I’m a huge fan of using numbered lists in writing: to generate ideas, organise your thoughts and structure material into a readable format.   (See 7 Ways to Write with Numbered Lists)

But  you can also use numbered lists as part of your journal: to explore ideas, hopes, fears and dreams in more depth, and learn more about some of the things that might be lying just below the surface of your conscious thought.

Kay Adams in Journal To the Self suggests generating a list of 100 items.

This allows (prompts, challenges, encourages) you to dig well below the surface – and to come up with some hidden gems.

It also provides enough raw material that you can then cluster to see what other patterns emerge.  From there you can calculate percentages: for example “24% of my fears were around not having enough money, 31% around the attention that comes with success, 18% around making a mistake and not doing things ‘right’”

It’s much easier from there to get an overview of what’s going on and what’s driving you, and to move beyond the detailed concerns on the list which might be bogging you down.

I tried this the other day around the mixed emotions I have around a new venture I’m embarking on.  I learned a lot from some of the items on the list, but I learned even more by doing the clustering afterwards, and then reviewing the percentages.

It was if it allowed the answer I was looking for to jump out of the page at me, pulsing, boldly.

It allowed me to look beyond some of the immediate fears to the deeper rooted feeling of discomfort that was driving them.  And once I knew what that was… it was a lot easier to work out what I should do next.

Including making more regular use of numbered lists