I recently realised something. My journal format sucked. Staying up to date was sucking the life out of me. I was going through the motions every time I opened up Evernote and getting little out of the process of tracking each of my trading days.
Fixed formats stifle you.
Yeah. I said it. I used to be an advocate of having a daily form that needed to be completed before and then finalised after each session. I used a fixed format with checklists to complete before and after the trading day but I found that it never really made me think of the things it was intended to make me think of. It felt like I was being organised in theory, but in reality, I was just completing it like a robot. It got to a point where I was pre-filling the documents ahead of the session. That isn't a good place to be.
I wanted a so-called 'second brain'.
There is more to my life than simply trading all day every day, but if you were to look at the previous incarnation of my journal, you probably wouldn't believe me. I wanted a place to capture, collate and keep information in a natural, effective way. For that reason, I've adopted Tiago Forte's PARA Method.
The first few days have been awesome.
I feel like I'm getting more out of my journal. I'm able to capture thoughts, voice notes, coding stuff, trading content and other ideas and put them into places that feel relevant. I don't feel like I'm shoehorning things into places that are inappropriate. Hopefully, this sense of improvement continues into the future.