Tracking Your Life

Learning from the examples of some great leaders out there, I've been working at adding two new habits to my routine, and two pieces of free software have really helped with that.

First, I've noticed that every major Christian leader that I love and respect, takes time in their day to journal. Even if it's for just a few minutes, they write out their thoughts and dreams, and keep track of what God has been telling them in their day. So many books have been written in this way too. Most of the best devotionals, leadership books, and self-help books, were slowly compiled through the life experiences of the writers. If I really have been called to leadership, I better start my own. Already it has really helped me to organize some of my thoughts.

So after some searching, I came across the Advanced Diary. This nifty little program is free, supports multiple daily entries, searching, text formatting, embedded pictures, can be printed and exported, and can even be password protected. It also runs off of a USB drive, so you can take it anywhere you go.

Next, leaders are always have a system to keep important information, interesting tidbits, facts and figures, and notes... easily at their disposal. How many times have I tried to think of a quote or statistic, and just couldn't remember what it was, or where it came from?

Evernote does this well, by letting you easily create formatted notes, sort and organize them, and export them. Combine this with their Firefox web clipper, and you can highlight parts of webpages and add them to your notes with a single click. Brilliant.

Keep track of your life. It's the only one you've got. And who knows? Maybe someone is actually interested in learning from it.