I’ve( 22M ) been an overthinker for almost my entire life. Not only that, I have hyper-anxiety and overwhelmness. I haven’t been scheduled with a psychiatrist so far.
A few months ago, I seriously realized that I was wasting my time on devices( phones, laptops etc) and haven’t been paying attention to real life and responsibilities. Because I had made devices as a way to escape from reality.
Then I made a schedule to maintain that included low and controlled use of devices and some other things. Journaling was also a part of that.
I began to write my daily events on a journal app in my phone. I had a physical diary that I started to use to write down advices, methods, facts, important instructions that I was gathering from youtube. That diary is now filled around 60%.
I continued writing my daily journal in the app for 1.5 months and then lost the drive to continue for unknown reason. Consider this one of my main psychological problem. I lose drive very quickly.
Then I realized that, when I continued journaling, I had more control of my overall daily activity that I used to do. I had less laziness, more energy, more drive, healthy sleep schedule etc. And now, it seems that I’ve sunken into my peak rabbithole again.
Now I’m seeking advices from people who turned their life in a positive way by writing journals as a first step. Any other advices except journaling is also welcomed.
The biggest thing that freed me to journal better is to cut all the bs rules I forced on myself. My only standard is to include the date everyday I write and try to add highlights to reflect on the day. Everything else is just random stream of consciousness tasks, thoughts, whatever. I also have a ton of random thoughts and I think that helps.
I tried keeping separate journals like you said but that’s too much form for me. Just throwing everything at one is best for me or I just won’t do it.
The best tip I have for organizing life is to keep a stupid easy non streak based habit tracker and a tasks list.