I journal through my blogs and also offline on my private personal notebooks.
I find that it depends on what you intend to get out of it.
For me, I began this habit when I was 17 years old and have been doing it for 7 years now. I began with the intention of just writing my goals down and somehow see my goals through to fruition (most of them have).
Then it evolved into a process of thought, feedback and idea logging.
Over the months and years I find that more and more creative, original and inspired ideas just seem to flow through my mind non-stop, it's become somewhat a disadvantage to me rather than an advantage, because of idea and information overload. You can get crippled by indecision.
Here's where a mentor, a friend or even paper tools can help you tremendously. Have a mechanism or system to organise your ideas and file them accordingly. Work only on those that are immediately practical and most beneficial.
You may not want to eliminate mental chatter outright, because sometimes you need it to think through things constructively (depends on what is your dominant type of intelligence - is it verbal intelligence?).
The best thing to do is find your own system or way to organise your thoughts. The stimuli you are receiving on a constant basis from the environment (TV, home, workplace, school, neighbourhood, etc) also has an effect on the thoughts you will dominantly have. |