A speaker shares five daily notebook prompts that transformed his routine: make an observation, record a lesson, note a surprising moment, identify one way you helped someone, and take one action outside your comfort zone. He argues a physical notebook keeps you present better than a phone.
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Most of my days used to blur together. You know the feeling. You wake up, you get a workout in. If you have kids, you play with the kids, get them to school, get to work, dinner, errands, everything that you do in a normal day. All that changed when I made one little shift at how I looked at those seemingly boring or uninteresting moments of any day. There are 5 questions, prompts, practices that you can use to make your life more interesting. And even though it may seem less convenient than your phone, I encourage you to use a notebook instead, because when you open a notebook, you stay in the moment. You stay with the pen and the paper and the words instead of being pulled into whatever app or notification is trying to distract you from the thing that you opened up your phone to do. There's nothing in a modern smartphone that comes anywhere close to this clean slate approach to your ideas. In this video, I'm going to show you how these 5 simple prompts and a notebook will turn ordinary days into moments that you'll remember forever. The first is to just make one observation each day. This could be something that you see, it could be something that you hear, it could be anything at all. This, I will admit, is a little tough to do every day. And I'm also not saying that you have to do each one of these things every day. These are 5 questions, prompts, practices that you can look for, just one. The next is one lesson that you learned. And this one is unique because in order to do this, you have to be a person who is open to learning lessons. So you have to be open-minded. You have to be someone who is in pursuit of knowledge. These are ways that you can proactively be the type of person who is ready to learn interesting things. And I promise, if you learn interesting things, you'll apply them to your suddenly more interesting life. The next one is to recognize a moment where you were surprised. And much like being a person who is willing to learn, you need to be a person who is open to surprise. It says it's a No, it's the car! The other thing to realize with this practice is that surprise may not be a thing that brings you joy. It could be a surprise that brings you sadness or sorrow or even anger. But paying attention to the moments and also to the reasons that you are joyful, that you are sad, that you are angry, that you are any of those emotions, and being intentional about what's happening behind the scenes here. When you do this, then you'll start to not only understand what is going on outside of you, but also what is going on inside of you. The next is to look for one way that you helped another person. Now I gotta say, it's kind of cheating for me to do this because I've got a bunch of kids running around. And so just helping them is a way of serving others. And the bigger thing that I want you to pay attention to here is that when you serve other people, you are thinking outside of yourself. You are putting yourself in this, in a servant leadership role that is so important and so meaningful. It also makes you realize that again, there are things happening outside of your own life. That might be bigger than you. And when you realize there's a great big world out there and lots of people who need what you have to offer, then life becomes a lot more interesting. And also you have a lot more fulfillment when you're the type of person who gives help to others. The last one that I'm going to give you today, even though it's certainly not the last thing that you can do, is look for one action where you went outside of your comfort zone. And I think one of the trickiest ways that I approach this and not get stuck in it is that, like, say through practicing jiu-jitsu or working out, like working out, especially jiu-jitsu, is uncomfortable. Like, it's not comfortable to be like knocked off your feet. It's not comfortable to be put in a choke. But I've gotten comfortable with that discomfort. What I can do and what I hope you can do is start to borrow confidence from others. Like, I used to be super uncomfortable at jiu-jitsu and now I feel pretty comfortable. 'Now this other thing that feels uncomfortable to me right now, this is also something that I can develop some comfort in.' So looking for those ways where you can stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, that is a really important part of leading an interesting life. But here's the trick: you have to be open to having a life that's more interesting. Because here's what you're really asking yourself when you're looking for those moments in your life: am I paying attention? Am I learning? Am I open to joy and sadness? Am I looking for ways to help others? And am I willing to be uncomfortable? I promise you, if you do these things, even if you just become more aware of them, your life will become more interesting because all of a sudden you become a person who does interesting things.
