Bad Time Log
How "this is terrible!" can turn to "I am curious to see what happens.."
This is a small, quite simple, yet powerful technique I love.
I encountered it as “bad time journal”, or negativity journal, from Arthur C. Brooks. Somehow I prefer calling this a log, but maybe that’s just my background.
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I personally LOVE journaling, and it keeps me somewhat saner.
In the past, I spent some time with the prompt “what can’t I do without”, following the idea that
“perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Pen and paper” ended up in that list, meaning that I go somewhat weird if I cannot jot down ideas.1
For me, journaling is a way to:
keep track of where I am and what I am doing and what needs to be done
go deeper on some topics, explore, expand, get some clarity
keeping track of something
probably much more, but for now...
This is a technique about keeping track.
Something bad happens
Generally when something bad happens, well, we feel bad.
Shocking, I know. Citation needed.
Some of us tend to have the tendency to catastrophize, and in any case, bad things are bad.
Only, we often don’t know for sure.
We do not really know for sure what happens next.
There is a Taoist parable (Huainanzi, 2nd century BCE), often retold in English by Alan Watts, that goes more or less like this:
A Chinese farmer’s horse runs away.
The neighbors say, “Terrible luck.”
The farmer says, “Maybe.”The next day the horse returns, bringing several wild horses.
The neighbors say, “Amazing luck!”
The farmer says, “Maybe.”The farmer’s son tries to ride one of the wild horses, falls, and breaks his leg.
The neighbors say, “Terrible luck.”
The farmer says, “Maybe.”Soon after, conscription officers come to draft young men.
They pass over the son because of his broken leg.
The neighbors say, “Amazing luck!”
The farmer says, “Maybe.”
Enter the bad time log.
The score is simple:
when something bad happens, write it down with the date.
Write how you feel, what you think will happen, why it is bad, whatever comes up.
Then set 2 reminders: one after 1 month, one after 6 months.
after one month, revisit the event.
Write down what you learned, what happened then, how you feel about it now.
Is it its effect still present? Is it still bad?
revisit it after 6 months
Write down any good thing that came from it. Also what else you learned?
Does it still hurt? Is it still bad?
That’s it.
Like almost all simple practices (gratitude journal, noting meditation, any sort of mindfulness, grounding practices, etc), you have to do it.
I mean, that is the point of it being a practice: you need to practically do it.
We have a tendency to forget how we felt about something, and how many things happened, felt bad... and just disappeared, or ended up being blessings in disguise.2 3
Give it a try.
If you are really impatient, like I was the first time I heard about it: go back in your calendar (or journal, if you keep one) and write down bad things that happened, that felt like a big deal at the time.
See if they still are 1 and 6 months later.
(It is not the same, but hey, it works like now)
Why this?
Because most bad things are not so bad.
Because most bad things disappear leaving very little trace. And lots of them either teach us a lesson, or end up being blessings in disguise.
(And some just suck, really, I get it)
It is easy to forget about it, and also think “this time is different”.
Keeping a log helps us remember it. If we do it for long enough, we end up almost getting curious when something bad happens. At least, we start looking forward writing it down, to see what happens.
It feels good re-reading it, after a while.
And it helps us developing some perspective.
I promise.
If you want to discuss this, or anything else, come to the Parts Work Unconference.
We are almost sure you will not have to add “attending the unconference” to your bad times log, but missing it could deserve an entry.
Just saying.
It is possible I am one of the few people that, when selecting a possible meditation retreat, will explicitly check “am I allowed to take notes and write?”.
Let’s say that if I am not allowed to externalize my thoughts, they tend to circle and become ruminations, and leave it at that.
It’s one of the reasons I started organizing peer to peer retreats. Also not waking up at 4am, and sleeping more than 6h per night.
Of course, you can probably think about plenty of stuff happened more than 6 months ago that are still bad, and still hurt. For sure. It is just that you do not need a practice to notice those, they happen on their own.
(it also makes me think about proposing to keep a gratitude practice to a family member going through a bad time.
“Can I keep a grudge journal instead?”, at the time I asked her not to, and just thought “you do it already, all the time”.
This is a form of a grudge journal, with a twist)
This is good. I wish I’d done that. Will try going forward although something bad happening has increased and accelerated over the last 10 years to the point where I need to write something bad down every day if that includes what’s happening in the world, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc..
Writing it down can interrupt rumination. That by itself seems useful.
I might add one distinction, though: perspective and authority are not always the same.
In family therapy, you sometimes see two adults who genuinely do not care anymore that “mom gave my brother the bigger piece of cake.” The narrative has softened. And yet the six-year-old part that registered unfairness can still hold emotional charge decades later. The story changes. The part may not have fully relinquished its role.
Something similar could happen here. An event may feel less catastrophic six months later, while the same protector that mobilized around threat continues to shape urgency and evaluation.
Revisiting the log might not only show whether the event was “still bad,” but whether the part that took control at the time has eased its authority.
Pressure, over time, may clarify that more than memory does.