Practice deliberately with journals

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Essay outline

Something happened. I started to write as a way to think. I haven’t fully grasped the consequences of that event.

To get good, learning is essential. We learn through practice. What is practice?

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My process now:

  1. Curate a list of interesting problems. Each problem is something I want to learn about.
  2. For each problem, create a problem journal.
  3. Then, when I’m curious, pick a problem journal at random.

There. That’s it.

Rationale

I want to control where I point my attention. I don’t want to waste my time. I don’t want to consume blindly.

I’ve found this site to be a lovely medium for making that happen. Now I’d like to share some workflows.

Workflow: I want to share an idea

  1. Name the idea
  2. Make a draft page for the idea
  3. Structure an essay up top, and a journal of exploration below
  4. Share the essay
  5. Merge notes back into the exploration journal below

Should achieve:

  1. I can build other stuff on my idea
  2. I get feedback on my idea
  3. I can iterate on the idea itself

Aspect — medium-agnostic

I’ve somehow managed to make it very easy to just “put content on here”. I feel that as a great relief. I can focus on any content — not just “snippets that fit in a blog”. Why is that important? I don’t need to fracture my thinking between platforms. I don’t need to fight the format.

Why is this relevant for deliberate practice? Because the way I do deliberate practice should be decided by the domain, not the user experience of the writing tool. I want a medium that can be tailored to the message.