Earlier this week I came across an interesting Peter McKinnon video titled
​Tracking your ENTIRE LIFE in a notebook about how he and other creators use notebooks during their creative process.

The first creator he speaks with is the YouTube legend Casey Neistat who is most famous for uploading a daily vlog for a year straight back in 2015.

Before Neistat documented his life on video he was an avid oberserver of life on the page filling dozens of notebooks that now line the bookshelfs of his New York City studio apartment.

His notebooks contain hundreds of diagrams, memorabilia, and meticulous documentation of his daily activities. It's an impressive array of pages filled with the ideas of an aspiring artist and filmmaker.

You get the sense while watching that this was a man who was deeply interested in life and someone who is always on the hunt for a good story.

But all of these notebooks were tellingly dated before 2012 signaling a shift in his writing habits that coincided with the invention of the smartphone and the explosive growth of social media.

When McKinnon asks what he writes in his notebooks now, his response revealed the reason.

"Nothing. Just notes on a phone call. Like the inspirational notebooks are a thing of the past...I think now most of what would in up in a book (back) then manifests into videos."

What used to be a inward facing process of documenting life and working through ideas became an outward facing craft of visual storytelling in the form of the daily vlog.

It's not that he stopped taking note of life, but rather that his medium changed.

Neistat has managed to keep some of his old-school documentation practice alive as he continues to use a small journal to track all of his notes from meetings, calls, and conversations.

"I don't do this to be romantic. I do this because it's functional. But the romance comes from when the book is full and I close it and it goes up on the shelf...maybe there'll be someday when I look back at this and remember those conversations. And maybe there's value in that."

Getting a glimpse into Neistat's documentation process gave me a few insights that I think are relevant for anyone interested in journaling:

1) Recording the present is an investment into your future. Every story, insight, and idea you collect today can be used to fuel creative work tomorrow. McKinnon himself realized this key insight midway through the video and it's a big reason he has adopted the practice of journaling. It's the same reason I started keeping a daily diary entry and why writers for centuries have kept their own journals.

2) Technology evolves but paper never goes out of style. Even though Neistat moved away from writing in his notebooks every day, you could tell they held a special place in his heart. There was a powerful hit of nostalgia flipping through his old notebooks that left both of them visibily elated. Digital tools for recording life will continue to get better but nothing feels quite like thumbing through a worn in journal.

3) Practical notebooks are just as romantic as an artist's scrapbook. Even mundane notebooks like your monthly planner have stored in them thousands of memories of the people you met, the conversations you had, and the time you spent experiencing the strangeness of life.

Even if they don't look as pretty as a well-thought out scrapbook, there's value in being able to flip through the pages of your life in a notebook.

Prompt:

Get out the oldest journal you can find and flip through the pages.

(If you're new to journaling and don't have an old notebook then try looking at an old photo of yourself.)

What memories come up? What surprises you the most? How are you different from that person now?