“Captain’s Log, Stardate 2818.9. There are many questions in my mind, too many, perhaps, about the actor Karidian, and his daughter. For personal reasons, I’m almost afraid to learn the answers.“
If you like Star Trek, you are bound to be familiar with Captain Kirk using a voice recorder to keep his Captain’s Log, noting the star date and any notable events or objectives.
Interstitial journaling is a similar concept to a Captain’s Log. Interstitial means to occupy the space or time in a segment, so in the context of journaling, it’s noting down what you did during a period of time in your day and keeping track of that the whole day, or perhaps just for your working hours or while you’re studying – wherever you’ve decided there might be a benefit.
I tried this method of journaling on and off for a whole year and found it very useful in several ways.
1. Identifying times of day when you’re at higher risk of practicing poor habits like snacking or shopping online because you’re distracted or tired or between meals
2. Identifying how often you are engaging in distracting activities, what types of activities are most likely to lead to you getting distracted, and how you usually distract yourself
3. Signifying your intention for focused work
4. Keeping track of times that are relevant for other purposes (for instance keeping my sleep tracker).
While I found it useful, I eventually learned that I didn’t need to record the time for absolutely every step of my day, and incorporated rapid logging techniques as described by Ryder Carroll of the Bullet Journal Method, which meant that I was then able to record any incidental thoughts, how I was feeling, something someone said, or something I saw. I could quickly jot down ideas for collecting together later, and note down tasks that I’d either do during the day, or migrate to my longer-term task list when I reviewed the day’s log in the evening.
I liked this combination of methods so much that I’ve continued employing them, mostly for my work day.
If you’d like to learn more, please watch my video on this subject, which shows lots of examples from my own journal.