October 11, 2017 • 39 mins
Do you know the many mental health benefits of journaling? With journals on the rise, B&E talk with Buzzfeed's Rachel Wilkerson Miller to discuss what makes journals so beneficial.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is a bridget and this is Emily, and
you're listening to stuff mom never told you. And today
on the show, I am so thrilled to talk to
a topic that really must play that in my life
(00:25):
in various times, various ways, and that is journaling. Emily,
Do you keep a journal? Are you kidding me? My
heart is like beating out of my chest because I
love journaling so much. I have still in my possession
journals that I started in the third grade. And I
wrote pretty regularly from the third grade up until a
(00:45):
few years after college. But things have waned since then
because I learned that I was actually a writer. I
think we used the term a journal er to describe
ladies writing, especially women writing about their own personal lives,
but really what that makes you was a writer. And
once I actually reconcile that in my brain, I started
writing a lot more publicly and started processing some of
(01:06):
those thoughts out loud. Would you say that journaling helps
you discover yourself as a writer and take ownership over
that label. Yeah. I think my therapist actually was the
first person who said to me, oh, you're a writer
when I mentioned that I've always journaled as a way
to process my thoughts. So what I can't take credit
for because I definitely didn't come to that realization of
my own, but it helped me become a better writer
(01:28):
for sure. I love that. I love that. I think
that your spot on you talk about the way that
women's writing in journals and diaries is often sort of
looked at historically as less important than you know, men's
writing and newspapers or books or blah blah blah. It's
sometimes sort of talked about like it's not as important.
But what's actually really interesting about women and journaling is
(01:48):
that a lot of literary scholars are actually going back
and looking at the journals and diaries of really well known,
famous women writers and making arguments about who they were,
and sort of putting our journals in conversation with some
of their more popular writing. I love it. It It makes
them historically salient from a personal perspective, not just based
on their professional success, which we've always done that with
(02:11):
men's journals. If you think about the Founding Fathers, their
letters to the loved ones become anthologies. Their personal writings
and musings were seen as salient based on their historical
pre eminence and power. But now I love seeing that
that's being done with some of the most famous and
influential and incredible female writers from literary history. Totally shout
(02:34):
out to Marry Helen Washington, who I actually tate for
when I was working on my PhD at University of Maryland. Um,
I was trying to get my PhD in African American
women's literature. Never actually ended up happening, sorry, Mom and dad,
but I did meet Dr Helen Washington there and she
was great. Um. She's actually doing a lot of literary
scholarship looking at the diaries and journals a famous Black
(02:55):
women writer. She has this great biography of Ida B. Wells,
who is one of my UM literary heroes really, who
was sort of known for her writing and cataloging and
really early data journalism around lynch ings and racism in
the South. But what's very interesting is that even though
I to be Wells is known publicly for her writing
around topics like race, her diaries really illustrate a very
(03:18):
different side to her. Her diaries are full of writing
about romantic struggles, um conflicts she has with family money trouble,
which we were just talking about what our diaries contents
say about us off air and what did what did
we summarize your journaling? If my if, if the writings
of Bridget Todd was ever published, would probably be called
(03:40):
boy trouble and over traft fees the Bridget story. It's
like bank account fees and boys. I just think that's
so perfect, basically basically it um But yeah, what I
love about this is that it really shows that a
lot of women writers, it's in their journals, in their
diaries where they really feel free to be this this
(04:01):
different version of themselves, and sometimes that version of themselves
does not necessarily align with the writings they're known for
publicly right exactly, which makes me feel the sense of
freedom around being multifaceted women with lots of different kinds
of interests, like, for instance, Alice Dunbar, a poet and
activist and a d c native. In her personal diary
(04:22):
she wrote about her lesbian extramarital affairs, but which for
some reason didn't quite make it to her public writings
in quite as obvious away. So it's it feels like
your personal diary can be this escape where you are
free to be full of yourself. It's just for you
and now historians, God, I hope historians never look at
my diaries. Let me just make that completely clear on
(04:43):
the record, But historians are going back and better understanding
these talented women and understanding, you know, even if revealing
too much of their intimate lives could have cost them
their lives at one point in history, or we're selected poorly,
especially for black women like Alice Dunbar, not only in
(05:04):
behalf of all women, but on behalf of the black community.
Now at this time, we're able to understand her with
some more progressive and compassionate and well rounded perspective totally.
Another famous female writers whose diaries I was super super
interested in is Virginia Wolfs. Her diary was the last
of her writings to be published, and what I found
so fascinating about some of the excerpts of her diary
(05:27):
that I read while researching this podcast are the ways
that the political climate of the day that she was
living in, you know, World War two, Hitler, all of
that really kind of took over her life in a
kind of way. And so her diaries show someone who
is struggling to be creative, having these creative ups and downs,
but so much of her Diaries is about what's happening
(05:47):
with Hitler, what's happening with World War two, to the
point where it's clear that she's not able to really
function regularly and creatively the way that she wants to
because she is so consumed with this. Are you relating
to this? Oh, I'm I was relating to it hardcore, hardcore.
So this is in she's revising her novel The Years,
which went on to be tremendously successful, and all of
(06:12):
this is happening with World War Two in the Rise
of Hitler in the background. And so her diary excerpt
here I thought was really troubling, is one way to
say it. But you you are reading the words of
a woman on the verge of nervous collapse. Definitely, And
I mean again, I don't want to draw too many parallels,
but she has so many lines that I feel like
I relate to so much. This this one quote from
(06:32):
her injury. She's looking at, you know, all this stuff
happening in politics. She writes, this idea struck me. The
army is the body I am. The brain thinking is
my fighting. And that just gives me chills, because I
think if we didn't have her diaries, We would never
know that Virginia Wolfe was someone who for whom thinking
and writing and being a creative person, that was her
(06:53):
way of resisting and fighting back and you know, standing
up against what she was really watching on full with
these wide eyes kind of terrified. So we've already been
talking about the ways that these famous female writers journaling
have shown up in their lives and told us more
about their inner lives and really helped us understand their writing.
But what about the rest of us, What about us,
(07:13):
not famous writers or you know what if I'm not
Virginia wolf Right, that's kind of the high bar. It's
a high bar. Not all of us a Virginia wolf
But you know, what are the ways that journaling can
can really benefit us? So we're gonna dive into some
of that research right after this quick break and we're back.
(07:40):
We were just talking about how journaling has played at
in the lives of some of the most famous women
writers out there. But how can journaling help us? What
does the science say? Well, science has actually shown that
journaling is good for us. In fact, it's so well
regarded that there's a center for journal therapy dedicated exclusively
to the mental health benefits of regular journaling in therapeutic
(08:00):
and personal settings. Um, this was something that I found
kind of shocking. I've been an on agan Opican journal
or I certainly have found positive benefits, but I was
really surprised to see how overwhelming the sciences on this issue.
I felt going into this, like it was so woo woo,
you know, I was like, oh, you know your morning
pages or you know, a brain dumb and all the
(08:23):
sort of pop science that comes into planners and the
whole industry around journals can be really I'm very skeptical
of them. However, these are we're talking about peer reviewed
journal studies in the medical community that have some profound results.
So psychologists from the University of California were actually able
(08:44):
to investigate the effects of journaling by dividing twenty people
to their lab for a brain scan. Basically, they asked
some of these people to write about something really emotionally intense,
something that happened to them that was a big deal.
The others wrote about something neutral, just something basically what
happened to that they have no strong emotional attachment to.
And what they found is that those who shows to
(09:04):
write about the emotional experience showed more activity in the
part of the brain called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Basically,
this is a part of the brain that controls emotion
and mood. The study then showed that the folks who
wrote about these emotional experiences reported being more relaxed and
having a better mood. So, if you're writing about something
that actually has a big emotional significance to you, versus
(09:28):
writing about something that is just neutral, or is just blase,
or it's just casual, it actually can have a positive
impact on your mood. Right, And another researcher in the
field wasn't so convinced about this. Right, They said, Listen,
the mere act of writing isn't necessarily beneficial, especially if
you're writing about something like trauma, which can trigger distress
(09:49):
and physical and emotional arousal in the brain. That's not
so pleasant. Not all people will work through that distress therapeutically,
and basically it could leave you feeling really emotionally raw.
It's not just the act of writing, says psychologist Helen Marlowe.
She says, quote, I get concerned that if people just
write about traumatic events, they get raw and opened up
(10:09):
and aren't able to work through it on their own.
But that said, her study doesn't really provide any evidence
that writing poses a risk or any long term harm,
even if it does leave you feeling emotionally raw. I
can definitely identify with that skepticism around journaling. But here's
why you think she might be wrong. Basically, according to
this research, it really comes down to the kind of
journaling that people are doing. Um, there's evidence that the
(10:31):
nature of a person's writing is really key to tapping
into those health benefits. Researchers Susan Lutkendorff, PhD at the
University of Iowa did an intensive journaling study where she
found that really it's about how you're writing about these issues.
If you're writing about them and deriving some sort of
meaning from what you're writing about, meaning that you're you know,
being self critical or self reflective, you're using words that
(10:53):
show that you're processing these emotionally heavy things that you're
writing about, you actually can tap into these benefits. If
you're just writing about your emotions and you're just logging
them and not actually doing any of the work to
process them via writing, you actually end up fearing worse
than the folks in the study who wrote about neutral things,
And it's kind of similar if you think about it too,
(11:13):
parallels that have been drawn in the UH cognitive behavioral
therapy world. That same researcher, Penna Baker behind the UC studies,
said that people who talk about things over and over
in the same way aren't getting any better. There has
to be growth or change in the way they view
their experiences. So really it's not the act of writing,
(11:35):
it's the quality of the journaling that you're doing. Are
you analyzing your emotions, are you exploring your perspectives, and
are you uh finding or drawing new conclusions? That, to me,
is the beauty of journaling is that it's writing for
the explicit intent of exploration. If you're just writing to
chronicle or log or rant and rave, you might not
(11:56):
end up experiencing those positive benefits. The other thing that
I found most compelling, quite frankly, is that we're not
just talking about feeling better. The research shows in a
really compelling way that there are much more tangible, measurable
health benefits associated with journaling. Okay, when I first read this,
(12:16):
I thought it was BS, but I dug deep. I
looked at this study. I read it and it sounds legit.
According to a study by Joshua M. Smith, PhD, Arthur A. Stone, PhD,
and Adam Urrett's m d, journaling actually can improve your
immune system and can help you improve with symptoms of
things like asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. That sounds wild, right,
(12:40):
It sounds really really wild, But here's what they did.
So over the course of four months, patients in the
study were assigned to write either about the most stressful
event of their lives and this is a sample size
of seventy one was in that selection group, or about
emotionally neutral topics. So again, the control group here is writing.
It's not that they're not writing, it's that the quality
(13:01):
of the writing is different. The first group, the experimental group,
was asked to really write about an emotionally salient experience
in their lives, and the outcome over the course of
four months of journal treatment was that asthma patients in
the experimental groups showed improved lung function, whereas the control
group patients showed no change. Rheumatoid authoritis patients had a
(13:25):
similar demonstration of improvements in overall disease activity, and here
they write, you know, as a mean reduction disease severity
of twenty eight percent, which is significant versus the control
group patients didn't have any kind of symptom change whatsoever.
So if you look at the overarching sample size, all
(13:45):
the patients in the study, of those in the experimental
group experienced clinically relevant improvement based on journaling alone, whereas
only twenty four percent of the control group members experienced
improvement based on writing, but not in a sort of
emotionally significant way. When I first heard that, it blew
(14:06):
me away. But I have to say so, I have asthma.
If you've ever listened to me huff and puff or
sound hard to understand on this very podcast, you might
already know that. Um, and I know from having asthma.
When I'm stressed out, my symptoms are much much worse.
I have a much much harder time when when I'm stressed.
And so if we if we buy that journaling helps
(14:27):
lower stress levels, it doesn't actually sound that wild to
me when I think about it in that in that way,
that journaling visa V would then help improve lung function.
I just have never thought about it in that way. Yeah,
that's interesting. It's kind of like the link between cortisol,
the stress hormone, being prevalent in your system and journaling.
If journaling can reduce like the chemical release of cortisol
(14:50):
in your blood system, that has to have and I
don't know I would I'm a doctor, but I would
venture to guess that has ramifications for the rest of
your health system. So that's that's fascinating. Studies like this
have shown such correlations when it comes to cancer, when
it comes to a variety of mental and physical medical outcomes.
So if you really want to dive deeper into this,
(15:11):
you can explore the body of clinical, peer reviewed research
that's out there, linking journaling of all things and journaling
in a very specific way about emotionally relevant experiences like
boys and bank accounts, uh, but in a way that
helps you draw and explore different perspectives. Another fascinating aspect
of this is bringing in gender dynamics. According to Matthew Lieberman,
(15:34):
a psychologist and University of California, journaling actually benefits men
more than does women. He writes, men tend to show
greater benefits and that is a bit counterintuitive, but the
reason might be that women more freely put their feelings
into words, so that this is a less novel experience
for them. For men, it's more of a novelty. It's
almost like journaling can give men a safe space to
be vulnerable, to be emotional without judgment from our society,
(15:57):
which still unfairly judges men and holds them up to
this sort of toxic masculinity um socialization that that can
probably leave a lot of men feeling bottled up and
and not able to explore their emotions as easily. That
just seems to be like another side of the coin
that we opened the show talking about, where these black
women and women like Virginia Wolf perhaps did not feel
(16:19):
comfortable being their full selves in their published work because
of society. If you're a black woman, you have to
be this kind of woman, if you're a successful creative
writing woman, you have to be this kind of woman.
And their diaries real these services free place for them
to actually be their authentic full selves, And I wonder
if that's what's actually going on with these men as well.
That makes me feel a lot better about the kind
of banal things that I've written about in my denaries
(16:43):
over the years. So it kind of makes me feel
better because it's not a space for any Is that
a reflection of your professional ambition or your you know,
serious work at hand. It's really for you. It's your
identity in construction. That's how I feel about it. And
I'm so thrilled that we actually have someone who is
an spurred on the way that writing and journaling can
tap into that authentic self and who we are and
(17:05):
can really sort of be a gift that we give
to ourselves in terms of how we process, how we
show up in the world. And that is Rachel Wilkerson Miller,
the senior lifestyle editor of BuzzFeed dot com. Rachel, thank
you so much for joining us today. Thank you so
much for having me. I'm so honored. So, Rachel, you
basically have written the book on dot journaling that's not
just an expression, and you actually have a book called
(17:27):
Journaling a Practical Guide, which was released this July, and
it's actually a number one Amazon bestseller in the scrap
booking category. So congratulations, Thank you so much. So it
seems like journaling, particularly dot journaling, it's really having a
moment right now. Why do you think that is? Um?
I think there are a couple of things happening right now. First, um,
I think in the past year so we've seen sort
(17:49):
of a trend toward mindfulness from people for tour, people
thinking I need to not spend as much time on
my phone or watching Netflix. So I think the adult
coloring book trend was sort of the beginning of this,
and dot journaling is a very natural progression, but it's
a little more permanent, it's a little more self guided,
it's a little more thought involved, um, which I think
people are looking for a creative outlet and you know,
(18:11):
putting pen to paper is sort of a time tested
thing that feels really good. Um. But I also think
that specifically right now, you know, the political climate, no
matter what your views are, is really tough. People are
very stressed out. We is one of the interesting things
that is, no matter where you fall in the political spectrum,
you're probably convinced that the world is about to end.
And I think that like there's a drive there to
(18:32):
record history as that happened, sort of record your own
personnel history, or just to kind of um, you know,
make your mark on the world, and also kind of
practice self care at the same time. So I think
that probably the general anxiety and stress right now is
definitely leading people to kind of want to reflect and
that sort of thing. I think that is spot on,
and I'm intrigued. As a long time journal er myself,
(18:54):
I have always been writing in my sort of various
journals over the years, but I'm curious about what makes
dot journaling specifically effective or helpful for folks. Can you
just explain the basics of what dot journaling is all about? Yeah, totally,
And and one thing I will say to process this
is that it's really simple concept that is remarkably difficult
(19:15):
to explain. Um, So to listeners, kind of keep that
in mind. Um, it's it's hard to explain because it's
kind of like you can do whatever you want and
there are no rules. But so then how do you
explanage people? Um? But the basic idea is that you're
using kind of this structure or framework to guide your journal,
and it's very much you you created as you go,
like you would most journals, um, or even a planner
(19:38):
or something to that effect. So there's no like you
don't sit down and build out all of these cool
layouts well in advance, very much one page at a time.
But you're using like sort of basic things like simple
page numbers and index to make it really easy to
organize everything into one notebook. So previously, like I had
my to do list that I kept in one notebook,
(19:59):
and then I have like a diary type of journal
where other things. This kind of gives you a framework
for putting both things together, um, just by using different
symbols to like mark things down really quickly, kind of
categorize them at a glance. So if it has a
dot next to it, that means is that to do?
If it has a dash next to it, that means
it's a thought. So like you look at a page
from like today, for me, I just have like all
(20:21):
of my two does at the top. Later I'll put
in my diary entries using the dash and like that signals.
Like these are two different things, but they all kind
of taken together make up this thought journal. Um. Also
people are doing the dot grid style of notebook has
really caught on in the past couple of years, um,
and it makes it really easy to create all of
these different like very artistic spreads and layouts and calendar
(20:43):
within a notebook that you probably couldn't do. And as
easily in aligned journal or a blank journal. Um. So, yeah,
that's kind of the basics. I don't know if that
makes sense. Yeah, that makes so much sense. So you've
mentioned a couple of the reasons why someone might choose
dot journaling over regular journaling. Is is there are there
more specific things why dot journaling might be more effective
(21:04):
or a different kind of experience than just writing an
aligned notebook. Yeah, I think so. And I too have
been like a lifelong journal or and then I kind
of fell out of the habit when I got into
my twenties and it was, you know, with the advent
of blogs on the internet and texting my friends all day,
I kind of like ran out of theme to write
in a diary. Um, but this really helps me do it,
And I think there are a couple of reasons it's
(21:24):
really caught on and it makes you more helpful. Um. First,
the like using the dash to take to jot down
diary entries is remarkably liberating. Like, I think there's something
about approaching a blank page where you're like, I have
to write a diary entry that feels very like serious
and sort of official in a way that like just
writing quick notes is really easy and there's like less pressure,
(21:45):
So I found that really helpful. Um. And then by
adding page numbers to everything, and then like putting this
index to the beginning or the end, where essentially you
can kind of write the page numbers of all of
the important things, so like September habits, I can tell
you a page back on what page, like my reading
list for seventeen is on. It makes the diary or
the journal essentially searchable, so it's more functional than a
(22:08):
regular diary or to do list because it's like organized
in this way that makes it really easy to find
anything you care about. In fact, one of the most
interesting things I found when I was researching my book
is that a lot of diaries throughout history look remarkably
like dot journals, which I just made me really happy. Um.
So I was looking at a journal Mary Holyoke's diary
(22:29):
from the seventeenth century, and she uses a dash before
like all of her entry and then really short and
to the point, and she tracks really sort of dramatic
life events this way. She lost several children in childbirth
or they died as infants, and about it's really terrible,
and she just logs it the same way that she
logs a visit from a friend, um, which is sort
of shocking. I think now that we can give journals
(22:52):
in this place for like intense self reflection, which is
something that happened in the twentieth century. Um, But we're
kind of going back to basics here, where just blogging
these things kind of quick. All events are given equal
weight if you want them to be given equal weight.
I had this idea in my head that like a
diary is this very serious place where I write like
very serious books. And I felt a little weird, like
(23:14):
blogging major life events the same way that I would
log like maybe get milk one to the store today.
And then I realized, like, you know, all of those
things like makeup, who I Am in the or seventeen,
like that gives us the complete picture of who we are.
And as a matter of fact, like this is actually
how people have been using their diaries for centuries. So
it's very much a return to form in a lot
(23:35):
of ways. I find what is so fascinating about the
rise of journaling recently is that it really does feel
like a response to our hyper digital age. This is
one of the most analog solutions to our overwhelmed that
comes with the digital age. Do you feel liberated by
having a sort of more analog component to your life
(23:58):
or do you I'm curious, like, do you use Google Calendar?
You know what I mean, because I have gone all
in on the digital front and I've really left my
journaling behind, and um, yeah, so I still use Google
Calendar because I need it for work, and so that
just makes perfect sense to me that, like I'm going
to continue to use that. My meeting changed so much
(24:20):
I don't want to write them down and pen whenever.
Um but I've never found a to do list app
that like does everything that I wanted to do and
doesn't get essentially like discontinued after two years. So I've
always loved a pen and paper to do list. I've
never been satisfied using any other system. So, like, I
think for me, it's very much a return to basics
(24:40):
personally to that kind of thing, but also think more generally,
like it's a society, it's very much a return to basics,
like for atning things down, like taking notes. It's been
around for a while. Um see, I think that like
you can bind you, I really like having the pen
and paper option especially I think at the beginning of
the day and the end of the day, like this
(25:01):
is how I start my day and end my day
with pen and paper, not with my phone. And I
think that's really valuable, and I think a lot of
people are kind of feeling that if they want, even
if it's like fifteen or twenty minutes, just some time
that they're not looking at the screen. We'll be right
back with more from Rachel after this quick break and
(25:23):
we're back, but let's jump right back into our conversation
with Rachel. I don't know if you had a chance
to look at some of the research that we compiled,
but I definitely think that one of the positive benefits
of journaling every day is a little bit of a
meditation and getting away from screens and things like that. Um,
are there other benefits that you see from journaling? Maybe
personal benefits, professional benefits, creative benefits, what kind of other
(25:46):
in addition to just getting away from your screen for
fifteen minutes? God knows, it's so hard, But what other
kind of benefits have you seen folks have from journaling?
So I think using this system has definitely helped me
become more organized. I'm a generally pretty organized person. But like, again,
the searchable factor is so major that like I can
really track like my conversations with my boss and we
(26:08):
have our check in every week, Like I'm I'm better
at like following up on the things we discussed or
recording them because I have a better framework for it.
So I really love that aspect of it. Um It's
also helped me creatively. It's sort of taking me a
few steps, but basically after I really got into dot journaling,
then I started doing morning pages, which are outlined in
the book The Artist's Way, which is a whole sort
(26:29):
of different type of journaling, but for me was an
extension of this other thing I would and that has
been like a really incredible creative shift for me. And now,
in an effort to be on my phone lass, I'm
journaling like multiple times throughout the day. So my new
thing lately has been doing journaling pages with the end
of the day. So I was in a really bad
habit where I would get home from work, start looking
(26:49):
through Twitter, catching up on blogs, go to Reddit, and
like an hour and a half and go by and
I had to come from the couch. So my new
thing is when I get home immediately, I sit down
and just stream of conscious this journals for like twenty
or thirty minutes, and it has been a complete game changer.
Part of it is because when I'm walking home, I
usually get a ton of creative ideas and I'm like
really stimulated when I get home. But it's also helps
(27:10):
me sort of retrain my brain and break that habit
of like getting home and just scrolling through my phone
for hours. So it's actually I've been able to like
right a ton that way to capture the things that
I was leading on my way home or the podcast
I listen to when my walk home. It's just been
like such a wonderful ritual to build into my everyday routine.
So I feel like that's another really great way to
use a journal. You are giving me all of the
(27:32):
goals around creative work, because obviously, Bridget and I it's
our job to come up with topics for a podcast,
and I do a boatload of writing, which I know
you do as well, Bridget, outside of producing two podcasts
a week, Honestly, finding a way to optimize your creative
energy not only to write the things you want to
(27:53):
write about, but also to come up with and be
inspired when it comes to what you want to explore next.
It's a challenge, um completely, especially to harness your own
creative energy and figure out what works for you. Like
I was saying, we've gone totally digital, and now I'm wondering,
should we incorporate more pen to paper into our workflow?
Do you feel like as a creative writer, and maybe
(28:16):
for other creative entrepreneurs listening, that mixing up your pen
to paper sort of more analog methodologies with the digital
ways that many of us work now is important. Yeah,
I mean I found it to be so helpful. So basically,
when I started like trying to journal more, I was
running out of ideas and that was what led me
to start writing out Essentially, you know it's for future
essays in a journal, and there's something for me. Like
(28:38):
I know that there's sort of the mythology around like
a blank page being really stressful, but I kind of
a blank journal page are less stressful than a blank
Google doc. Like for some reason, I have this sense
of like this is just for me. I don't need
to show it to anyone else, Like I can write
whatever I want here and it feels like so much
less pressure. So I've been doing that occasionally, and then
(28:59):
like when I go back, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna
write yesterday. Now I'm going to type it into a
Google Dog. I'll go back and it's like, oh my gosh,
I wrote three pages. The bulk of it is done,
and I didn't even sort of realize that. I didn't
even feel it. I want to do that. We need now,
I really recommend it. I can't help but lift up
a lot of the things that you're saying for me,
um as a you know, a creative professional, like all
(29:21):
of us are in this conversation. Um, I am someone
who is me. I know that, well all this put
it this way. Rachel from being in your home, I
know you're a very organized person. Emily is also very organized.
There there are also those of us who are creative
professionals who are not Type A, perhaps for type B,
Type C, type D sort of fly by the seat
(29:42):
of our pants creative type. And I think listening to
what you're saying that the one of the benefits of
creative journaling is that it helps you follow up on
those bursts of creative energy. Right, Like, I am someone
who I just get an idea and I'm like, oh,
this is my idea, and then if I don't write
it down, it's gone in my head and it's just
you know, it's it's just gone. Um. So I love
(30:03):
this idea of journaling as an intentional way of focusing
that sort of manic creative energy so that you can
actually capitalize on it and do something with it other
than just forget about it in the shower the next day. Exactly. Yeah.
So I guess my question is for those of us
who are not super organized like myself, Um, what are
(30:24):
the suggestions that you have for really making this habit
work for us? So, I think the best advice I
can give you is start small, don't go overboard. I
think you could be really tempting when you're looking at
like all of these cool things that you can do,
to want to do all of them at once, which
is fun for like a week, and then you like,
you know, something changes in your routine and you're thrown
off and you just keep up starily or you get
(30:45):
really overwhelmed because you can't keep up with it. Um.
So I really recommend like first, I think when you
approach any new habits, especially this one, I think, really
think about what you want to get out of it
and what your purposes, so you have like the thing
is to keep you motivated to stick with it, and
then like set your goal around what your life actually is,
not the person you want to be, Like if you're
(31:07):
if you know you're not going to write for an
hour every day, like, don't make that the goal. Makes
your goal writing for fifteen minutes every day. I think
that's a good place to start. Um. And then you
know everything you do, everything you add, whether it's beautiful
highlighters and markers or washy tape for like cool spreads
should be to serve the journal and to serve you,
and like you shouldn't feel like you are beholden to it. Um.
(31:30):
So for me, it meant you. I gave myself a
rule that you can only start with like one pen,
no fancy spreads. You have to do this for a
month first to see if you actually like it, to
kind of commit to it. Once it's actually a habit
and you've built it into your day, then you can
go crazy. So that really helped me UM and I
definitely recommend it to people who tend to get like
get super excited about stuff and then like kind of
(31:51):
loose steam. Um so if that feels like you, I
think that would be a good recommendation that does feel
like I also just love what you have to say, Rachel,
and your recent post for BuzzFeed titled being organized is
a gift I give myself and other people that really
busts apart this mythology of someone is born organized in
(32:12):
type A or not. Can you tell me more about
about what your philosophy is on that front. Yeah, I realized,
you know, people, like a lot of people think I'm
very organized, and I think there's this idea, especially with
women on the internet, that like, oh, she's so effortlessly organized,
like good for her. I could never do that, And
I'm like, I'm actually not effortlessly organized. Like this is work,
Like it's a choice that I make and it's gotten
(32:34):
easier now that I've been doing it for longer, but
like I had to shift my mindset and not expect
that it should come easily, but to kind of see
so that there's real like labor here, there's emotional labor,
there's there's time involved in a mental shift that I
had to make to decide I want to be an
organized person because it makes me feel better, it makes
the people who depend on me feel better. Like that's
(32:56):
not effortless, and that's what is so great about it,
Like taking a choice to do this thing, Rachel, that
that choice comes with boundaries you've set so that you
can protect your own time and give yourself the time
and care that it takes to be taking care of
yourself in that way, because that's exactly how I feel it.
It's like, it definitely takes work to be organized, and
(33:19):
sometimes it means saying no to other people and protect
your ability to be organized. Part of it. What's funny,
Rachel is I saw you post that article on BuzzFeed
and I came very close to tagging Emily my number
one organized friend in the post. No, I mean my
whole I hear so much of myself and what you're saying.
I have this fantasy that one day I will wake
(33:40):
up and just my DNA will be different, right, I'll
be organized and together, and my apartment will be spotless
all the time and perfect hair, and my life will
be so great and I'll never spill whatever white and
blah blah blah blah. Like one day I'll wake up
and all these things I've always wanted to be different
will be different. But I love what you're saying is
that it's not about being born or guys are not
(34:00):
being organized. It's about choices, and it's about knowing yourself
and knowing, Hey, if I want to have this kind
of outcome, I know I'll never do I'll never be
the kind of person who does X, y Z. So
how can I make doing that work for me and
who I actually am? It's sort of it's sort of
a weird kind of self acceptance almost, and I think
there's something really empowering about realizing that you actually have
(34:23):
control over this situation, because I think it's very easy
to think like, oh, I'm just a complete mess, like
I'll never be able to shop up on time, Like
this is just who I am. I'm always late, and
it's like what if you we're on time? Though, Like
what if? What if? That? I feel I gotta say,
I feel personally attacked right now. I felt an intervention.
(34:46):
We all care about your bridge, we just want you
to be on time. I have no experience with you
being late, so I didn't realize that, Like I'm not
even sure that's true, I think she just talks publicly
about being late on more often than she's actually like.
But it is funny to have two type a's on
the line, because it's usually Be and I playing off
each other's difference. I don't even think of myself as
(35:07):
type he like I probably would call myself like T
B minus like I don't. I don't know, because I
don't feel like super stressed about it, Like I feel
like I'm pretty chill in general. Um So I don't know.
I think I have anything like I feel No, just kidding, no,
I think you're totally spot on that it's not that simple, right.
It's about effort. It definitely takes effort, but the beauty
(35:30):
is a little bit of effort to make the rest
of your life feel effortless. It really like it will
come back to you ten told I think that is
one of the most important things to think about. That,
like making these smaller decisions, it's a little bit of
an investment upfront, whether that's of time, whether it's a
mental energy. I talked about this to me atay, but like,
I don't want to spend you know, forty five minutes
trying to like find my prescription for my glasses and
(35:52):
then like calling my like finding the time to call
my eye doctor, and then like going to my eye
doctor and picking up the prescription. It's like when I
had the time so that I finally ordered new glasses,
Like that's so much work. That's such a waste of time.
Like if I just know where my glasses prescription is,
I don't have to do that. So like if I
take the twenty minutes up front to decide where I'm
going to put my glasses prescription and I put it there,
(36:14):
I save so much time in the long run, and
so much like stress and embarrassment and anxiety in the
long run. So it's very much just the like shift
of like okay, you know it's a it's as a
late gratification thing. I think, Um, once you do it
a few times, it's like, okay, hey wait, this actually
feels really nice, and it's like very much motivation to
keep doing it. Rachel, you really hit it on the head.
I think this idea that journaling being organized, figuring out
(36:37):
ways of documenting how we're showing up who we are. Um,
all of these can be sort of gifts that we
give ourselves in a form of self care. Thank you
so much. I'm I'm so thrilled at in awe of
here and you say this and my journey of being
an organized together person? Is it to start tomorrow? Yeah?
I hope it starts. I truly feel like having a
(36:57):
to do list really makes everything feel under control. So
start there, start with the list, it really helps. I
love it, Rachel. Where can folks find out more about
your book and you're writing and all the cool things
you're up to these days. The best place to find
me is my blog. It's th h e r e
w m dot com, the room r e w m
(37:19):
um and then that has linked to everything else. But
if you're on Twitter, you can find me at the
underscore room of that is also the same on Instagram,
So so this is the best place to start. Their
links my book there and kind of go from there.
I love it. Rachel. Thank you so much for being
with us today. You learned so much about the way
that journaling can really help us live our lives and
maybe make us more aspirational versions of ourselves if you're me,
(37:41):
maybe or make us more creative versions of I saw
that I am a journal geek myself, so I want
to hear from you, sminthy listeners. How has journaling played
a role in your life? Is this something that you've
had as a practice for a long time? Is it
something you wish you could do more of but it's
never been a have it that's really stuck? What do
(38:01):
you get out of journaling if you are a journal er?
And do you think of yourself as a writer, because
it took me twenty five years to see myself not
only as a journaler, but as a writer who has
something to say too? Or are you like me who
has been sort of a scattered creative type who is
kind of dipped in and out of the journaling vibe
a little bit and likes to think of yourself as
(38:22):
a journalier but can't quite get there on a regular basis.
How are you holding up? I want to see, like
what a journal of yours looks like. Oh, it's it's
it's chaos. It's it's chaos. I just think it's interesting
that you say creative type there too. Yeah, I mean
I think I think I think of myself as someone
who is just a thinker and a creator, and I'm
(38:47):
most happy when I'm creating things and sort of a chaotic,
scattered way. And so even though I know that you
are also a creative type, you're organized about it. And
so for me, creativity looks like scattered, looks like papers
on the floor. But I know what they all mean.
It looks like posted that if anyone else saw, they
would say, are you okay? But I get what they're saying. Well,
I think there's another episode to explore there at some
(39:08):
point in the near future. I like it awesome. Well,
thank you so much for listening. As always, we want
to continue this conversation with you. Hit us up on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Instagram at
stuff I've Never told you, and we love getting your emails,
so send them our way at mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com.
Hey, this is a bridget and this is Emily, and
you're listening to stuff mom never told you. And today
on the show, I am so thrilled to talk to
a topic that really must play that in my life
(00:25):
in various times, various ways, and that is journaling. Emily,
Do you keep a journal? Are you kidding me? My
heart is like beating out of my chest because I
love journaling so much. I have still in my possession
journals that I started in the third grade. And I
wrote pretty regularly from the third grade up until a
(00:45):
few years after college. But things have waned since then
because I learned that I was actually a writer. I
think we used the term a journal er to describe
ladies writing, especially women writing about their own personal lives,
but really what that makes you was a writer. And
once I actually reconcile that in my brain, I started
writing a lot more publicly and started processing some of
(01:06):
those thoughts out loud. Would you say that journaling helps
you discover yourself as a writer and take ownership over
that label. Yeah. I think my therapist actually was the
first person who said to me, oh, you're a writer
when I mentioned that I've always journaled as a way
to process my thoughts. So what I can't take credit
for because I definitely didn't come to that realization of
my own, but it helped me become a better writer
(01:28):
for sure. I love that. I love that. I think
that your spot on you talk about the way that
women's writing in journals and diaries is often sort of
looked at historically as less important than you know, men's
writing and newspapers or books or blah blah blah. It's
sometimes sort of talked about like it's not as important.
But what's actually really interesting about women and journaling is
(01:48):
that a lot of literary scholars are actually going back
and looking at the journals and diaries of really well known,
famous women writers and making arguments about who they were,
and sort of putting our journals in conversation with some
of their more popular writing. I love it. It It makes
them historically salient from a personal perspective, not just based
on their professional success, which we've always done that with
(02:11):
men's journals. If you think about the Founding Fathers, their
letters to the loved ones become anthologies. Their personal writings
and musings were seen as salient based on their historical
pre eminence and power. But now I love seeing that
that's being done with some of the most famous and
influential and incredible female writers from literary history. Totally shout
(02:34):
out to Marry Helen Washington, who I actually tate for
when I was working on my PhD at University of Maryland. Um,
I was trying to get my PhD in African American
women's literature. Never actually ended up happening, sorry, Mom and dad,
but I did meet Dr Helen Washington there and she
was great. Um. She's actually doing a lot of literary
scholarship looking at the diaries and journals a famous Black
(02:55):
women writer. She has this great biography of Ida B. Wells,
who is one of my UM literary heroes really, who
was sort of known for her writing and cataloging and
really early data journalism around lynch ings and racism in
the South. But what's very interesting is that even though
I to be Wells is known publicly for her writing
around topics like race, her diaries really illustrate a very
(03:18):
different side to her. Her diaries are full of writing
about romantic struggles, um conflicts she has with family money trouble,
which we were just talking about what our diaries contents
say about us off air and what did what did
we summarize your journaling? If my if, if the writings
of Bridget Todd was ever published, would probably be called
(03:40):
boy trouble and over traft fees the Bridget story. It's
like bank account fees and boys. I just think that's
so perfect, basically basically it um But yeah, what I
love about this is that it really shows that a
lot of women writers, it's in their journals, in their
diaries where they really feel free to be this this
(04:01):
different version of themselves, and sometimes that version of themselves
does not necessarily align with the writings they're known for
publicly right exactly, which makes me feel the sense of
freedom around being multifaceted women with lots of different kinds
of interests, like, for instance, Alice Dunbar, a poet and
activist and a d c native. In her personal diary
(04:22):
she wrote about her lesbian extramarital affairs, but which for
some reason didn't quite make it to her public writings
in quite as obvious away. So it's it feels like
your personal diary can be this escape where you are
free to be full of yourself. It's just for you
and now historians, God, I hope historians never look at
my diaries. Let me just make that completely clear on
(04:43):
the record, But historians are going back and better understanding
these talented women and understanding, you know, even if revealing
too much of their intimate lives could have cost them
their lives at one point in history, or we're selected poorly,
especially for black women like Alice Dunbar, not only in
(05:04):
behalf of all women, but on behalf of the black community.
Now at this time, we're able to understand her with
some more progressive and compassionate and well rounded perspective totally.
Another famous female writers whose diaries I was super super
interested in is Virginia Wolfs. Her diary was the last
of her writings to be published, and what I found
so fascinating about some of the excerpts of her diary
(05:27):
that I read while researching this podcast are the ways
that the political climate of the day that she was
living in, you know, World War two, Hitler, all of
that really kind of took over her life in a
kind of way. And so her diaries show someone who
is struggling to be creative, having these creative ups and downs,
but so much of her Diaries is about what's happening
(05:47):
with Hitler, what's happening with World War two, to the
point where it's clear that she's not able to really
function regularly and creatively the way that she wants to
because she is so consumed with this. Are you relating
to this? Oh, I'm I was relating to it hardcore, hardcore.
So this is in she's revising her novel The Years,
which went on to be tremendously successful, and all of
(06:12):
this is happening with World War Two in the Rise
of Hitler in the background. And so her diary excerpt
here I thought was really troubling, is one way to
say it. But you you are reading the words of
a woman on the verge of nervous collapse. Definitely, And
I mean again, I don't want to draw too many parallels,
but she has so many lines that I feel like
I relate to so much. This this one quote from
(06:32):
her injury. She's looking at, you know, all this stuff
happening in politics. She writes, this idea struck me. The
army is the body I am. The brain thinking is
my fighting. And that just gives me chills, because I
think if we didn't have her diaries, We would never
know that Virginia Wolfe was someone who for whom thinking
and writing and being a creative person, that was her
(06:53):
way of resisting and fighting back and you know, standing
up against what she was really watching on full with
these wide eyes kind of terrified. So we've already been
talking about the ways that these famous female writers journaling
have shown up in their lives and told us more
about their inner lives and really helped us understand their writing.
But what about the rest of us, What about us,
(07:13):
not famous writers or you know what if I'm not
Virginia wolf Right, that's kind of the high bar. It's
a high bar. Not all of us a Virginia wolf
But you know, what are the ways that journaling can
can really benefit us? So we're gonna dive into some
of that research right after this quick break and we're back.
(07:40):
We were just talking about how journaling has played at
in the lives of some of the most famous women
writers out there. But how can journaling help us? What
does the science say? Well, science has actually shown that
journaling is good for us. In fact, it's so well
regarded that there's a center for journal therapy dedicated exclusively
to the mental health benefits of regular journaling in therapeutic
(08:00):
and personal settings. Um, this was something that I found
kind of shocking. I've been an on agan Opican journal
or I certainly have found positive benefits, but I was
really surprised to see how overwhelming the sciences on this issue.
I felt going into this, like it was so woo woo,
you know, I was like, oh, you know your morning
pages or you know, a brain dumb and all the
(08:23):
sort of pop science that comes into planners and the
whole industry around journals can be really I'm very skeptical
of them. However, these are we're talking about peer reviewed
journal studies in the medical community that have some profound results.
So psychologists from the University of California were actually able
(08:44):
to investigate the effects of journaling by dividing twenty people
to their lab for a brain scan. Basically, they asked
some of these people to write about something really emotionally intense,
something that happened to them that was a big deal.
The others wrote about something neutral, just something basically what
happened to that they have no strong emotional attachment to.
And what they found is that those who shows to
(09:04):
write about the emotional experience showed more activity in the
part of the brain called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Basically,
this is a part of the brain that controls emotion
and mood. The study then showed that the folks who
wrote about these emotional experiences reported being more relaxed and
having a better mood. So, if you're writing about something
that actually has a big emotional significance to you, versus
(09:28):
writing about something that is just neutral, or is just blase,
or it's just casual, it actually can have a positive
impact on your mood. Right, And another researcher in the
field wasn't so convinced about this. Right, They said, Listen,
the mere act of writing isn't necessarily beneficial, especially if
you're writing about something like trauma, which can trigger distress
(09:49):
and physical and emotional arousal in the brain. That's not
so pleasant. Not all people will work through that distress therapeutically,
and basically it could leave you feeling really emotionally raw.
It's not just the act of writing, says psychologist Helen Marlowe.
She says, quote, I get concerned that if people just
write about traumatic events, they get raw and opened up
(10:09):
and aren't able to work through it on their own.
But that said, her study doesn't really provide any evidence
that writing poses a risk or any long term harm,
even if it does leave you feeling emotionally raw. I
can definitely identify with that skepticism around journaling. But here's
why you think she might be wrong. Basically, according to
this research, it really comes down to the kind of
journaling that people are doing. Um, there's evidence that the
(10:31):
nature of a person's writing is really key to tapping
into those health benefits. Researchers Susan Lutkendorff, PhD at the
University of Iowa did an intensive journaling study where she
found that really it's about how you're writing about these issues.
If you're writing about them and deriving some sort of
meaning from what you're writing about, meaning that you're you know,
being self critical or self reflective, you're using words that
(10:53):
show that you're processing these emotionally heavy things that you're
writing about, you actually can tap into these benefits. If
you're just writing about your emotions and you're just logging
them and not actually doing any of the work to
process them via writing, you actually end up fearing worse
than the folks in the study who wrote about neutral things,
And it's kind of similar if you think about it too,
(11:13):
parallels that have been drawn in the UH cognitive behavioral
therapy world. That same researcher, Penna Baker behind the UC studies,
said that people who talk about things over and over
in the same way aren't getting any better. There has
to be growth or change in the way they view
their experiences. So really it's not the act of writing,
(11:35):
it's the quality of the journaling that you're doing. Are
you analyzing your emotions, are you exploring your perspectives, and
are you uh finding or drawing new conclusions? That, to me,
is the beauty of journaling is that it's writing for
the explicit intent of exploration. If you're just writing to
chronicle or log or rant and rave, you might not
(11:56):
end up experiencing those positive benefits. The other thing that
I found most compelling, quite frankly, is that we're not
just talking about feeling better. The research shows in a
really compelling way that there are much more tangible, measurable
health benefits associated with journaling. Okay, when I first read this,
(12:16):
I thought it was BS, but I dug deep. I
looked at this study. I read it and it sounds legit.
According to a study by Joshua M. Smith, PhD, Arthur A. Stone, PhD,
and Adam Urrett's m d, journaling actually can improve your
immune system and can help you improve with symptoms of
things like asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. That sounds wild, right,
(12:40):
It sounds really really wild, But here's what they did.
So over the course of four months, patients in the
study were assigned to write either about the most stressful
event of their lives and this is a sample size
of seventy one was in that selection group, or about
emotionally neutral topics. So again, the control group here is writing.
It's not that they're not writing, it's that the quality
(13:01):
of the writing is different. The first group, the experimental group,
was asked to really write about an emotionally salient experience
in their lives, and the outcome over the course of
four months of journal treatment was that asthma patients in
the experimental groups showed improved lung function, whereas the control
group patients showed no change. Rheumatoid authoritis patients had a
(13:25):
similar demonstration of improvements in overall disease activity, and here
they write, you know, as a mean reduction disease severity
of twenty eight percent, which is significant versus the control
group patients didn't have any kind of symptom change whatsoever.
So if you look at the overarching sample size, all
(13:45):
the patients in the study, of those in the experimental
group experienced clinically relevant improvement based on journaling alone, whereas
only twenty four percent of the control group members experienced
improvement based on writing, but not in a sort of
emotionally significant way. When I first heard that, it blew
(14:06):
me away. But I have to say so, I have asthma.
If you've ever listened to me huff and puff or
sound hard to understand on this very podcast, you might
already know that. Um, and I know from having asthma.
When I'm stressed out, my symptoms are much much worse.
I have a much much harder time when when I'm stressed.
And so if we if we buy that journaling helps
(14:27):
lower stress levels, it doesn't actually sound that wild to
me when I think about it in that in that way,
that journaling visa V would then help improve lung function.
I just have never thought about it in that way. Yeah,
that's interesting. It's kind of like the link between cortisol,
the stress hormone, being prevalent in your system and journaling.
If journaling can reduce like the chemical release of cortisol
(14:50):
in your blood system, that has to have and I
don't know I would I'm a doctor, but I would
venture to guess that has ramifications for the rest of
your health system. So that's that's fascinating. Studies like this
have shown such correlations when it comes to cancer, when
it comes to a variety of mental and physical medical outcomes.
So if you really want to dive deeper into this,
(15:11):
you can explore the body of clinical, peer reviewed research
that's out there, linking journaling of all things and journaling
in a very specific way about emotionally relevant experiences like
boys and bank accounts, uh, but in a way that
helps you draw and explore different perspectives. Another fascinating aspect
of this is bringing in gender dynamics. According to Matthew Lieberman,
(15:34):
a psychologist and University of California, journaling actually benefits men
more than does women. He writes, men tend to show
greater benefits and that is a bit counterintuitive, but the
reason might be that women more freely put their feelings
into words, so that this is a less novel experience
for them. For men, it's more of a novelty. It's
almost like journaling can give men a safe space to
be vulnerable, to be emotional without judgment from our society,
(15:57):
which still unfairly judges men and holds them up to
this sort of toxic masculinity um socialization that that can
probably leave a lot of men feeling bottled up and
and not able to explore their emotions as easily. That
just seems to be like another side of the coin
that we opened the show talking about, where these black
women and women like Virginia Wolf perhaps did not feel
(16:19):
comfortable being their full selves in their published work because
of society. If you're a black woman, you have to
be this kind of woman, if you're a successful creative
writing woman, you have to be this kind of woman.
And their diaries real these services free place for them
to actually be their authentic full selves, And I wonder
if that's what's actually going on with these men as well.
That makes me feel a lot better about the kind
of banal things that I've written about in my denaries
(16:43):
over the years. So it kind of makes me feel
better because it's not a space for any Is that
a reflection of your professional ambition or your you know,
serious work at hand. It's really for you. It's your
identity in construction. That's how I feel about it. And
I'm so thrilled that we actually have someone who is
an spurred on the way that writing and journaling can
tap into that authentic self and who we are and
(17:05):
can really sort of be a gift that we give
to ourselves in terms of how we process, how we
show up in the world. And that is Rachel Wilkerson Miller,
the senior lifestyle editor of BuzzFeed dot com. Rachel, thank
you so much for joining us today. Thank you so
much for having me. I'm so honored. So, Rachel, you
basically have written the book on dot journaling that's not
just an expression, and you actually have a book called
(17:27):
Journaling a Practical Guide, which was released this July, and
it's actually a number one Amazon bestseller in the scrap
booking category. So congratulations, Thank you so much. So it
seems like journaling, particularly dot journaling, it's really having a
moment right now. Why do you think that is? Um?
I think there are a couple of things happening right now. First, um,
I think in the past year so we've seen sort
(17:49):
of a trend toward mindfulness from people for tour, people
thinking I need to not spend as much time on
my phone or watching Netflix. So I think the adult
coloring book trend was sort of the beginning of this,
and dot journaling is a very natural progression, but it's
a little more permanent, it's a little more self guided,
it's a little more thought involved, um, which I think
people are looking for a creative outlet and you know,
(18:11):
putting pen to paper is sort of a time tested
thing that feels really good. Um. But I also think
that specifically right now, you know, the political climate, no
matter what your views are, is really tough. People are
very stressed out. We is one of the interesting things
that is, no matter where you fall in the political spectrum,
you're probably convinced that the world is about to end.
And I think that like there's a drive there to
(18:32):
record history as that happened, sort of record your own
personnel history, or just to kind of um, you know,
make your mark on the world, and also kind of
practice self care at the same time. So I think
that probably the general anxiety and stress right now is
definitely leading people to kind of want to reflect and
that sort of thing. I think that is spot on,
and I'm intrigued. As a long time journal er myself,
(18:54):
I have always been writing in my sort of various
journals over the years, but I'm curious about what makes
dot journaling specifically effective or helpful for folks. Can you
just explain the basics of what dot journaling is all about? Yeah, totally,
And and one thing I will say to process this
is that it's really simple concept that is remarkably difficult
(19:15):
to explain. Um, So to listeners, kind of keep that
in mind. Um, it's it's hard to explain because it's
kind of like you can do whatever you want and
there are no rules. But so then how do you
explanage people? Um? But the basic idea is that you're
using kind of this structure or framework to guide your journal,
and it's very much you you created as you go,
like you would most journals, um, or even a planner
(19:38):
or something to that effect. So there's no like you
don't sit down and build out all of these cool
layouts well in advance, very much one page at a time.
But you're using like sort of basic things like simple
page numbers and index to make it really easy to
organize everything into one notebook. So previously, like I had
my to do list that I kept in one notebook,
(19:59):
and then I have like a diary type of journal
where other things. This kind of gives you a framework
for putting both things together, um, just by using different
symbols to like mark things down really quickly, kind of
categorize them at a glance. So if it has a
dot next to it, that means is that to do?
If it has a dash next to it, that means
it's a thought. So like you look at a page
from like today, for me, I just have like all
(20:21):
of my two does at the top. Later I'll put
in my diary entries using the dash and like that signals.
Like these are two different things, but they all kind
of taken together make up this thought journal. Um. Also
people are doing the dot grid style of notebook has
really caught on in the past couple of years, um,
and it makes it really easy to create all of
these different like very artistic spreads and layouts and calendar
(20:43):
within a notebook that you probably couldn't do. And as
easily in aligned journal or a blank journal. Um. So, yeah,
that's kind of the basics. I don't know if that
makes sense. Yeah, that makes so much sense. So you've
mentioned a couple of the reasons why someone might choose
dot journaling over regular journaling. Is is there are there
more specific things why dot journaling might be more effective
(21:04):
or a different kind of experience than just writing an
aligned notebook. Yeah, I think so. And I too have
been like a lifelong journal or and then I kind
of fell out of the habit when I got into
my twenties and it was, you know, with the advent
of blogs on the internet and texting my friends all day,
I kind of like ran out of theme to write
in a diary. Um, but this really helps me do it,
And I think there are a couple of reasons it's
(21:24):
really caught on and it makes you more helpful. Um. First,
the like using the dash to take to jot down
diary entries is remarkably liberating. Like, I think there's something
about approaching a blank page where you're like, I have
to write a diary entry that feels very like serious
and sort of official in a way that like just
writing quick notes is really easy and there's like less pressure,
(21:45):
So I found that really helpful. Um. And then by
adding page numbers to everything, and then like putting this
index to the beginning or the end, where essentially you
can kind of write the page numbers of all of
the important things, so like September habits, I can tell
you a page back on what page, like my reading
list for seventeen is on. It makes the diary or
the journal essentially searchable, so it's more functional than a
(22:08):
regular diary or to do list because it's like organized
in this way that makes it really easy to find
anything you care about. In fact, one of the most
interesting things I found when I was researching my book
is that a lot of diaries throughout history look remarkably
like dot journals, which I just made me really happy. Um.
So I was looking at a journal Mary Holyoke's diary
(22:29):
from the seventeenth century, and she uses a dash before
like all of her entry and then really short and
to the point, and she tracks really sort of dramatic
life events this way. She lost several children in childbirth
or they died as infants, and about it's really terrible,
and she just logs it the same way that she
logs a visit from a friend, um, which is sort
of shocking. I think now that we can give journals
(22:52):
in this place for like intense self reflection, which is
something that happened in the twentieth century. Um, But we're
kind of going back to basics here, where just blogging
these things kind of quick. All events are given equal
weight if you want them to be given equal weight.
I had this idea in my head that like a
diary is this very serious place where I write like
very serious books. And I felt a little weird, like
(23:14):
blogging major life events the same way that I would
log like maybe get milk one to the store today.
And then I realized, like, you know, all of those
things like makeup, who I Am in the or seventeen,
like that gives us the complete picture of who we are.
And as a matter of fact, like this is actually
how people have been using their diaries for centuries. So
it's very much a return to form in a lot
(23:35):
of ways. I find what is so fascinating about the
rise of journaling recently is that it really does feel
like a response to our hyper digital age. This is
one of the most analog solutions to our overwhelmed that
comes with the digital age. Do you feel liberated by
having a sort of more analog component to your life
(23:58):
or do you I'm curious, like, do you use Google Calendar?
You know what I mean, because I have gone all
in on the digital front and I've really left my
journaling behind, and um, yeah, so I still use Google
Calendar because I need it for work, and so that
just makes perfect sense to me that, like I'm going
to continue to use that. My meeting changed so much
(24:20):
I don't want to write them down and pen whenever.
Um but I've never found a to do list app
that like does everything that I wanted to do and
doesn't get essentially like discontinued after two years. So I've
always loved a pen and paper to do list. I've
never been satisfied using any other system. So, like, I
think for me, it's very much a return to basics
(24:40):
personally to that kind of thing, but also think more generally,
like it's a society, it's very much a return to basics,
like for atning things down, like taking notes. It's been
around for a while. Um see, I think that like
you can bind you, I really like having the pen
and paper option especially I think at the beginning of
the day and the end of the day, like this
(25:01):
is how I start my day and end my day
with pen and paper, not with my phone. And I
think that's really valuable, and I think a lot of
people are kind of feeling that if they want, even
if it's like fifteen or twenty minutes, just some time
that they're not looking at the screen. We'll be right
back with more from Rachel after this quick break and
(25:23):
we're back, but let's jump right back into our conversation
with Rachel. I don't know if you had a chance
to look at some of the research that we compiled,
but I definitely think that one of the positive benefits
of journaling every day is a little bit of a
meditation and getting away from screens and things like that. Um,
are there other benefits that you see from journaling? Maybe
personal benefits, professional benefits, creative benefits, what kind of other
(25:46):
in addition to just getting away from your screen for
fifteen minutes? God knows, it's so hard, But what other
kind of benefits have you seen folks have from journaling?
So I think using this system has definitely helped me
become more organized. I'm a generally pretty organized person. But like, again,
the searchable factor is so major that like I can
really track like my conversations with my boss and we
(26:08):
have our check in every week, Like I'm I'm better
at like following up on the things we discussed or
recording them because I have a better framework for it.
So I really love that aspect of it. Um It's
also helped me creatively. It's sort of taking me a
few steps, but basically after I really got into dot journaling,
then I started doing morning pages, which are outlined in
the book The Artist's Way, which is a whole sort
(26:29):
of different type of journaling, but for me was an
extension of this other thing I would and that has
been like a really incredible creative shift for me. And now,
in an effort to be on my phone lass, I'm
journaling like multiple times throughout the day. So my new
thing lately has been doing journaling pages with the end
of the day. So I was in a really bad
habit where I would get home from work, start looking
(26:49):
through Twitter, catching up on blogs, go to Reddit, and
like an hour and a half and go by and
I had to come from the couch. So my new
thing is when I get home immediately, I sit down
and just stream of conscious this journals for like twenty
or thirty minutes, and it has been a complete game changer.
Part of it is because when I'm walking home, I
usually get a ton of creative ideas and I'm like
really stimulated when I get home. But it's also helps
(27:10):
me sort of retrain my brain and break that habit
of like getting home and just scrolling through my phone
for hours. So it's actually I've been able to like
right a ton that way to capture the things that
I was leading on my way home or the podcast
I listen to when my walk home. It's just been
like such a wonderful ritual to build into my everyday routine.
So I feel like that's another really great way to
use a journal. You are giving me all of the
(27:32):
goals around creative work, because obviously, Bridget and I it's
our job to come up with topics for a podcast,
and I do a boatload of writing, which I know
you do as well, Bridget, outside of producing two podcasts
a week, Honestly, finding a way to optimize your creative
energy not only to write the things you want to
(27:53):
write about, but also to come up with and be
inspired when it comes to what you want to explore next.
It's a challenge, um completely, especially to harness your own
creative energy and figure out what works for you. Like
I was saying, we've gone totally digital, and now I'm wondering,
should we incorporate more pen to paper into our workflow?
Do you feel like as a creative writer, and maybe
(28:16):
for other creative entrepreneurs listening, that mixing up your pen
to paper sort of more analog methodologies with the digital
ways that many of us work now is important. Yeah,
I mean I found it to be so helpful. So basically,
when I started like trying to journal more, I was
running out of ideas and that was what led me
to start writing out Essentially, you know it's for future
essays in a journal, and there's something for me. Like
(28:38):
I know that there's sort of the mythology around like
a blank page being really stressful, but I kind of
a blank journal page are less stressful than a blank
Google doc. Like for some reason, I have this sense
of like this is just for me. I don't need
to show it to anyone else, Like I can write
whatever I want here and it feels like so much
less pressure. So I've been doing that occasionally, and then
(28:59):
like when I go back, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna
write yesterday. Now I'm going to type it into a
Google Dog. I'll go back and it's like, oh my gosh,
I wrote three pages. The bulk of it is done,
and I didn't even sort of realize that. I didn't
even feel it. I want to do that. We need now,
I really recommend it. I can't help but lift up
a lot of the things that you're saying for me,
um as a you know, a creative professional, like all
(29:21):
of us are in this conversation. Um, I am someone
who is me. I know that, well all this put
it this way. Rachel from being in your home, I
know you're a very organized person. Emily is also very organized.
There there are also those of us who are creative
professionals who are not Type A, perhaps for type B,
Type C, type D sort of fly by the seat
(29:42):
of our pants creative type. And I think listening to
what you're saying that the one of the benefits of
creative journaling is that it helps you follow up on
those bursts of creative energy. Right, Like, I am someone
who I just get an idea and I'm like, oh,
this is my idea, and then if I don't write
it down, it's gone in my head and it's just
you know, it's it's just gone. Um. So I love
(30:03):
this idea of journaling as an intentional way of focusing
that sort of manic creative energy so that you can
actually capitalize on it and do something with it other
than just forget about it in the shower the next day. Exactly. Yeah.
So I guess my question is for those of us
who are not super organized like myself, Um, what are
(30:24):
the suggestions that you have for really making this habit
work for us? So, I think the best advice I
can give you is start small, don't go overboard. I
think you could be really tempting when you're looking at
like all of these cool things that you can do,
to want to do all of them at once, which
is fun for like a week, and then you like,
you know, something changes in your routine and you're thrown
off and you just keep up starily or you get
(30:45):
really overwhelmed because you can't keep up with it. Um.
So I really recommend like first, I think when you
approach any new habits, especially this one, I think, really
think about what you want to get out of it
and what your purposes, so you have like the thing
is to keep you motivated to stick with it, and
then like set your goal around what your life actually is,
not the person you want to be, Like if you're
(31:07):
if you know you're not going to write for an
hour every day, like, don't make that the goal. Makes
your goal writing for fifteen minutes every day. I think
that's a good place to start. Um. And then you
know everything you do, everything you add, whether it's beautiful
highlighters and markers or washy tape for like cool spreads
should be to serve the journal and to serve you,
and like you shouldn't feel like you are beholden to it. Um.
(31:30):
So for me, it meant you. I gave myself a
rule that you can only start with like one pen,
no fancy spreads. You have to do this for a
month first to see if you actually like it, to
kind of commit to it. Once it's actually a habit
and you've built it into your day, then you can
go crazy. So that really helped me UM and I
definitely recommend it to people who tend to get like
get super excited about stuff and then like kind of
(31:51):
loose steam. Um so if that feels like you, I
think that would be a good recommendation that does feel
like I also just love what you have to say, Rachel,
and your recent post for BuzzFeed titled being organized is
a gift I give myself and other people that really
busts apart this mythology of someone is born organized in
(32:12):
type A or not. Can you tell me more about
about what your philosophy is on that front. Yeah, I realized,
you know, people, like a lot of people think I'm
very organized, and I think there's this idea, especially with
women on the internet, that like, oh, she's so effortlessly organized,
like good for her. I could never do that, And
I'm like, I'm actually not effortlessly organized. Like this is work,
Like it's a choice that I make and it's gotten
(32:34):
easier now that I've been doing it for longer, but
like I had to shift my mindset and not expect
that it should come easily, but to kind of see
so that there's real like labor here, there's emotional labor,
there's there's time involved in a mental shift that I
had to make to decide I want to be an
organized person because it makes me feel better, it makes
the people who depend on me feel better. Like that's
(32:56):
not effortless, and that's what is so great about it,
Like taking a choice to do this thing, Rachel, that
that choice comes with boundaries you've set so that you
can protect your own time and give yourself the time
and care that it takes to be taking care of
yourself in that way, because that's exactly how I feel it.
It's like, it definitely takes work to be organized, and
(33:19):
sometimes it means saying no to other people and protect
your ability to be organized. Part of it. What's funny,
Rachel is I saw you post that article on BuzzFeed
and I came very close to tagging Emily my number
one organized friend in the post. No, I mean my
whole I hear so much of myself and what you're saying.
I have this fantasy that one day I will wake
(33:40):
up and just my DNA will be different, right, I'll
be organized and together, and my apartment will be spotless
all the time and perfect hair, and my life will
be so great and I'll never spill whatever white and
blah blah blah blah. Like one day I'll wake up
and all these things I've always wanted to be different
will be different. But I love what you're saying is
that it's not about being born or guys are not
(34:00):
being organized. It's about choices, and it's about knowing yourself
and knowing, Hey, if I want to have this kind
of outcome, I know I'll never do I'll never be
the kind of person who does X, y Z. So
how can I make doing that work for me and
who I actually am? It's sort of it's sort of
a weird kind of self acceptance almost, and I think
there's something really empowering about realizing that you actually have
(34:23):
control over this situation, because I think it's very easy
to think like, oh, I'm just a complete mess, like
I'll never be able to shop up on time, Like
this is just who I am. I'm always late, and
it's like what if you we're on time? Though, Like
what if? What if? That? I feel I gotta say,
I feel personally attacked right now. I felt an intervention.
(34:46):
We all care about your bridge, we just want you
to be on time. I have no experience with you
being late, so I didn't realize that, Like I'm not
even sure that's true, I think she just talks publicly
about being late on more often than she's actually like.
But it is funny to have two type a's on
the line, because it's usually Be and I playing off
each other's difference. I don't even think of myself as
(35:07):
type he like I probably would call myself like T
B minus like I don't. I don't know, because I
don't feel like super stressed about it, Like I feel
like I'm pretty chill in general. Um So I don't know.
I think I have anything like I feel No, just kidding, no,
I think you're totally spot on that it's not that simple, right.
It's about effort. It definitely takes effort, but the beauty
(35:30):
is a little bit of effort to make the rest
of your life feel effortless. It really like it will
come back to you ten told I think that is
one of the most important things to think about. That,
like making these smaller decisions, it's a little bit of
an investment upfront, whether that's of time, whether it's a
mental energy. I talked about this to me atay, but like,
I don't want to spend you know, forty five minutes
trying to like find my prescription for my glasses and
(35:52):
then like calling my like finding the time to call
my eye doctor, and then like going to my eye
doctor and picking up the prescription. It's like when I
had the time so that I finally ordered new glasses,
Like that's so much work. That's such a waste of time.
Like if I just know where my glasses prescription is,
I don't have to do that. So like if I
take the twenty minutes up front to decide where I'm
going to put my glasses prescription and I put it there,
(36:14):
I save so much time in the long run, and
so much like stress and embarrassment and anxiety in the
long run. So it's very much just the like shift
of like okay, you know it's a it's as a
late gratification thing. I think, Um, once you do it
a few times, it's like, okay, hey wait, this actually
feels really nice, and it's like very much motivation to
keep doing it. Rachel, you really hit it on the head.
I think this idea that journaling being organized, figuring out
(36:37):
ways of documenting how we're showing up who we are. Um,
all of these can be sort of gifts that we
give ourselves in a form of self care. Thank you
so much. I'm I'm so thrilled at in awe of
here and you say this and my journey of being
an organized together person? Is it to start tomorrow? Yeah?
I hope it starts. I truly feel like having a
(36:57):
to do list really makes everything feel under control. So
start there, start with the list, it really helps. I
love it, Rachel. Where can folks find out more about
your book and you're writing and all the cool things
you're up to these days. The best place to find
me is my blog. It's th h e r e
w m dot com, the room r e w m
(37:19):
um and then that has linked to everything else. But
if you're on Twitter, you can find me at the
underscore room of that is also the same on Instagram,
So so this is the best place to start. Their
links my book there and kind of go from there.
I love it. Rachel. Thank you so much for being
with us today. You learned so much about the way
that journaling can really help us live our lives and
maybe make us more aspirational versions of ourselves if you're me,
(37:41):
maybe or make us more creative versions of I saw
that I am a journal geek myself, so I want
to hear from you, sminthy listeners. How has journaling played
a role in your life? Is this something that you've
had as a practice for a long time? Is it
something you wish you could do more of but it's
never been a have it that's really stuck? What do
(38:01):
you get out of journaling if you are a journal er?
And do you think of yourself as a writer, because
it took me twenty five years to see myself not
only as a journaler, but as a writer who has
something to say too? Or are you like me who
has been sort of a scattered creative type who is
kind of dipped in and out of the journaling vibe
a little bit and likes to think of yourself as
(38:22):
a journalier but can't quite get there on a regular basis.
How are you holding up? I want to see, like
what a journal of yours looks like. Oh, it's it's
it's chaos. It's it's chaos. I just think it's interesting
that you say creative type there too. Yeah, I mean
I think I think I think of myself as someone
who is just a thinker and a creator, and I'm
(38:47):
most happy when I'm creating things and sort of a chaotic,
scattered way. And so even though I know that you
are also a creative type, you're organized about it. And
so for me, creativity looks like scattered, looks like papers
on the floor. But I know what they all mean.
It looks like posted that if anyone else saw, they
would say, are you okay? But I get what they're saying. Well,
I think there's another episode to explore there at some
(39:08):
point in the near future. I like it awesome. Well,
thank you so much for listening. As always, we want
to continue this conversation with you. Hit us up on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Instagram at
stuff I've Never told you, and we love getting your emails,
so send them our way at mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com.
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