When I Decided to Start Documenting Ideas

Don’t Waste Your Thoughts

I had recently accepted a promotion, moved with my wife to a new city, and was enjoying learning and growing in my new role. During work, I kept having ideas about what could be improved, or lessons I learned, etc. Sometimes I’d write the idea or thought down quickly on a sticky note, then put it somewhere on or around my desk, then quickly misplace it, forget about it, or throw it in the garbage. Maybe the idea was a great idea! Maybe a simple lesson would help me be more productive. It didn’t matter. I didn’t do anything with the thoughts. They were concocted in my head, then passed over and wasted.

The Importance of Documenting

Documenting helps you to remember. Even if you don’t go back and read something, writing something down can be worth it. I had had enough of wasting my thoughts. I wanted to somehow keep track of them. I wanted the lessons I learned from work to be made permanent (at least to me). I also wanted to have a piece of work that down the road, when I had hopefully progressed in my own career or started my own business, I could reference back to and see my journey from early career until present day. So on September 24th, 2017 that’s what I did. Originally I started it as a precursor to hopefully starting my own business someday. I dubbed the document, “Journey to business journal.” It wasn’t shared, it wasn’t online, it wasn’t meant to grow an audience. No… it was private, saved on my personal computer, read and written by me. Sure I told my wife and some close family about it in conversation. But overall it was meant to record ideas and lessons that could be remembered and referenced back to as I grew in my professional life.

Below is my second day’s worth of “entries” to this personal journal back more than two years ago. When it was all said and done, I wrote this personal and private journal for almost exactly one full year. Over the course of the year I had compiled 19 pages worth of material. Look out for my next post in the “My Journey to Starting a Podcast Series” to see why I stopped and what I decided to do instead.