Get sh*t done.
The idea for the Doary came from several tangents. First, in my quest for learning but actually achieving those goals, I looked to entrepreneurs; many of whom journal each day to digest and reflect on what they had achieved and as a habit forming ritual.
Do more of what you love to do – make it a habit.
Secondly, struggling to commit to learning in today’s digital distractions, a more binding commitment; making a contract with yourself and a way of tracking it. A study in 20121 showed that repeating a focused action consistently can make it become automatic — by making it a habit, it is not a chore.
Get back to basics
And having served many years in the creative industry working almost exclusively on screens and keyboards, going back to doodling and sketching ideas on paper before committing to a digital entity helped me think outside the box and free my mind.
Why write by hand? Isn’t there an app for that?
There have been many studies since the dawn of the digital age that show ‘analog’ methods are still important. Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer2 observed that when making notes, the processing that occurs will improve learning and retention — it takes a more concentrated effort of hand-eye coordination than
‘blind typing’ on a keyboard.
Research from Harvard demonstrated that doodling helped increase memory retention by 29%3 on the task you’re doing. Writing / drawing by hand has also been shown to reduce stress4.
Doary offers a plan to achieve this, in a simple and effective way.
Why 30 / 100 days?
Malcolm Gladwell famously proclaimed it takes 10,000 hours of “Deliberate Practice” to become world-class in any field. As CodingVC5 determined, “in most disciplines, it only takes one hundred hours of active learning to become much more competent than an absolute beginner.”
Whilst we have a full length Doary of 100 days, we have a shorter, 30-day habit forming edition that could kick start your journey.
Focus and Manifestation
This is a combination of habit forming by repetitive action, and then there’s commitment – take for example the story of actor and comedian Jim Carrey writing himself a cheque for $10,000,0006 dated for thanksgiving 1995, which he kept in his wallet to give him focus, and was able to cash it just before that date when he made Dumb & Dumber (smart move!).
Would it have been the same if he’d made a digital note somewhere amongst many others on his phone? As Oprah Winfrey surmised from this:
“If you can see it and believe it, it’s a lot easier to achieve it.”
Get started
Do the Doary
Your regular commitment to success
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3505409/
- The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking – Pam A. Mueller, Daniel M. Oppenheimer – https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614524581
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of-doodling-2016121510844
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2076785/?page=1
- https://www.codingvc.com/the-100-hour-rule/
- http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/what-oprah-learned-from-jim-carrey-video