Realise Your Productivity Potential with Interstitial Journalling

The Method You Never Knew You Needed

The Importance of Methods over Tools

Unexpectedly, 2023 is turning out to be the year where I finally get myself sorted out in terms of productivity tools. And not just the tools, but the methods. The methods are infinitely more important than the tools. You can have the shiniest and sleekest app going, but if your systems suck then the app is useless. And so might you be. That was harsh. Sorry.

So this is not a post about tools but methods, and one method in particular: Interstitial journalling.

What is Interstitial Journalling?

The word interstitial comes from interstice which is “an intervening space, especially a very small one.”

So interstitial journalling is filling the small spaces in-between events, tasks and meetings through the day. Basically, I’m making journalling a habit which happens not just once on a morning, but as many times in one day as I finish work on one project or task and before I start the next.

How It Works: An Example

For example, say I am writing a talk from 9 am until 11 am (my deep work prime-time). Then I have meeting at 11:30 am. What am I going to do in those 30 minutes? It’s essential for me to have scheduled something in, otherwise those 30 minutes are going to be frittered away somehow. So I will journal. Not for long, necessarily. I will write about how my talk is developing. I might write about where I’m going next with it. But then I will write about what I am doing at 11:30 – that meeting. How do I feel about it? What do I want from it? Etc.

And then after the meeting, the same thing. I will write about how the meeting went, and anything else relevant, what’s coming next, how do I feel about that, and so on and so forth.

Interstitial journalling means I am writing about, and processing, my day as it happens.

Like most things in life, you don’t realise the benefit of it until you’ve been doing it for some time. I have been doing this for the past two weeks, and I believe I am starting to reap the benefits.

The Benefits of Interstitial Journalling

1. Writing about my day through the day is enabling me to think more clearly about everything I have to do.
2. Writing everything down, including how I’m feeling and what I want, is massively reducing stress. Stress increases when there is an element of uncertainty. Journalling through the day decreases that uncertainty because of point one – I am thinking through that which I am uncertain of.
3. The process of interstitial journalling is creating for me a record of each day. Not just what happened, but also my thoughts, reactions and desires. I find it helpful to look back over the day and week, and discover that in doing so further thoughts or ideas are prompted.

Give It a Try and Reap the Benefits

If you aren’t already doing this, I recommend you give interstitial journalling a try. Persist with it for at least a couple of weeks to starting experiencing the benefits. Initially I thought it would be a waste of my time, but I am beginning to discover that there is no better use of my time.