Journaling brings clarity.
This became clear again when I came across my old practical shooting journals. Three notebooks, filled front to back. Drills, goals, personal reflections. I was fully committed then—to mastery, to getting better—and the act of writing anchored that commitment.
I’ve always believed in writing things down. Shooting was no exception. Those early entries shaped how I trained, thought, and improved. Even though I don’t keep shooting logs anymore, those pages still influence how I approach performance today.
But it goes beyond practical shooting.
As I walked through the house recently, I found stacks of notebooks going back to my twenties. Business journals, personal journals, dad journals. I’d forgotten how much I’ve written. There’s something telling about that—maybe I never became a “writer,” but it’s obvious I’ve always needed to write.
Those pages capture everything: scattered ideas, frustrations, diagrams from meetings, conversations I didn’t want to forget. Some are rough—just venting. Others are surprisingly precise. But all of them point to the same pattern: writing is how I get unstuck.
One entry stood out. It was a letter to my infant son, written when I didn’t know if we’d have another child. (We did—my daughter.) I wrote to them not as babies, but as future adults. I wanted them to know what mattered to me back then. Those pages are still here. Maybe one day they’ll read them.
Journaling isn’t about being a writer. It’s about making sense of what you’re doing, how you’re thinking, and where you’re headed. Writing things down is how I’ve processed problems at work, clarified ideas, and defused stress before it leaked into other areas of life. No app can compete with that.
There’s something about pen and paper that cuts through noise. It’s slower. More honest. You can’t scroll away from your thoughts. You have to face them. Sometimes that means clarity. Other times, it means wrestling with what you find. Either way, it moves you forward.
It’s funny—when I post about journaling, the response is usually silence. Most people think it’s a luxury or a waste of time. “Must be nice,” they say. What they miss is that journaling isn’t a soft habit. It’s hard. It’s raw. And it’s one of the most rigorous things you can do for your mind.
I’m not saying you need to journal. But I’ll say this: writing consistently, even badly, will sharpen your thinking across every domain of life. Whether it’s business, parenting, shooting, or just surviving the day—writing helps.
Go write.