Quote: (01-08-2017 11:20 PM)R_Niko Wrote:
It depends what your goals are. I fancy myself a writer, short stories and essays, occasionally published, and I find journaling instrumental for coming up with ideas. I also find writing ideas down before bed makes me sleep better, I think it helps clear the mind.
Ditto. Not literally a journal (I don't record events of the day) but a repository of ideas and such.
I typically have a small spiral notebook on hand at all times for this, a habit I picked up in high school based on an interview with Ray Bradbury. I start a new page for a new day, date it, write out whatever came to mind (an idea, an observation, a quote, a useful fact...), and expand on it for a page or two if the mood strikes me (which is about half the time).
When finished, I follow Thomas Jefferson's practice of writing a common keyword in the upper right corner of each page, related to what is written there. I use about a dozen generic terms for this purpose. Makes it a lot easier to thumb through a notebook for a particular item.
When I fill a notebook I go through it systematically, using the keywords as a guide. Anything that still strikes me as worthwhile or useful gets appropriate follow-on treatment.
ETA: the benefit is the organization and documentation of your thoughts. When you see them spelled out, it's much easier to think through your ideas and organize them and make them coherent and consistent while adding depth (vs. just bouncing them around in your head). Plus, it's easy to forget some great insight you had if you don't do anything further with it than think it. A juggler can keep a lot of balls flying around in the air, but a man with a table can manage an indefinite number of them, stack them in pleasing shapes, examine them individually, etc.
Which is why I'm an advocate of doing it longhand on paper. Hand-writing is a slower and less forgiving process, so you have to think ahead as you write. That thinking makes the thoughts stick better (which is straight out of College Student Skills 101).