Designing Your Life

Create a Good Time Journal

Instructions

Track your daily activities
Write down a list of all your primary daily activities, both personal and work-related. Also, take note of those times when you’re most engaged and energized and what you’re doing during those times. Do this daily for 3 weeks.
Reflect on your activities at the end of the week
At the end of every week, go through your daily logs and take note of any trends or insights. For example, which activities do you find engaging and energizing? Which activities are not engaging/ energizing? This reflection will help you identify the activities that motivate you.
Add more details to your list of activities
After the first week, take a deeper look at your list and be more specific with the way you describe your engaging or energizing moments. For example, instead of writing “Enjoyed staff meeting today,” you can write “I enjoyed it when others recognized my ideas during the staff meeting.” Being more precise increases your awareness of the behavior that energizes you.
Use the AEIOU method to make accurate observations of your daily activities
Focus on the Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users by asking yourself these questions. Activities—What activities was I doing? What role was I playing? Environment—What kind of place was I in? How did it make me feel? Interactions—What or who was I interacting with? Was it a formal or informal interaction? Objects—Was I using any objects or devices that supported my feeling of engagement? Users—Who else was around? Did they make it a positive or negative experience?