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Resonance Journal as a Tool for Self-Discovery

The concept of a resonance journal and how it can be used as a tool for self-discovery.

I came to know about the concept of Resonance Journal when I watched Ali Abdaal’s video on how he uses notion for keeping his resonance calendar. After watching the video, I felt like the term ‘Resonance Calendar’ is not apt for what I wanted to do or achieve. I decided to rename it as ‘Resonance Journal‘ and set up one similar to Ali on Notion. I currently use the Resonance Journal as a tool in my journey towards self-discovery.

Anytime I come across anything at all that resonates with me, I drop it into the Resonance Calendar on Notion. This lets me keep track of articles I’ve read, YouTube videos I’ve watched, books and podcasts I’ve listened to, and anything else I come across in life.

Ali Abdaal

How does it work?

How an entry looks in Resonance Journal

The concept is simple. Every time you come across a video, podcast, job, article, book, project, etc that resonates with you, add it as an entry to the resonance journal. Use the existing tags or create one if it doesn’t exist. Over time you would see a pattern or a common thread of things that resonates with you. You would eventually see that some items often resonate with you and have multiple entries in the journal. For example, I came across articles, blogs, personalities around human-centred Design a lot in my journal. It was really interesting as there were very few entries related to renewable energy, my major in the journal! 🙂

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Self-Discovery using Resonance Journal

I have always struggled with what I wanted to do in life. I have always wanted to work on something I’m really passionate about especially in terms of career as it occupies a major part of your life. Journaling about things that resonates with me had a positive effect on my self-discovery journey. I realized that things that I thought mattered to me or stuff that I thought fitted me are not the ones I have a true connection with. Through this process, I found interesting patterns and came across multiple personalities again and again in different contexts. In fact, at the time of writing this, I’m currently doing a program on Design Research by the Interaction Design Foundation (IDF). This is something I have discovered after journaling for a few months on the resonance journal. I came across multiple instances where I felt a deep connection with design research like works by IDEO, Acumen Academy, Space10, Don Norman, etc. Every time I read about something related to UX say design research or interaction design, I feel a true connection and I’m very excited to know more about it. The funny thing is these were the same things that made me excited 2 years back, and I thought of it as another curiosity craving. I don’t know where this is right or wrong, but I’m happy that I’m pursuing something that resonates with me rather than doing something accidentally.

You can check out my sample resonance journal using the link below.

What do you think of Resonance Journaling? Does it make sense to you? If you’re into journaling, check out my article on stress journaling.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or message me directly.

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