23Jun16 | 90% of our problems are not new

Recently I was thinking about how I encounter the same types of problems I used to go through from 2, 3, or 4 years ago. Noticing how I used to react to each of them versus how I react now.

Many problems take tolls on us at different times of our lives, but only through these do we get better and stronger when dealing with the same stuff over and over.

So I developed a practice which I believe should help me not forget the lessons I learn along the way. My goal was to always keep context, and never lose attention of my progress when it comes to dealing with certain issues in my life. I found that as long as I don’t forget, I will be fine. Only through keeping the bigger context, do we get better & better at dealing with whatever problems that get thrown our way. But that’s not always the case, we’re often struck by our very own biological limits, and we don’t remember the lessons we learnt. Albeit our growth & progress, there are certain nuances that are often lost. So sometimes along the way I decided to take extensive notes on how I responded, how it turned out, how I failed, and what I learned.

And to my surprise it worked. Whenever I am bound to face a problem that seems to have happened before, first thing I check is what my older self have to say about it.

And what I noticed is, you lose parts of your identity when you’re under stress. You’re more prone to be affected by external factors, which in many cases are factors you don’t have control over. Because problems have the tendency to bring out the worst of us, the more we think about them, the bigger they seem to be. BUT, having your older self assure you that we’ve been through it before, is like having your close pal, which knows all about you, and is always helping you not lose focus. So it’s a good thing to track progress and take notes of lessons you learn along the way.

And for that particular reason I think of journaling as therapy, because it really is.

I believe journaling is the closest thing we have to time travel.

And I believe we should start taking notes early, so we can build upon ideas over time.

Build a library of ideas that you can save easily and instantly search for the rest of your life.

A beautiful thing about taking notes is that they’re like seedlings. Seedling notes need time to grow into timeless ideas. You don’t know which piece of thought you will need at what time and that’s the beauty of it!

Maintaining an efficient note-taking system will enable you to make sense of your scattered thoughts across different points in time. I have spent a better part of the last few years trying to make my note-taking system as efficient as possible, to help me achieve this very goal.

And now the countdown has started for our new journaling app: Hyperspaces.

We looked into all the ways that make keeping a daily journal fun & easy, and we came up with a science-backed method that helps track every part of your day: Habits, Events, & Progress.

Waiting list for Hyperspaces is now live on the website: