I keep a daily journal. I’ve been pretty consistent about writing a daily log of what I got up to for a little over three and a half years now, but I also have entries on and off from a few periods in my life.
(See previously. Completely aside: I’d totally forgotten that The Crow Road is why I got back on this habit. See! Writing is cool! I would have forgotten that detail forever if I hadn’t revisited this article!)
This might sound obvious, but when I’m a part of something interesting, I elaborate on it more in my journal, because there are more interesting details I want to be able to reflect on further down the road. Most fun days simply have a large number of details that I’ll end up writing down.
This means that you can roughly correlate how much fun I’m having on any given day by how long the journal entry is. “Woke up at a reasonable hour. Got into the office. Did [list of work goes here]. Home, ordered pizza, watched YouTube with M, bed at a reasonable hour.” Sure, there’s a lot that’s rewarding in there — I get to spend time with my family! I have a really great commute! — but this isn’t a day where I’m maximizing the amount of fun I have.
I also keep a document that I call the “perspective” doc. These are things I want to make sure I’m constantly reflecting on; things I never want to forget. One entry on that list is a goal of mine:
Make every day a full page day.
