7 Ted Talks that Serve as Great Journaling Inspiration
As you all may know, planning and journaling are amazing tools to implement into your lives. Bullet journaling has given me a ton of focus, clarity, and direction. Along with that, being efficient at planning has allowed me to make time for my hobbies, goals, and passions.
Although journaling and planning are intuitive once you get the hang of it, getting started is the hardest part. That is why I curated a series of ted-talks that will inspire you and help you start journaling.
If you’re overwhelmed about planning/journaling like I was, here are 7 inspiring Ted-talks that will help motivate and inspire you to start taking action. Hopefully, this post provides you good journaling inspiration.
1. How to declutter your mind — keep a journal | Ryder Carroll | TEDxYale
Ryder Caroll is the inventor of the bullet journal. He is also one of my main journaling inspirations. The bullet journal is a widely used system that helps organize thoughts, tasks, and goals. In this Ted-talk, Caroll tells us how the idea of the bullet journal came to life, how it helped him, and eventually how it helped others who have adopted this system.
Rather than living a busy life, your aim should be to live an intentional life. When watching the Ted-talk, I found myself resonating with everything he was saying. It all made so much sense — if we decluttered our minds, we would have more room to make important and meaningful decisions.
Furthermore, Caroll has also provided actionable steps on how to get starting with the bullet journal system — a system that will ultimately change your life. His system is incredibly straight-forward and easy. Here is a good video explaining the steps.
2. Designing your Life by Bill Burnett
Design thinking consists of empathizing, defining, ideate, prototype, and testing. Burnett describes this process in his Ted-talk and applies all of the components to solving one major design problem: your life.
If you want to learn how you can effectively design your life so that you’re doing something you love, then this Ted-talk is for you. Your dream life is only a few steps away.
3. How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals
This is an amazing and profound Ted-talk about making intentional decisions. I once believed that you had to be naturally talented or intelligent to achieve great things. However, Stephen Duneier completely debunks this. He talks about his life-long struggles with focusing and completing bigger projects. However, he came to realize the importance of breaking down bigger goals into doable actions.
Because of his implementation of chunking tasks down, he achieved greatness by completing tasks that seemed impossible. Duneier got the Guinness World Record for the largest crocheted granny square, learned German in a few years, read 50 books in a year, and more. You can see all the impressive things that he did in this ted-talk.
He also emphasizes that it isn’t because he’s naturally talented or intelligent, but because he breaks these large tasks into manageable tasks for him.
Many people still believe that they cannot achieve something due to their lack of talent. This is not the case. If you want to be proven wrong, then you need to watch this Ted-talk.
4. What’s your plan? CJ Hendry
CJ is an amazing artist and is an inspiration to many women (and men), such as myself. Although we talk about the importance of planning and journaling, you should never be fixated on perfection.
Planning should enhance your life and help you make better decisions, but you shouldn’t let it dictate your life. Adapting your plans is necessary – if you solely rely on a plan, and it fails, you might feel demoralized and dejected, just as CJ did with her experiences as a swimmer and a university student.
CJ talks about the importance of adaptability, as sometimes, things don’t go as planned. However, your ability to adapt, persevere, and maintain laser focus is something that will bring you far. Don’t fixate on perfection, as that will only deter your progress.
5. Why you should think about financial independence and mini-retirements
Although this talk is not specifically about journaling and planning, Lacey Filipich demonstrates the rewards of making good decisions, which stems from good planning. Filipich talks about her experience of being financially aware, which led her to make good financial decisions. This ultimately resulted in her becoming more time rich. This allowed her to do the things she loves and to live a life full of meaning and purpose.
You can learn more about her journey in the talk as well as actions that you can start implementing today that can help you start planning for a more time-rich life.
Why spend your best hours of the day doing something that doesn’t mean anything to you?
6. Want to learn better? Start mind mapping
Mind-mapping is an amazing tool you can use to help you better process information.
In this Ted-talk, Hazel Wagner talks about how mind-mapping helps her remember complex and dense information. Taking notes mechanically just isn’t engaging, which makes it harder for you to remember key concepts. Mind-mapping, on the other hand, operates as your brain would. It makes logical connections between different key points, allowing you to better understand concepts.
Imagine coupling mind-mapping with your journaling or planning. If you’re stuck on an important task, using mind-mapping can help you generate important ideas and revelations. You can also use it to gather journaling inspiration!
Mind-mapping is truly a great tool to use for processing and taking notes, generating an idea, or figuring out what you want and have to do.
As Wagner says, why work against your brain when you can work with it.
7. The Art of Focus
Christina Bengtsson talks about the importance of focus. Nowadays, we find that we are more distracted than ever. Bengtsson dives deeper into what focus is and how you can find it.
To achieve focus, we have to eliminate nervousness and the “what-if” thoughts. We also have to distinguish between “disturbing” and “neutral” thoughts, which will help us focus on the present. Staying focused, as Bengtsson describes, is a deliberate choice.
I love her point on making a not-to-do-list, which goes hand-in-hand with planning and journaling. To help eliminate distractions, listing out things that stray you further from what you have to do is key. As said before, being busy is not being focused and productive.
Conclusion
Overall, there is a common thread among all of these talks — the message that you should put your time and energy to the things that matter the MOST to you. But first, you must make time by eliminating distractions. This is where planning and journaling come into play. You can employ and apply all these ted-talks into your journaling.
Where do you find journaling inspiration? Comment below in the comments your answers and any questions you may have!
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