Sample Pages from Personal Diaries of Fahri Karakas
You establish your own game in life through dreaming and doodling — one notebook at a time
Why sketchbooks and notebooks are your superhero tools that save your life
Keeping notebooks will literally improve the quality of your life. You can reflect, set goals, create ideas, learn, solve problems, create art, develop systems of productivity, design your life, visualize new possibilities, create assets, and dream big dreams in your notebooks.
I have always been a passionate notebook lover and keeper.
I loved keeping personal and professional diaries.
I have been keeping inspirational diaries for myself, my studies, and my career since I was 12.
I have finished writing countless diaries up till now.
I am also a serious doodler.
I use notebooks to inspire myself.
Locked up at home due to Covid-19, I have started to revisit my old diaries.
In this article, I will share some pages from my diaries with you.
I am inviting you to my personal space.
Welcome to a special notebook tour spanning many years.
As I present the pages, I hope to inspire you and provide you ideas for your own diaries, sketchbooks, or notebooks.
Are you ready?
Let us start!
My Academic Diary from 2016 September
As you see below, I have put together some goals, visions, and principles for myself for the new academic year.
I love using metaphors in my notebooks.
On the second page below, I have turned my big goals to apples on an annual tree.
My New Semester Diary from 2017 January
In this diary, I have formulated a new program for myself branded “FF” — fast forward.
I have put together lots of research and paper goals under this umbrella.
I have also created ‘smart writing projects’ for myself.
As you see, I use my notebooks to experiment, keep learning, organise goals, dream big dreams, and produce ideas.
My Brainstorming Pages from 2017 Summer
In this notebook, I have reflected on my research paper projects and my streams of research at that time.
As you can see, I have received a lot of rejections and harsh reviews from journals at that time.
You see how I have felt wounded and you see how I am trying to lick my wounds and develop resilience.
Another pattern I see is how many projects and papers I am concurrently working on. I do not put my eggs in the same basket and you can see my diversification in action.
I have also organised all my projects under relevant research clusters. Visually organising and linking these clusters helps me to categorise my research streams.
As you see, I am trying to see the big picture.
I am mapping the territory of my research; and you can see the whole landscape in these two pages:
A detour: My University Entrance Exam Preparation Diary from 1996 Spring
Many of my early notebooks have been lost — unfortunately.
One of the earliest notebooks that I have been able to keep and secure is the diary below.
In this diary from the year 1996, I was preparing for the university entrance exams.
On weekdays, I was staying in a dormitory in Balikesir, a small city on the Western coast of Turkey. I was attending school and I was studying long hours to prepare myself for university entrance exams. This meant I would study for 10 hours or more every day.
On the weekend, I was working to help my dad in the small grocery store in our hometown, Ivrindi (a lovely small town in Balikesir).
As you see below, I was studying extremely hard during those times. At some point, I was getting up at 4.20 a.m. to study. The total number of my study hours was about 10–11 hours every day!
During those times, I had big ambitions and dreams. I wanted to succeed in the university entrance exam to be admitted into the best universities in Turkey. There were more than a million students entering this exam every year and the competition was intense. Therefore, I needed to solve more than a thousand problems every week. This required great determination.
I was coaching myself using this notebook. I designed my own study monthly programmes and gave them inspiring titles (such as ‘The Ultimate Mathematics Marathon’ or ‘Social Studies Super-Hero Super-camp’ or ‘Hyper-Active System’).
You can see one of the branded titles below.
I have also put the following slogan at the top right corner:
Two magical words: Persistence and Hard-work
As you see from these examples, I have incorporated elements of ‘play’, ’design’, and ’story’ to my weekly study schedules. I ‘branded’ each session to make it more playful and invigorating.
These notebooks were ‘top secret’ — nobody was supposed to see them. I was competing with no one else but myself. I ended up ranking among the top 6 students among 1.5 million in that university entrance exam. Journalists came to my father’s shop for an interview asking me the secrets of my success.
I responded:
‘It is all about keeping notebooks to work, play, learn, improve, and to keep track of yourself and your goals.’
My Goals and Dreams Diary from 2012 September
Now, fast forward to year 2012.
This is a goals and dreams diary where I represented each of my goals as a balloon.
I was aiming to float them all at once.
As you can see from the page above, I did not care too much about drawing excellence.
I have never seen myself as a talented drawer or painter.
You will see that the doodles here are not faultless. I try to embrace and sometimes come to like my ‘faults’.
I think the functional benefits of my doodles (such as engaging the mind, solving problems, visual thinking) are more significant than their artistic value.
I also think that perfection is the enemy of creativity and productivity.
So, I have preferred quick sketches or doodles to neat drawings.
Therefore, you might find oddities, mistakes, or even ugly sketches in my notebooks. All are fine.
I encourage you to make similar mistakes. Just start doodling.
You do not need drawing skills.
Make ugly sketches — it is fine.
What matters is capturing your thoughts and ideas.
My Doodle Diary from March 2017
During March 2017, I was teaching a large number of students at UEA. I felt rather tired after my teachings were over each day.
I was just watching Turkish TV dramas in the evenings and I searched for an activity that would be refreshing, therapeutic, and playful.
I thought — why not doodling? What better way to refresh and re-vitalise myself?
I ended up creating a lot of doodles while watching episodes of Turkish dramas (Turkish dramas are incredibly long with each episode lasting more than 2 hours!).
I loved every minute of creating something new and pursuing an interest.
Starting with this diary, I have started to use more visualisation and doodles to capture my ideas and inspiration.
I have used doodles to add a personal and inspirational touch to my teaching at UEA.
It was also a way of encouraging my students to learn and develop reflective skills through visualisation and creativity.
After March 2017, I have started doodling regularly.
I tried to create one page every day, if I did have some time in the evenings.
Through these doodles, I have tried to develop a diverse range of developmental and reflective exercises and make them available to my students and the wider audience.
In particular, my focus was to help individuals interested in exploring and developing themselves and preparing themselves for the job market.
Before I knew it, I had created hundreds of doodles.
I have finally created a book using some of these doodles and I shared the book with the world.
My Professional Diary from 2019
You can use doodles and diary keeping to inspire yourself, and to brainstorm new possibilities for your career.
Below, you can see my diary from 2019 where I reflect on my goals, capture my ideas, and even exchange conversations with myself:
You can write yourself an inspirational letter, or brainstorm new possibilities about how you can create breakthrough value.
Your notebook is your closest friend. You can share all your secrets, dreams, anxieties, goals, challenges, fears with it. The notebook will listen to you. There will be no judging.
So, here is my summary thesis in this piece:
- You can use diaries to develop your own capacities for lifetime learning, reflection, sense-making, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking.
- Diary keeping can be very effective in developing what I call ‘inspirational capital’ — the individual capability for wonder, enchantment, curiosity, learning, self-disruption, creativity and skill development.
- These capabilities are becoming more and more important in workplaces of tomorrow.
- Everyone is expected to keep learning, create value, adapt to changing circumstances, and innovate at the speed of life.
- The rate of change and innovation has become so scary that we all need personal anchors, principles, and systems in place.
- Keeping notebooks will help you to develop such personal anchors, principles, and systems.
I have finished writing more than 250 notebooks over the course of my life.
My notebooks are very precious to me — they capture my plans, passions, professional goals, emotions, disappointments, and anxieties.
I have been keeping notebooks for the last 25 years to share my dreams and passions in life.
I use diaries to put my goals and memories on paper.
I practice what Julia Cameron (the master teacher of creativity) recommends as ‘morning pages’. I just write non-stop for 30–40 minutes to capture my stream of consciousness in the morning — it helps tremendously and helps me to focus on what is important ahead of me.
I also use my notebooks for doodling. I cannot stop doodling and I love it.
I encourage you to do the same (even if you do not feel that you can draw/doodle beautifully).
Doodling will help you integrate and clarify your thinking. You may even end up innovating or inventing new things!
I will finish and say farewell to you with the last 3 pages of one of my diaries:
I hope you liked this journey into my notebooks over the years.
Which notebook pages inspired you the most?
Which ideas or methods better captured your imagination?
Which ones can you adopt or implement in your own life?
As you respond to these questions, please take a favourite empty notebook of yours and start your new journey.
Each white page is an invitation.
New dreams and adventures are waiting for you.
Sincerely;
Fahri
