Process

General Process

The goal of Iterative Journaling is to simplify improving or perfecting any process. This may be cooking a recipe, improving on a hobby, or even being better in a career. The process is quite simple. You use journal entries that are designed around the key elements of a specific activity for each attempt (iteration). You log the primary attempt type in the Iterations Log so you can easily link each attempt together. Once you identify a favorite or optimal attempt, you record some quick information about it (including the page number of that attempt) in the Favorites Log. That's it! Certain Iteration Journals may have an additional section or two but they are added along with the same philosophy.

Core Idea

Make it easy to document and track multiple attempts on a journey to improve or perfect a particular activity. Everything about Iterative Journaling, and the purpose-built Iteration Journals, follows this core idea. You will see this in how the journal is laid out, how navigation is handled, and more.

Main Elements

Each journal is broken down into 3 (sometimes more) main sections. Each main section is described in detail below. In addition, the design of the Iteration Journal makes use of the page margins to help with navigation between sections along with finding information faster.

Actions or Favorites Section

In the Actions or Favorites Section (determined by the type of activity) is where follow-up actions or favorite iterations are recorded. This is where you would write the name, page number, and any high-level details about a successful iteration. An example would be if you've been working on a recipe for spaghetti sauce and after a number of iterations, you've created your perfect sauce (or one you really like). You would record that information here.

Why? This makes it very easy to find the specific iteration where you achieved your goal. Essentially you are creating a Table of Contents for your successful iterations.

In some journals, this may be where you record future actions to take based on an iteration. This is common when using Iterative Journaling as part of a sales process. You record your meeting notes in the Iteration Journal and when there are determined actions or next steps to take based on the meeting, they are recorded in the Actions Section. This way it's easy to look at the Actions page, review what actions are needed, and when completed simply cross them off. The alternative is to thumb through notes and figure out what actions are required, often resulting in steps being missed.

Iteration Log

This is where you link iterations together. Using the spaghetti sauce example, you would create an entry called "Spaghetti Sauce" and note the page number of your first attempt. In addition, you would use one of the reference marks to quickly record how successful it was. Each journal will have recommended marks you can use. This may be a simple line above the page number to signify it needs improvement or a slash across the number to indicate it wasn't good. On your next iteration, you can easily identify previous versions, review your notes and feedback, then document and record your current attempt. This makes it really easy to find all the related iterations (attempts) and improve upon each one following the recommendations you wrote down when you provided yourself feedback on that iteration.

Using the example of the sales process Iteration Journal, may choose to track all meetings with a specific customer or a project. It may be to track marketing activities, events, or more. These are activities that often are related but may have multiple meetings or instances. Using the iteration log, you can easily record which iterations go together by referencing the page number each journal entry is recorded on.

Journal

This is where the main information is kept. Again, based on the specific activity, the titles may be different. The titles are purpose-built (designed) with the specific activity in mind. This makes it easy to record only relevant information and have it be consistent for the activity. There will always be a primary area for keeping notes however this is complemented by a series of fields relevant to the particular activity. For many activities, you'll find an area to track what you liked or didn't like about the particular iteration, changes you'd like to make for next time, and a name for the particular activity attempt.

Navigation

Each journal will have a Table of Contents to quickly find a specific section. In addition, the section names will also be found on the right outside margin. This allows you to quickly flip the pages and find the section you want to go to. In the main journal section, both the right and left margins will be utilized to identify key information about each iteration. Again, this is intended to make it easy to flip through pages and quickly find specific information. For example, in the Pasta Makers Iteration Journal, on the left margin is a star rating system and heart - allowing you to quickly find iterations you really liked or decided were a favorite. On the right margin of the Pasta Makers Iteration Journal, you can select the pasta shape or type of recipe you might be iterating (dough or sauce for example).

The goal of the navigation style used in an Iteration Journal is to make it very easy to find specific entries. This builds upon the core purpose of making it easy to iterate, improve, and perfect nearly any process.