You Have To Look Back To Move Forward

A daily retrospective to set context going forward into a new day.

Adding A Wrinkle To My Daily And Weekly Notes

I was reading Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s nesslabs.com blog, and this post got my attention: Plus Minus Next journaling.

It starts:

At this point, most people know about the benefits of journaling. Read any self-development blog and you will stumble on at least one article telling you why keeping a journal will change your life.

The problem? Most people can’t build the habit. We know we should keep a journal. But we don’t know how to keep a journal. I have tried most of the journaling methods out there—one line a day, free writing, doodling, the bullet journal—and none worked for me. None of them felt goal-oriented enough, and some of them required too much work.

I almost laughed, because I use a daily, weekly, and (sort of) monthly journal technique. I almost laughed because journaling is central to my work and studies.

She continued with ‘one special trick’ to get over the hump:

So I made my own journaling method. It’s dead simple, it may not work for everyone, but it’s perfect for me and I’ve managed to stick with it. I call it “plus minus next” journaling—and it does what it says on the tin.

What worked, what didn’t, what’s next

This method can work with whichever medium you prefer, but since I’m a big fan of handwriting, let’s pretend you have a notebook. Open your notebook, write the date at the top of a page, and draw three columns. At the top of each column, write “+” for what worked, “–” for what didn’t go so well, and “→” for what you plan to do next. This is what it should look like:

Then, fill it with events from the past week.

What’s The Wrinkle?

About a year ago, I adopted the idea (proposed by who I can’t recall) of looking back each morning and answering two questions: ‘what was the best thing about yesterday’, and ‘what did I work on yesterday?’. This was placed above the various notes and scribblings that occur throughout the day. These first sections are something I write first thing in the morning. A daily retrospective to set context going forward into a new day.

Here’s a typical example from the era:

A quiet day, honestly.

By October that had coalesced into a single ‘Yesterday’ section. And by December, it had grown to two sections: ‘yesterday’, and ‘today’:

So, by December 2024 I had slowly evolved into two thirds of Le Cunff’s ‘Plus Minus Next’ model on my daily notes. Note that she suggests the use for weekly notes, but I find a daily reckoning very grounding.

So, I’ve now tweaked my daily and weekly notes to reflect her suggestion of a distinction between plus and minus, and simply treat ‘today’ as equivalent to her next:

(Note: I include dates in the yesterday and today because I had occasionally wanted to search on fields like +yesterday and I couldn’t tell which yesterday. Hence, the date.)

I have also made the transition on weekly notes, but that will take a few weeks to settle down:

Conclusion

Le Cunff’s post was the final tipping point before evolving from a one-liner every morning to a full-fledged diary system.

Thanks, Anne-Laure!