Editing The Pen Addict 443/transcript (section)

== Daily Theme Pages ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Let's take a break and we can get back into this because we should talk about the daily pages, too, and how you have those set up. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace. They will help you create that website for your next idea or project. And maybe the beginning of a new year is the time for you to finally set that project up that you've been working on. You know, like, people, we're talking about it, right? People like change. It's a time for reflection. Maybe you have something you've been wanting to get into action this year. Or maybe at some point over the next few months, you know, part of your yearly theme will enable you to need a website of your own. Well, let me tell you why Squarespace is the best place for that. But if you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, maybe you want to create a site for a business or maybe an online event that you're running, no matter what it is, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. You don't have to install, patch, or upgrade anything because they've got it all covered for you. Squarespace really do take care of everything you're going to need with building your own site. And if you do have any problems at all, you can reach out to their 24-7 customer support team for help. I was talking about the themesystem.com earlier, which is the website where I've laid out kind of what the theme system is all about, included images, videos, links. I did all of that on Squarespace. So easy. And if I want to update it or add anything to the site, I can do that on my iPad now. The fantastic iPad app that they have that allow me to manage my website and give me some real great tools to be able to update it and all that stuff. It's super awesome. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict. When you're in that trial, you can build your entire site. And then when you're ready to launch it to the world, you just sign up one of their plans. But if you use the code penaddict to check out, you'll also get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. That's squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the daily theme pages are what a lot of people would consider or call a habit tracker. Yeah. Never in a million years would I thought I would enjoy using or would actually use a habit tracker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Never.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Never. Because habit trackers, Myke, in my head, were for tracking how much water I drank today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tracking how much I stood. Tracking how much I ate or what I ate.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's stuff that I wouldn't do or I would want technology to do for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Right. So just like the journal pages, I had to rethink if I'm going to use this, what would I make this into that would work for me? So again, I had to sit and like really think. And once I started to realize, okay, what constitutes a good day for me? Mm-hmm. What are the things that I do every day or want to do every day or come about naturally every day or think about every day personally? Do I want to track? So I came up with eight things. This list has been pretty consistent through my journals through the years. I think I maybe tweaked one or two things over the years, but it's never been much different. So the eight things I track are love. You know, this is kind of like the one personal. Well, I guess there's probably more things in there. But this is kind of like the personal family, you know, life related thing where a lot of the journal pages are kind of more business related, but they do get personal sometimes. So love, you know, was, you know, did I share the love? Did I have love in my heart today? You know, did, you know, do I, you know, live that, you know, life that I want to live? And the second one is laugh. You know, did I smile today and laugh today and giggle today and like not take myself too seriously today? The third one is create. Did I make something today? And that could be, you know, just it could be anything. It could be writing a blog post. It could be, you know, deciding on a product color, you know, that type of thing. So that's important to me, you know, because I'm like I've said before, I'm only as good as my next ideas, right? So did I make something today? Refresh. Did I take time for myself today? Like did I, you know, just take a break for a while today? Sometimes you just get head down for hours. And did you just chill out and, you know, watch the Premier League today for a while or, you know, do something like that? Play a video game. Those types of things. Self-improvement. That is did I further my education today kind of topic, right? Did I when I read, did I am I reading for refresh like the entertainment, which is one part of reading books? Or did I read to like figure out and like maybe learn some different things today? So the self-improvement is did I work on myself today? You know, that could be cover a lot of different things. The next one is share. Did I share other people's work today? So I'm a big promoter of everyone. Like I like to share others work. I like to raise people, raise people up and, you know, make sure they're getting, you know, their work shared. You know, I have a platform that's large enough to be able to make a difference. And did I use that in a valuable fashion for others?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The kind of the counterpoint to that one is the next one, which is promote. Did I share myself today? Right. So like part of my job is promoting what I do, whether I like it or not. Right. So I think it's good to have a dedicated line for, hey, did I, you know, share enough of myself today? Like, don't be shy about promoting your own work. And the last one is ideas. Did I come up with anything new today? Right. Did I come up with, you know, a product sketch, blog post idea, like all these things that we've covered. But like, did I did I come up with anything new today? So it's those eight things and those work really, really well for me. They're kind of ranked in importance. Like, by default, I didn't really think about that until I was looking at it last night. And I've been doing this for a while. I was like, you know, love, laugh, create, refresh, self-improvement. Those are kind of all the top ones. And then the share, promote and ideas are kind of all the businessy ones, you know, like down below. And that's kind of the kind of the right order, I think. So that's what I do. And then for each circle. So Myke has designed the circle. It's a circle with a line through it. So I either have zero, basically unfilled, half filled or completely filled. So completely filled is I've done the best job. Half filled is like I did something for that. And blank is I didn't do anything towards that. So I have I'm looking at so I started this theme system journal on December 14th. And I have not done a lot of self-improvement. And like that's something like you can see visually because every day I use a different colored pencil to mark these in. I'm use the the Tombow Erojitin, one of the sets. I forget which volume I have. So it's 30 colored pencils. So I have a system in my colored pencil box to make sure I don't use the same one twice until I get through all of them. So, you know, I'm just weird that way. So every day is in a different color and you get a pretty good grasp of like, hey, wow, like the self-improvement stuff I am super lacking in, you know, like that's not cool. But it was also a lot around the holidays. Like there are definitely days where like over the past few weeks where I haven't I haven't done theme system journal because I was essentially off. So that's part of it. But as we go into, you know, our normal workflows in January, I have a feeling like I will be more consistent in some of these things than I have been over the past couple of weeks of tracking. So that's kind of my daily themes. I can't believe how much I enjoy this stupid page because I thought I was going to I thought there's no way I'm going to do this. There's no way I'm going to do this. And I love it. Like this is my this is my favorite part of the book, to be honest, because it causes me to grade myself on a day and to think back. I was like, dang, I did really good here or dang, I did really poorly here. And can I do better? Like, can I change tomorrow? And I think that's important. I think that's important way to look at yourself where I wouldn't get that value if I said drink 60 ounces of water today. And I saw that across the chart that would not be valuable for me. This is valuable for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So one thing that I really notice in doing this type of stuff is sometimes I'll be like towards the end of the day and I'm in a bad mood or whatever. Like I'm just not feeling I'm not feeling good. Just like not feeling very engaged or motivated. And I fill out my journal and I mark off the things and I'm like, oh, I didn't do the stuff today that I'm supposed to do to make me feel accomplished. Right. Right. And so and look, and there are some days where it's like it's like a chicken and egg thing where like maybe I'm just not feeling my best. So I don't do them. And then I know that. I'm like, yeah, of course, I didn't do this, this and this today because I had a bad day or something big came up. And I couldn't put any time into this. But there's also that other thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you could go back and reference it in the daily page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And I do. Yeah. And so like there's a link there with those things. But like it's just funny to me where sometimes I'm like, I'm not feeling great and I don't know why. And then I realized that it's because I didn't do any of the things that I have deemed for myself to be like pivotal to having a day where I feel accomplished. And so it's just like it's a nice it's a nice way of doing that. And I agree with you. Like that's the type of stuff that works for me. Like read 20 lines, send four thank you notes like that. I'm not knocking that if that works for you. But that is not the kind of stuff that works for me in this category. I like it to be nebulous. And I like it to be like, you know, so so one of the phrases that I track is revenue. And that can be so many ways I can consider that a success. And I like that. Right. Like, you know, I could say I could change. I could be like seller sponsorship. Right. I mean, that's very specific. But it's also not the only way that I can generate revenue. Like promoting the membership can be revenue generating or selling some merch can be revenue generating. So like I like it to be more open ended than that. So I'm not kicking myself at the end of every day. Right. Like, right. I'm setting myself up to succeed with this stuff. And that's something that I really recommend people do. Like, don't make this hard for you. Give yourself like and it's this. Honestly, this ladders up to the theme thing in general. Like, and why themes are better than resolutions is you're not setting fail states for yourself with this stuff. Right. You've got kind of going easy in yourself and using it to help guide you towards where you want to go. And not being super bummed out about the fact that you didn't do the thing that you said you were going to do. Like, I don't really think that that's super valuable in our lives.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Right. And I just want to be clear. Like, I fully agree with you that, you know, like I'm super pro like tracking like your input and output and your exercise and those types of things. That's just not what I use this book for. There's other things where I feel like digital is a lot better for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, you know, like if I want to track how much I'm standing up, I can put on my Apple watch and it will do it for me. Right. Like there's apps like apps like water minder and stuff. If I want to be tracking my water intake. Like I feel like digital is better because as well, like it's always on me. So I don't have to like remember how much water I drank every day and then write it down in my book when I'm done at the end of the day. Like, you know, I feel like that digital and analog tools should work for what they're focused on as opposed to like trying to shoehorn everything into everywhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. And, you know, that's why you got to something like the theme system journal you can tailor to yourself. And, you know, that's what I found worked for me. And, you know, I had to sit with it for a while, just staring at it, not using it until I was committed to the things that are going to be most beneficial for me. Sometimes like this thing arrives in the mail and you throw it open and you start writing and it's like I don't have as much chance of success if I just go at this haphazardly. Like I have to make things that were meaningful for me. So and I think I did a good job on that because I haven't changed much. But don't be afraid to change the headings and the habits. Yeah. Yeah. Don't be afraid to change, though, if you need to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Sorry, we haven't got them in stock. Like some point soon. I'm hoping should be maybe end of February, early March will be when they'll be back in stock again. That's not bad. But again, it's like you can you can do this stuff in any book. I think I've made the best book for it. But it's like the bullet journal, right? You can bullet journal anywhere. But probably the best book to bullet journal in is the bullet journal book because it's built with the system mind. Right. But you can do you can adopt this type of thing in other planners and other notebooks if that's your bag.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Like I personally would not be as successful if it wasn't laid out for me where other people are the exact opposite. They need to roll their own, make their tweaks as they see and use this as a baseline.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, my book is opinionated, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And that's good products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There was somebody saying to me that they felt that the dot grid was too tight. You know? It's like, okay, but this is the size I wanted. You know, so it's like, right, right. I agree. Like and some people don't like dot grid or they want lines or some people want plain or whatever. Right. Right. And like or some people like the paper, they would want it to be different or whatever. Right. But sure. Sure. Or they want different sizes. I mean, this is just what all of these products are like every every decent or good product is just a set of decisions that were made that ladder up to it being a completed item. Um, these were my decisions. This is the result of it. Yep. All right. This isn't the only planner that you're using, though, is it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I don't even call this a planner. I don't even call this a planner. So that's a whole topic we can hit on this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, I don't call it a planner either. It's a journal. But journal planner, I think for a lot of people, those terms are interchangeable.