I will let the ancient one set the stage for this post:

Unexamined life is not worth living.

- Socrates

The wisdom of ancient Greece teaches us that going blindly about our lives equals to having an unworthy life.  Well, I bet he had his own reasons to say that, but in short non-self-reflection = stagnation. Stagnation = death. I didn’t say that, he did:

What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don’t change, you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.

- Leonard Sweet

I agree. To make one’s life worthy, he first needs to consistently examine it.

Where shall the examination start

Start small with one action. Just make notes. You need 2 things for that. The first one - we all have it, the second - we all can afford it, so there are no excuses for not examining our lives.

1. Mind - it all starts from the realisation that past needs to be reflected upon. In this case, present thoughts, emotions, the environment needs to be observed and recorded. There is no other way to progress and develop apart from looking deep in the past and extracting the valuable lessons it has to offer for each of us individually. Those who fail to do that are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
2. Pen and paper - should be your best friends from now on. Since about 2 years ago they are with me wherever I go. I started with simple Moleskine notebooks at first. Firstly they are great quality, secondly the size is small enough to keep them in any pocket. In case you are wondering why red:

Yes, that’s Professor Moriarty. Yes, red because of that. Shut up.

How Did It Work Out For Me So Far

I used to keep one always in the inner pocket of my jacket during my time at Uni. I carried one with me while working in a restaurant, actually two -  in my apron. Why two? One was for making notes about the dishes and restaurant standards and everything related to my job, the second one - for all my random thoughts and ideas. Since all managers got used to me taking notes for work, none of them ever bothered to tell me off for not paying attention to the tables. I never had an issue with pulling it out and making notes. I must say - you get to learn a lot from people…by just observing and keeping your ears open.

This way I found about a wonderful book by Lee Harper “To Kill a Mockingbird” which was mentioned at a team briefing. The book had a great lesson in it:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Note: I just pulled this quote from well, my notebook where I keep the summaries of the books that I read.

The same way, when I had a chat with a couple of regulars, the gentlemen asked me a good question: “If you could describe yourself with 3 adjectives, what they would they be and why?” I noted it down with my answer, of course. Shortly afterwards, his wife gave me another one: “How would (father/mother/friend/partner) describe you in a couple of sentences?” Good stuff. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Final example - something that I was just able to hear while pouring water at a table of 2 - late 30-s, they had a business lunch, both worked in investment banking. One of them goes: “It is a great weakness if your behaviour is driven by the instincts.” I wish I stayed for longer at that table…but I had 3 more to serve…

What Should You Put In Your Notebook

You did order one already, didn’t you

Simple - whatever the fuck you want. This is not the notebook to keep clean, organised and categorised, it is to note down things that come suddenly those which you would rather not slip through the net of your memory.

For example, over the years, I made notes on:

• Not so positive body language of the academic dean during his first presentation at the start of the semester. What did I learn? I will never present anything in front of the crowd with both hands in my pockets.

• Some key ideas from the documentary about the Enron case. How was it useful? Many times when the talk at the table was about financial bubbles or money laundering I was the only one who knew about the Enron case and could share the info (and yes, I did pull my notebook out to get these notes sometimes).

• Few cocktail recipes and a list of cool secret bars to check out in London. How did that help me? I visited most of the cocktail places I noted and had some great dates in them (who liked the place as much as l did). Moreover, I replicated some recipes at had cocktails at home.

• Some business/project ideas. Any good? Most of the business ideas were crap, some projects/tasks I actually ended up doing.

Note Down Whatever is Relevant to You

The notes above might not sound much or useful to you - they don’t have to be. It’s all individual - whatever you think is worth writing down - do it, you will thank yourself later. You will find some notes useless after a while - that’s normal too. Firstly, you can’t know by default what will be useful, what not. Secondly, if you think what you wrote is fucking stupid - congratulations, you are just getting smarter, more experienced and able to look at things from different angles.

You get to choose you own format of the notebook. Don’t overthink it. Just do it.

Where To Go From Here

Start small, start by just taking notes and look at them regularly, dissect them into pieces and find the key ideas, that can teach you. By taking notes regularly you also get a few side effect bonuses:

• It becomes a habit - you will find yourself noting down more and more things, ideas, quotes, observations.
• You will start to see more connections between the ideas if you keep reflecting on your notes often. Ability to “connect the dots” is one the 2 key elements of creativity. Or as James Altucher puts it: “Idea Sex”. James is an awesome guy, and if you are looking for some inspiration, I highly recommend two of his books: Choose Yourself and Choose Yourself Stories.

Author: Steve JobsCreativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

I bet they noted down whatever it was that they saw.

Taken from the WIRED Interview, 1996.

• From personal experience - you will actually feel like you remember more.

Finally, paper will endure the heaviest of thoughts. Whatever your troubled, irrational mind comes up with, paper is always there to attentively listen to every single thing you got to say. And it will remember that every single thing you ever told them. That is if you don’t lose the darn paper, notebook or whatever you are using to vomit your thoughts out on.

Great men who changed this world in one way or another kept a notebook with them at all times. Much of what they have produced stems from the fact that they kept notes, they examined, analysed, made connections, connected the dots. If we are to do the same, we should follow their footsteps.

I challenge you to start taking notes today. Don’t fancy regular paper? Fine - use Evernote or OneNote instead. I used both and stuck with OneNote. I keep there my commonplace book. And that’s a topic for another post.