trying to find one that I can share with you but I'll give I'll give you an example and there are many many many that I could pull out alright so I'm going to read and there are some guidelines that I've been given and for many of these I put prompts at the top that I want to remind myself of so one of the prompts that I've used is state story strategy and they're arrows that point to these that is a heuristic bard from 20 Robbins meaning you want to improve your physical state your energy level you a state of arousal so to speak like doing a cold plunge doing some jumping rope whatever before you create your story which will be enabling or disabling or somewhere in between and before you then create your strategy for achieving a goal or problem-solving because if you're in a depressed state and this is something I've struggled with you're going to create a disabling or a victim based story and then your strategy is really going to be very narrow it's it's not going to be particularly oblique or useful in an unusual way if you have a heightened state and then you can translate that into an enabling optimistic story your strategy will be better so I wrote that at the top of many of these particular entries blank entries before then getting to them in any case so first morning back Montreal was the day before this is in 2017 I'm smiling at friend of mine from Montreal I am grateful for and again this might seem cheesy but for me if I use certain tips and note-taking for digesting information or brainstorming finding insight that is one type of notetaking I use the morning pages for reducing nebulous anxiety or worry and I use the five-minute journal for focus improving focus and execution and appreciation which you'll see so I'm grateful for number one birdsong outside beautiful number two fireflies and stars last night number three great great sauna times two before bed and rain outside to lull to sleep so I will write down any number of things what has been a practice for me is choosing simple basic things in other words you could say my family my loving family and that's great but that is a big item and I have tried to cultivate an appreciation of the smaller things which could be this notebook the convenience of this notebook and the quality of the leather it could be one of my favorite coffee mugs which is this yellow coffee mug which has made many appearances in my five minute journal and that trains you I think to notice the little things which ultimately translates to of course noticing the big things but not vice versa alright what would make today great this wasn't 2017 create b.o.b forms alright so b.o.b later became Quixote which was tools of titans I believe that was b.o.b that have been I think so I think it was I think was tools the Titans might have been trapped mentors but I think was tools of titans if we're looking at the dates look at TFS answers shep honor that refers to chef Gordon so this is the second bullet also T ot spreadsheet all right so that's Amanda Palmer I created and my team helped me create different forms and spreadsheets for digesting the hundreds of hours of audio and transcripts that we have from the Tim Ferriss show podcast alright so create b.o.b forms look at TFS answers and then number three was email twenty new people to test the form and these would be forms that are either Google forms or wufu forms or something like that that's it what would make today great that is it I'm very prone to overestimating what I can do in the day and under estimating what I can do say any year and the benefit of the five ment journal with very little space and very few bulleted options is that you really need to be concise you need to be succinct and that helps me to overcome some of my lesser tendencies next daily affirmations I am forever forward M - no hurry no pause no hurry no pause is an expression that was taught to me by a friend former Navy SEAL and also quite common in Buddhist circles that I became very fond of and I think that made it into tools of titans and maybe into tribes mentors daily affirmations I am alright second bullet good at this four times before so just reassuring myself that I can actually complete books because whether you realize it or not I find writing extremely difficult and and with great concerns of insufficiency every time I tried to write a book so that makes anyone feel better in the PM review three amazing things that happen today I also always try to include at least one thing that is small Molly that's my dog heeling while walking around a few different retail stores very basic Molly used to have tendency to pull on the leash sometimes still doesn't she healed really well great that's bullet number one next bullet per ton of all said of all rava Khan who was a bit of an Oracle an incredibly gifted and very smart investor he predicted that Krypto was gonna drop 30 to 40 percent and lo and behold it did drop 30 to 40 percent and he called it exactly number three great late-night call with a dear friend of mine that's it three amazing things that happen today boom those are three so I guess late-night calls probably the night before that's okay sometimes I make ketchup and then last but not least how could I have made today better so this was late June 2017 and it's good for me to see this because I need the reminder even though I've been quite good at Thai trading back number one don't use Kido as an excuse to drink 15 liters of coffee that's the ketogenic diet and if I'm using a low calorie keto diet to transition into fasting sometimes I compensate for that during the very awkward kind of grey transition period of keto flu to drink copious amounts of coffee which always backfires and has negative side effects so don't use keto as an excuse to drink 15 liters of coffee I wasn't literally drinking 15 liters if those in the Internet are taking that literally next drink less coffee comma used caffeine pills if needed alright so coffees a really interesting substance and has effects on the ability to conceive pregnancy and so on that seems to apply even if it's decaf as an example so this was a period when I was very very tightly wound on high dose caffeine and wanted to make an effort to decrease my coffee consumption and when you use the five-minute journal consistently what I will do then is say every quarter go back and look for patterns and to the patterns that I noticed where what could I do to make tomorrow better the two most common answers were drink less coffee and wake up earlier those were the two so I have made concerted effort with accountability to do both of those things and that is the five minutes journal so we have brainstorm insight note-taking review write for answers problem solving interesting goals and so on we've got the the morning pages which I can do here or in the more pages workbook for reducing anxiety or worries neuroses whatever it might be and then the 5-minute journal which is very helpful for both focus keep anything simple and appreciation so you don't have to do all three of these every day I certainly don't I use them as needed but when I do even one of these consistently I see a dramatic difference and not just my quality of life but focus and ability to execute consistently so hopefully that helps at least one eat out there and thanks for watching you

Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 608,164

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Keywords: tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, angel investor, ferriss, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Tim Ferriss Podcast, 5-minute journal, journaling, morning pages, focusing, brainstorming, anxiety

Id: UFdR8w_R1HA

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020