# During our conversation By [coconut meat](https://paragraph.com/@coconut-meat) · 2022-12-02 --- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/465c3960a64cbb70891dec6c7480801216845e131ecf86501a0f88376e3c2c23.png) About 10 years ago, I was talking to some of my best friends about old times. During our conversation, I was surprised to find that I did not remember many of the details they mentioned, such as how many months it happened, who was involved, what their relationship was, what they did... I only vaguely remember it happening, but a lot of the details are like hearing it for the first time, like I wasn't there. I don't have a good memory, especially when it comes to bad experiences, but that day made me ask myself a question: What have I been doing all these years? It doesn't matter if I don't ask. It makes the hairs on my back stand up because there's a vacuum and I can't even remember what I've done in the last few years, or even remember one or two things. Although I live according to the routine every day, but it seems that nothing has been done, life is like a silent stream, flowing from the side every day, but a look, nothing left. At that moment, I felt a deep sense of weightlessness and experienced anxiety for the first time. To alleviate this anxiety and not make a fool of myself, I decided to do something about it. On New Year's Day 2010, I prepared a diary and made my first entry. From that day on, my life began to be clearly marked, and it has not stopped since. On the New Year's Day of 2014, I started to use mobile phone log (the built-in calendar software of the system) to make records, because electronic log is more convenient to carry and record, and it is also very convenient to search. Before I knew it, it had been going on for 10 years, the longest I had ever done. Later, I learned from the book Strange Life that there was a man named Lyubichev who kept doing time statistics for 56 years. He lived a very good life. In a way, I was doing what he was doing -- keeping a detailed diary. However, in the control of time, I am far from Lyubichev. The biggest meaning of recording time for me is to make myself aware of the existence of time, so that I can live more down-to-earth. Although my memory is still not good and I may still not be able to answer my friends' questions about the past, I am not worried because after a few seconds I can tell the details with incredible accuracy: the date, the day, the time, who, where and what I went to. However, this is probably the end of the function, it is just a habit, let me have a memory plug-in, my awareness of life is not special. It wasn't until February 2017 that I read Cheng Jia's book Study Well and decided to start "daily reflection". Who would have thought that this humble "daily reflection" would open up a whole new world for me. Keeping a diary doesn't make me as good a person as Lyubichev, but it does make me more sensitive to time. Every time I record my wasted time, such as 2 hours spent looking at my phone, I feel a sense of guilt in my heart and unconsciously wish to reduce the waste. After all, it is not glorious to record such a log, and who wants to have their life made up of such boring things? Of course, I sometimes have a very busy life, often busy confused, looking at the dense log, also can't help but think: "what on earth are you busy?" Because these busyness is often a passive response to external pressure, rather than their own active pursuit of something. So I asked myself: What's the point of living a "fulfilling" day if you're constantly being driven by external schedules? People are probably like this, hoping to live a richer and more wonderful life, so under the natural review of the journal, I am more and more eager to live an efficient and meaningful life, this desire is increasingly strong, but I have been unable to find the exit. It wasn't until I started practicing daily reflection that I realized it was a new outlet for self-awareness. It's like a deep journal. Just taking a little time each day to reflect on the events or insights that touched you the most can help you stay more aware of your life. So I started doing it, and it went from bad to worse. When I wrote the 160th day, I conceived the idea of opening a public account to write. Because these reflections made me really examine my own status and goals, and realize the benefits of writing for myself. Through reflection, I have become more aware of the details of my life. I can improve myself in small ways without outside help. I can't tell you how good these reflections have been for me, so I want to bring them to you and let more people know about them and benefit from them. At first, I only knew there were benefits to writing the Daily Reflection, but I didn't realize how great the benefits were, and I am surprised when I look back at how many underlying principles this little reflection implied. That's often what a thoroughfare is: so simple that you don't want to believe it's a thoroughfare. In order for you to understand, I will introduce my own method of writing "Daily Reflection". My approach is simply to focus on what touches me the most in my daily life. Whether that dot is a joyful realization or a painful confusion, if it sparks in your heart, pick it up and write it down in a document. And the way of recovery is very simple, usually only three points: (1) describe the past, so that you can recall the scene in the future; ② Analyze the reasons -- ask a few more why, until there is a deep inspiration; ③ Improvement measures - try to extract a cognitive point or action point. Nothing more. Sometimes it's just a few words, sometimes it's thousands of words. It depends on your mind, it depends on your situation, it just needs to help you see the problem better and make changes. --- *Originally published on [coconut meat](https://paragraph.com/@coconut-meat/during-our-conversation)*