In my article how to be wrong more often, I presented the idea of making a diary to record one thing I was wrong about each day. Here, I will talk about what happened and how I changed the general concept of the diary.
Finding things I was wrong about was very, very difficult, so I started doing a general inventory of errors in judgment and parts of my day I could have improved upon. Basically, I did a daily debrief and thought about how productive I was, how conscientious I was and what could have been improbed upon. This is really close to what I tried to do after reading “The Little Book of Stoicism” by Jonas Salzgeber. In this book, he suggests the practice of reviewing every day. After reading it, I could never really motivate myself to consistently review every day.
This experiment helped me understand the motivation for writing a diary to improve myself. It felt like less of a sterile concept that way, and it was easier to keep it up.
To be completely honest, I sometimes forgot to write into my diary (which was more of a virtual diary: a mixture of notes on my phone and a txt-file on my computer). Whenever I forgot, I would review said day the day after.
Did the diary improve my general behavior?
I would love to say the diary revolutionized how I lived my life and made me a much better person overnight, but it didn’t. The daily examination did help me find more minor things to improve upon, and I think it helped me with a positive, productive mindset (see my article on Instant Karma). What I can say, though, is that I will do my best to keep up the habit and integrate it into my daily routine.
Apart from improving and shaping my behavior, I hope that in the future, the diary will help me become more open to making mistakes and more mindful of my own actions. Unfortunately, I cannot say if the diary has helped me in this regard or not, and I need to keep at it to see if it helps me be more mindful.
Conclusion
Because I found this a difficult habit to create, I am not sure if I can put it on the top of the list of good habits to cultivate, but I also think this is really worth trying. Making a habit of reviewing every day can only help one take more responsibility in life, and I believe that is a good thing.