Pen & Paper, IRL

Usually, I like December to be the month for reflection and planning so that in January I can get on with whatever the year’s experiment for a New Me is! But, I was so exhausted in December 2025, with whatever bandwidth I had taken up by planning to host Christmas, I didn’t really get into anything, and I feel like I’ve come into 2026 with a head full of Stuff and less than ideal anxiety levels.

I’ve been pondering how on the heck I am going to make time for everything I want to do, then this week I came across the video How To Change Your Life In 2026 *if ur a mess of a human who can’t track goals by Mia’s Digital Diary. This really untangled my thoughts and offered a solution to the nagging doubts over how I was going to realise my Grand Plans for 2026.

It is as simple as treating my “goals” as the “experiments” that they really are.

This means I can “experiment” with setting myself a daily schedule and see if I can stick to it. I only need to try this for two weeks, for example, and if I fail, that’s fine. I can either make adjustments to my approach and re-run the experiment, or I can drop it because that is just not the way I want to live!

The experiment failed, but I didn’t fail.

This is great, love this idea, but it does mean my already overloaded brain needs to process and reconcile these ideas of starting a personal curriculum, with scheduling around work, and with all the other “experiments” I want to work through this year.

Mind mapping a brain dump

That video took me to another, Overthinker’s Guide to Mind Mapping by Rachelle in Theory, which unearthed something else from a dark, dusty corner of my brain. Two truths I’d forgotten in the last 5 years:

1. Mind maps are fantastic.
2. Pen and paper feels good.

In the past, I’ve used mind maps to help me solve difficult mental or anxiety problems or to prep for things like job interviews. I know they work for me, so why did I never think to use them for more regular everyday things? Or for book reviews, and other blog post ideas?

I’d also never tried the ’10 minute brain dump’ method, which is a way to get out EVERYTHING and then sift through and work out what actions you might be able to take.

This was exactly what I needed today. I set a 10-minute timer and scribbled down everything on my mind. Then I categorised them and worked out a prioritised to-do list of things I could get done today to lift some of the biggest “blockers”. It has also left me with a list of more complex ideas or anxieties I need to make further time to work through by mind mapping out.

And you know what else? I decided to map out my thoughts for writing this blog post, and it felt much quicker than usual. Quicker than my usual staring at digital notes app, or starting from a blank page and hoping for the best.

The last couple of books I read were non-fiction I had some complicated thoughts about, so I’m hoping a little mind map session might finally get those written up.

BuJos gone by

I had to hunt through my office for a notebook to use to start on this mind mapping, and that lead me too my old journals. From 2016 to 2019 I kept a ‘bullet journal’ where I logged and organised all kinds of things about my life. I really can’t remember why I stopped doing it in 2019. That was a period where I was feeling very lonely and getting increasingly depressed, so that might have been reason.

I did start another bullet journal briefly in 2022 before I moved to digital notes systems in Obsidian. I quickly learned daily notes and personal to-do lists didn’t work for me in Obsidian, and the whole practice just fell away from my life (but I do do a variation of it in Obsidian at work).

Looking back at these journals I regret dropping it. The older I get the more I appreciate being in touch with past versions of myself, and it’s interesting to be able to have this window.

Some of it does make me cringe – like the boyfriend who smashed self-esteem in 2016 on a list of “things that make me feel good” .. oh boy! I didn’t know what was coming later that year.  That OG 2016 BuJo did see me through a lot!

The pre-pandemic journals are also a lot more battered than the short-lived 2022 one because I wasn’t carrying it around in my bag every day to work in the office! The very idea of commuting daily seems foreign to me now.

Holding these books, and seeing them sit on the shelf next to my desk, makes me realise how impermanent digital notes are. They’re so easily deleted or lost, or altered. And it’s not the same connection being able to leaf through pages I filled in a decade ago (2016!), by a version of myself that now feels like a different person.

The good news is I already decided I was going to keep a paper journal for 2026 (the berry coloured one on top of the stack). My original intention was to keep it on my desk and use it for daily ‘brain dumps,’ the idea being I write in it instead picking up my phone when I needed a mini focus break at work and feel the urge to doom scroll. Or, when I feel myself getting distracted by a non-work idea while at work!

I’ve been doing this for a week and it feels so nice to be writing on paper again, and especially use my Parker fountain pen! I missed that guy. Every time I hold it I get a flash of recall that I wrote every exam I’ve ever taken with it. Does anyone else have an emotional connection to a pen?

Anyway, I now think I’m going to add in some of my old bullet journal elements – simple lists of podcasts, TV shows, movies etc that I’m engaging with. Maybe list books in there too, though I still think I’m best tracking those notes digitally as I do much more with them. That’s the sort of thing I forget that is nice to look back on. Future Alice will appreciate it, I think.

I’m not sure if I want to bother with things like monthly spreads, I need to consider that.  I’m also thinking about ways I might be able to add in a habit tracker of sorts for evaluating my experiments.

I am even more excited for this year now! I believe in even more potential to learn new things and be able to parse my own thoughts with more clarify now I’m reacquainted with mind mapping techniques and the benefits of putting an IRL pen to IRL paper.

Yet another example of how I need to go around the houses, a couple of times, before I can see the process that was there at the start all along! 😂