One thing I wish I’d done differently in my early journals…
I wish I’d written the date, time, and place every single day.
Now I always do.
It’s amazing how much context those little details give you when you look back thirty years later.
As I was reading through Journal #4 this morning, I realized something surprising.
Almost nothing about the structure of my ideal day has changed.
Back then I wrote that I wanted to spend my days reading, studying, talking with interesting people, playing golf, and dreaming up ideas.
Today?
It’s still reading, writing, talking with interesting people, and creating new projects.
The tools have changed.
The technology has changed.
But the day is remarkably similar.
We still live sixty minutes at a time.
There are still mornings, afternoons, evenings, and sleep.
The real question isn’t how to manage your time.
It’s how to design your days.
I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi again this week.
Jiro spent decades doing one thing extraordinarily well.
Stephen King writes for about three focused hours each day.
The pattern is everywhere.
World-class work doesn’t require sixteen-hour days.
It requires protecting the two or three hours that matter most.
Looking back, I realized something else.
In 1997 I already knew who I was.
I just hadn’t built the life around it yet.
Today I have an incredible team that handles the administrative, financial, technical, and operational pieces, leaving me free to spend most of my time doing the work only I can do.
The destination didn’t change.
I simply kept removing everything that wasn’t part of it.
So here’s a worthwhile journaling prompt:
What would your perfect day actually look like?
Not someday.
A day you could start embracing this week.
Write it down.
Because once you know what you’re aiming for, you can start chipping away at everything that doesn’t belong.
Life gets surprisingly clear after that.