3 word journal

 I listened to an incredible podcast today (the podcast is All In and I listen nearly every week).  The episode that I listened to today was Morgan Jones interviewing Randal Wright.  He said a lot of great things but the part that I'm most excited about it the 3 word journal.  He explains it like this: 

"As I thought back, I'd read statements, and I've got a statement here by Harvey Cluff, Utah pioneer. He said, "No intelligent person, in youth or old age, should merely drift along. Look the world squarely in the face, listen, and learn, for there are grand lessons for you every minute." And I thought, "Wow, that's incredible." So then I started looking close, and I started writing those things down, and it didn't have to happen to me. If I observed it, if it was a Morgan Jones story, I would write it down. I didn't care who taught me the lesson. I thought, "This life is a university. We go to a university for a few years, don't learn that much, and then in life, we can learn." So I started recording them, and after a while, I started going backward. I started going back in my past and bringing them forward. Before long, I was just kind of a jumbled mess. I thought, "Ah, I'm getting confused now." And I thought, "I need to record something, I don't have time to record the whole thing." And that's when I came up with what I call "The Three Word Journal," where I just take three words that summarize the experience where I know exactly what it means. I could pass it on to my kids and they would have no idea what it means, but I would know what it meant. So I started doing that. It would take me eight to ten seconds to write it down. So maybe I'm in sacrament meeting—in fact, I remember sitting with Morgan Jones and Ellie Hall in Nauvoo, Illinois after that session of EFY, and said, "Okay, Morgan, there's one." It was very irreverent sacrament meeting because I was trying to teach you to look for those things that are right in front of us. And maybe you already did it, for all I know, but I just made that commitment that we're looking for lessons.

You can call them stories, you can call them whatever. But for example, maybe I'm at a meeting in Orem, Utah, and the speaker, his name is Nolan Butters, and he says that his son, Jared—I think Jared was seven years old at the time—was out playing with his little green turtle, that little small green turtle he bought. Not a big turtle at all, but he was playing with one of his little friends from the neighborhood. And his little friend said, "You sure are lucky to have a turtle." And then the fatherBut  heard a little neighbor boy say, "All I have is a dog and a cat and a horse." And I went, "I love that." Immediately I'm writing that down. I'm going to three-word it, and it's going to be Jared (the son's name), lucky, turtle. I knew exactly what it is. And every time I'm envious, if somebody has a new boat or whatever, you sure are lucky to have a turtle, all I have is—boom. So I took a little story that someone else shared, and all of a sudden it became mine too because all I had to do is insert myself in the story. I was in the Orem Suncrest Stake, and Nolan Butters was giving a talk, and all of a sudden, it's mine, too. He shouldn't have shared it if he didn't want me to learn from it. So I'm just writing them down, and all of a sudden I have more and more."

Of course you can't just record 3 words and expect that months or years later you will remember what those three words mean.  You have to take time at some point to write out the details.   But I love this...and I'm going to really try to record one 3 word story a day.  My own stories.  Other people's stories.  Current happenings.  Past memories. Things shared in church.  I wrote my first one today. I have been thinking for months that to become a better teacher, I need to have stories that help teach lessons, but I just haven't had a good plan for how to accomplish this.  And this seems doable and like it will work...especially if I add labels of the lessons learned so that I can quickly find the stories. I  have been using Instagram mostly to record my family's events but I think that this will be a good place to record these stories.

Brother Wright also said: 

Are you all in on journal keeping? And if you're not, guess what. You can record an entry in 10 seconds. Then what if you recorded one a day? If you recorded one a day, just like we just did here, at the end of the year you have 365 recorded. At the end of 10 years, you have 3650 recorded. What we're looking for is things that taught you a lesson. The other thing that happens, as soon as I read that, and I file them in a little program called Evernote. All I do is type in your name and everything. There's more, but I typed up the experience from the journal and I got the Tyler experience here immediately. I like to put pictures for them, it allows you to do that, but your picture's in there. I wish I had one with Tyler. I don't, but we have that recorded. But what happens also is, then I put them into subjects. So it is self-esteem or something like that, all of those experiences I've already recorded keep flooding back into my mind. And so as soon as I read that, I thought, "Oh, trek." We were out and it was with our stake. Our stake president was walking behind two girls. In our stake at the time, we had eight very wealthy Austin, Texas wards, and three that were not so wealthy. And two of the girls from the wards that didn't have quite as much money as the others were walking, and one of them said to the other, "You know what I love about trek?" And the other friend said, "What?" She said, "That we're all dressed the same way. We all are dressed like pioneers." And then she said, "And nobody knows who the cool kids are." And as soon as I read Tyler's, that experience pops into my mind and I go, "How many Tylers are out there, just wanting to be a part, one week of the year?" So again, you see what I'm doing here. I'm trying to learn the lessons so that I can be a better person with that. So that's why I like stories. I like stories because they change me. They make me want to be better, but it doesn't help if we don't—I'm kidding here—but it doesn't help if we don't record the "Tyler lessons" and keep them. 

LESSON LEARNED:  In just a few minutes I can record my lessons and the lessons I learn from others and have a handy resource for the future...and I can see a way to do it.