It’s funny how a simple blog post can stick with you. I read about the 5 year diary on Austin Kleon’s blog 3 days ago, and from the moment I read about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Austin Kleon said, “This is one of the places I go when I’m uninspired,” in reference to his 5-year diary, I thought, if he can get inspired by it, why can’t I? I needed to try it.
In my opinion, as an artist, inspiration is everything. If the artist finds inspiration, then creation is basically done. If there’s a way to have unlimited inspiration then I am all up for it.
So after three days of excruciating pain trying to find a 365+ page book (that is cheap), I settled on the around 300-page sketchbook, the same one that I’m currently using for my Morning Pages.
I also gifted one to Rohan because I already know this is going to be an amazing and transformative journey.
But at first, I didn’t really get it. A 5-year diary? It sounded cool, but I wasn’t sure what it really meant. I didn’t fully understand what he meant by a 5-year diary.
I thought it was just another journaling method, but after doing my research, I realized—it’s not just about writing down thoughts. It’s about capturing life in the simplest form, in short moments.
Condensing my days into just a few sentences, and then, one year from now, reading them again. Being able to relive the exact emotions, the exact mindset. Almost like time traveling. A perfect way to remember life.
So I got so hyped & excited that I started creating Notion templates to begin my 5 year journey (of various aspects of my life) without wasting a single day because I realized that I could make a 5-year journal about anything.
I’ve done it with reading, cooking, career, and journaling. But above everything else, my main focus is on doing the quote thing—just like how Austin Kleon does it.
Maintaining a physial book and writing a quote a day, or favorite sentences from novels, stories, poems and songs, from plays and movies, from overheard conversations and as Dwight Garner puts it, “Lines that made me sit up in my seat; lines that jolted me awake.”
“If keeping a journal would be a way to look in the mirror and make an honest appraisal of myself, keeping a commonplace book is more like looking at myself out of the corner of my eye.” wrote Charley Locke when talking about her commonplace book experience.
5 year diary and Commonplace are two different things. 5 year diary is traditionally a form of journal method and a Commonplace book is where you collect and write everything and anything you want — thoughts, ideas, quotes, conversations etc.
But what Austin Kleon did is that he merged both the concepts of 5 Year Diary and a Commonplace book into one a.k.a, The 5 Year Commonplace Book, a cocktail which blew my mind.
There’s something powerful in writing every day, in capturing just a few sentences that encapsulate where you are, what you’re thinking, and what inspires you.
You might be thinking, what’s the use of going through all this trouble to write a single quote in a book? I know, the first year will make no sense, but I never question my mentors.
I want you to think of the 5 year diary/journal as a tree.
- The first year, it takes time to properly root.
- The second year, you see the stem and the leaves.
- The third year, it bears fruit that is beyond delicious.
- By the fourth and fifth years, you are just grateful to yourself for planting the tree in the first place.
I’m definitely going to make a video about it soon, after I try it for more than a month… Right now, everything is about setting up the roots. And this diary, this quote-a-day habit, feels like the foundation of something much bigger.
Will they still hit the same? Will they speak to me in a different way? Only time will tell, but I can already see this becoming one of my most treasured possessions. And maybe, just maybe, by writing down these thoughts every day, I’ll start to see patterns. I’ll see the highs, the lows, and everything in between.
I’m excited. There’s no other way to describe it. This is just the beginning of something I know will stay with me for a long time. One sentence, one quote, one page at a time.
