The Thinking Journal Weekly Round Up

In my last blog post I shared my daily review process for continuous improvement. It was called The Thinking Journal and it is a part of a process designed to make sure that I continually improve each and every day. My definition of continuous improvement is to must make sure I am working in line with my life purpose, have meaning and become a better man – every day.

If you stop learning, you stop creating history and become history – Vadim Kotelnikov

At the end of each week I ensure that I go through all of my thinking journal notes and create action plans. I call this part of the process the imaginatively titled The Weekly Round Up, catchy isn’t it!

If things seem under control, you are not going fast enough – Mario Andretti

If you have read The Thinking Journal you will remember that I carry out various processes before I go to bed, at night, and I want to focus on two in particular. They are What Do I Need? And What Support Do I Need? I write in my thinking journal, each night, because the process helps improve the likelihood that the words will stick in my mind and eventually become meaning and understanding. This to me is progress. But sometimes I need to do far more than just write. I also have to take tangible action and it is the information penned underneath these two parts of the process that contains the call to arms.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together – Vincent Van Gogh

To help you understand, more clearly, let me use an example straight out of my own process.

1. I was worrying about income and I wrote about the worry in my thinking journal. When I carried out my weekly review I noted down an action to create a mind map of how to create multiple streams of income. This action was placed directly onto my To Do List.

2. I had been working hard to write the very best content that I could think of for my blog. I was creating 100 consecutive blog posts and yet my readership was not growing because I was not marketing my product. I wrote about this in my thinking journal and during my weekly review I placed an action onto my To Do List.

3. In my marriage I was terrible at balancing my work with my family obligations. As I worked harder and harder whilst simultaneously falling in love with my new girlfriend, I was worried that I would repeat the same mistakes. I noted an action to talk to my girlfriend about this during my weekly review. I placed an action onto my To Do List.

4. I wasn’t happy with the way that I had behaved in a discussion with my son and wrote about it in my thinking journal. I noted that I had learned a new communication technique while reading People Skills by Robert Bolton. I then placed an action on my To Do List to speak to my son about this.

As you can tell there are a lot of tasks being added to my To Do List, but without the weekly round up these important issues would be forgotten about and replaced by latest worry and strife. The weekly round up is as critical as the thinking journal activity itself – another link in the chain of continuous improvement.

I now have something else to write on my to do list – Write a blog post about my To Do List!

What do you think about the process of continuous improvement and how it applies to life?

Inspiration

Once I had decided to share my Thinking Journal process with you I just kept writing and the Weekly Round Up was the next logical step. When looking for material for blog posts it is always a good idea to think about longevity. Processes, whether in business or life, offer longevity because you can divide the information into bite size chunks of information just like I have done with my own process for continuous improvement.

Photos courtesy of Woodleywonerworks  & Juhansonin (cc @ flickr.com)