by Amy-Grace Bessick
Picking up a pen and paper in this digitally advanced world feels archaic but it is essential. An Australian Illustrator and YouTuber that goes by the name Struthless is someone whose videos I find not only entertaining but refreshingly informative and practical. With an eccentric appearance and a kind demeanour, it’s easy to grow fond of Struthless. I am personally a fan of his advice style of content. I have found a lot of his tips to be quite useful and his life advice, thought provoking. One of his videos, titled The Journaling Techniques That Changed my Life, has indeed impacted my lifestyle.
Out of the nine journaling techniques that Struthless shares in his video, which he has developed over 12 years, I personally have used variations of each of them but I have found four of these techniques particularly useful. As someone who easily is overwhelmed by the list of things that life constantly demands, I find journaling both a practical and personal aid.
The four techniques that are Struthless approved are Journaling for clarity, Journaling for when bad things happen, Journaling for to-do lists and direction, and finally, journaling for decision making. For my personal university student lifestyle, these are the techniques that I have found useful and easy to achieve.
Journaling for clarity is, as the title suggests, attempting to make a situation you experienced or your own racing thoughts organised. You simply just write, stream of consciousness style, letting out every thought and emotion you are having. I find that after sessions of this, I feel lighter, like all the brain fog has lifted.
Journaling for ‘when bad things happen’ is a brilliant reflective approach to looking at a situation objectively. Prompts such as ‘How would I comfort a friend or loved one if this happened to them’ and ‘How is this the best thing that has ever happened to me’, really allows for me to respond to what is happening after I have reacted.
The third technique, journaling to-do lists and direction is the one technique that I definitely use the most. Trying to organize the different tasks we have in our every day lives as humans along with, in my case, university assignments and in other cases, work priorities, can all be overwhelming. That is why it is important to write down all the things you need to accomplish and once that is done, you audit it. Determine what is crucial and seeks your attention as soon as possible. Struthless takes this further by applying the ‘work smarter not harder’ concept to this technique, giving us prompts such as ‘what 20 percent of the activities are producing 80 percent of the results’.
And finally, journaling for decision making that is efficient so you are not left pondering the “what if’s” and outcomes of your choices on a particular decision. He adds a time-based prompt ‘If I had to make this decision in 60 seconds, what would I choose?’ followed by ‘Could I live with this outcome?’ and ‘What would this look like if it were easy?’. This allows for you to not only come to a decision, but to go with your instincts, your gut feeling, and the choice that you feel the most assured about.
These four techniques are what I found helpful but I do highly recommended checking out the original video as well as Struthless’ other videos and content, definitely a creator to keep an eye on. Besides providing an answer to the question ‘How do I actually journal?’, Struthless reminded me the value of this practice. Checking in with oneself through the written word is powerful and should be encouraged. There is something undeniably special about flipping through old journals and seeing how your past-self processed life, how they got excited over things you may no longer be interested in, or what was so vitally important, that the only thing they could do, is pick up a pen and put it to paper. It is a chance for you to undo the knots that are forming in your mind, it clears the brain fog and, in many occasions, grants you the solutions you need in order to do what needs to be done.
So, I encourage you, next time your thoughts seem to be overwhelming or simply when you feel inclined to reach for your phone to type out a checklist, remember there is an alternative called journaling and it is so much more satisfying to cross off a task on paper than it is to simply click and watch a pixelated line have all the fun.