Before Session 5 · Wayfinding
Read this before class — 10 to 15 minutes. Nothing is due before this session — today is where you start to journaling in the Good Time Journal.
The big idea: a compass tells you the direction, not the destination
Last week you built a compass — your CollegeView, Workview, and Lifeview. A compass is honest about what it can and can't do: it will never tell you exactly where to end up, but it can always tell you whether you're currently moving in a direction that's actually yours. Burnett and Evans call the next move wayfinding — using small, real clues from your own life to navigate, the way sailors read the stars instead of consulting a map that doesn't yet exist.
Burnett and Evans tell the story of Michael, a civil engineer who came to them at thirty-four not knowing what he liked or didn't like about his own life. He wasn't in crisis exactly — he wasn't paying attention. They had him do
something simple: at the end of each workday, write down when he felt bored or restless and what he was doing during those times; then write down when he felt excited and focused and what he was doing then. That's the whole exercise. It's called the Good Time Journal, and it's your wayfinding tool — you're starting yours this week.
The point isn't to judge your days as good or bad. It's to catch yourself in the act of having a good time — and a bad one — with enough specificity that a pattern can actually show up. Most of us can say “today was fine” or “today sucked,” but we rarely sift through what exactly made it that way. A day is made of many small moments. This journal is how you start noticing them.
Three things you're tracking
Engagement — were you interested, absorbed, pulled in? Or were you watching the clock?
Energy — did the activity fill you up or drain you? Energy can go negative — some things leave you worse off than before you started, even if you were technically “engaged” while doing them.
Flow — engagement on steroids. The rare state where time disappears, the challenge matches your skill exactly, and you're not thinking about the outcome at all — just doing the thing.
These three don't always move together. You can be highly engaged by something that quietly exhausts you — arguing a point you're good at, for instance, can be absorbing and still leave you drained. Tracking all three separately is what makes the pattern visible instead of just a vague daily mood.
What you're actually logging
Twice a day is plenty — once at the end of the day is fine too. For each activity you log, write down what you were doing and a quick read on your engagement and energy (Ken's worksheet in your folder has gauges for this if you'd rather mark a scale than write sentences). Don't analyze anything yet. Don't decide what it means. Just get it down on paper, in enough detail that you could read it back next week and remember the moment, not just the label.
Michael did this for a few weeks before any pattern became obvious to him. You're doing a compressed version — one week — which means the specificity of each entry matters even more than usual. “Class — fine” tells you nothing next week. “Class — came alive during the small-group part, went flat during the lecture part” does.
This week's belief → reframe
The belief that gets people stuck: “If I don't already know what engages me, there's nothing here to find.”
The designer's reframe: You're not supposed to already know — that's exactly why you log it instead of guessing.
Come Ready
Bring something to log in — your phone notes, the worksheet from your folder, a notebook, whatever you'll actually use. Nothing needs to be filled in yet. Class today is where you learn the format and make your first entry; the rest of the week is where the journal does its work. Next week, you'll come back and read what it told you.
ENT 1611 Designing Your Life · FSU Innovation Hub · Good Time Journal and Michael's story: Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, Designing Your Life (Knopf, 2016) · Worksheets and submissions on Canvas