Life Data, Part 2

James Robinson • April 5, 2025

Tracking Life's Data, Part 2: Extremist Edition

I've written about my process for collecting and analyzing internal Life Data through time tracking-- but the next step is a bit extremist.


In today’s entry, I’ll share another step from my personal annual review process– which is a very inefficient task– but valuable nonetheless.


First, I create a stack of data, from one of my daily practices, doing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages.


Every morning I wake up, feed the cats, turn the coffee on, then I write three pages in my journal. That’s it. I just get whatever is in my head and soul out onto the page.


I don’t re-read. I just close the book, then engage in my other practices– which are prayer, reading the bible, then some form of exercise.


However, four years ago I started to re-read the entries, document them in a spreadsheet, and look for trends, moods and tones . It's a new year's tradition at this point, completed during the last week of December.


It’s a long process because I fill 4 notebooks. Each of the notebooks contains 251 pages . I prefer the LEUCHTTURM 1917 notebooks because there’s a space for a table of contents, lines and page numbers, which makes documentation easy.


The Process


To do my Year In Review, I re-read, do a qualitative analysis of the tone, topics and my calendar, then I enter the findings in a spreadsheet. The categories I document are date, page number, theme (if there is one), a learning and I assign it a positive, neutral or negative for mood value.

Here’s an example from Book 1, 2022:



Book 1, 2022


January was tough that year. My stepfather, who raised me and with whom I had a difficult relationship with, was diagnosed with cancer. And my daughter was away at college, in an emergency room, with COVID and possible blood clots. There’s a lot of sadness and anxiety in these entries. I had my first blood clot in my calf earlier that year, so I was scared for my oldest kid.


2 weeks later, on page 197 , I documented other insights. Dad died. We were near him. In fact, I was on a zoom call with a funder on the minute of his last breath. Seeing my father ill , I started smoking again and craved being an underdog, to start over at something, to try something new.


2 months later, in Book 2, I found what was spiking joy– writing short stories and studying the craft. I also began to see creativity as a daily practice and started thinking about leaving my job. Perhaps the contemplation of mortality, based on the death of Dad, made me start contemplating other career and life choices.


And then later in May:



May 2022, Book 2


From the entry on page 158, I learned that Rachmaninoff brings me joy, as does the writer Lydia Davis, and I was grateful for participating in The Creatives Workshop by Akimbo and Seth Godin. Seeing my daughter graduate and reading a friend’s writing also struck joy.  However, on page 161, there were negative themes around work-- which I'll share at some point. As a result, a few weeks later I made the decision and left.


So why is this process important?


For me, it allows me to be more conscious in my decision making. I have good qualitative data as evidence for what brings me joy, what my challenges are. As a result, I gain more discernment.


In knowing this, I now know how to better spend my time, what challenges are worth engaging in and what challenges need to be avoided, just because it may be a waste of time and energy or the challenges don’t align to my 2026 goals.



As part of my coaching package, From Dark to Diamond, I help other introverted men to develop similar systems for collecting life-data in order help them make conscious choices instead of reactionary ones. If you want to learn more, email me at james@miningandshining.com or visit the miningandshinig.com website.

Remember, the first excavation call is free and I guarantee some insight.

A Swarm of Lemmings:Writers' Passive Suicide and the Crisis in K-12 Literacy – Implications for Western Civilization

By James Robinson • March 7, 2026
A swarm of lemmings continues their march to the proverbial sea, attracted by a temporary vision of sun and beauty, but ultimately distracted by that vision—thus, they fall off the cliff in a passive suicide. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Their deaths were the consequence of distraction alone. In this allegory, the lemmings are writers (and many in publishing) who ignore the erosion in elementary schools and K-12 education. Writers may create brilliant work, but if students graduate without the skills to engage deeply, our audience vanishes. From a cultural perspective, this is alarming—and the stakes extend to the health of Western civilization itself. In my day job, as Executive Director of a small non-profit, I oversee a pre-K program, a charter school, and our efforts to revitalize a publishing company re-dedicated to high-quality children's books, which we're strongly considering. These trends hit close to home: we're building foundations early because the data shows the stakes are high—not just for individuals, but for the shared knowledge, critical reasoning, and civic discourse that have sustained Western democratic traditions for centuries. Key trends: Average Grade Level of Books Sold Now vs. 1950: Decline Toward Grade 5–7 Bestsellers today often score 5th–7th grade on Flesch-Kincaid (many 4th–6th for broad appeal), with simpler sentences and vocabulary to match declining adult reading stamina. Mid-20th-century works frequently demanded more (closer to 7th–9th in analyses), reflecting a market shift toward accessibility amid falling literacy. Didactic vs. Non-Didactic vs. Classics: Effects on Brain Development Narrative-driven reading (non-didactic stories or classics) sustains broader brain activation—engaging language, empathy, memory, and connectivity regions more effectively than passive or overly didactic methods. Neuroscience shows immersive storytelling promotes neuroplasticity and deeper neural pathways, while fragmented/instructional approaches may limit sustained engagement and cognitive depth needed for complex literature. If Trends Continue: What Will Texts Look Like in the Future—4th Grade? Pleasure reading has plummeted ~40% over 20 years (daily readers from 28% peak in 2004 to 16% in 2023); adult literacy scores dropped sharply (many below 6th grade); NAEP reading scores remain at historic lows. Unchecked, popular texts could simplify to 4th-grade or lower: basic vocabulary, short sentences, reduced nuance—eroding space for sophisticated writing. These declines threaten more than literacy: they undermine the foundations of Western civilization. Deep reading fosters critical thinking, empathy, and shared cultural references essential to informed citizenship and democratic debate. As reading wanes, societies risk shallower discourse, greater susceptibility to manipulation, weakened civic engagement, and a fraying of the reflective reasoning that has driven progress, innovation, and self-governance in the West. This isn't inevitable. Writers and creators bring storytelling, imagination, and engagement that schools and early programs need most. Call to Action: Get involved in schools and early education. Ask kids about the books you remember reading when you were a kid– The Oddyssey, Of Mice and Men, Leaves of Grass. Advocate for narrative-rich curricula, or support initiatives like ours in pre-K and charter settings. Or send me an email, I'd love to chat. When we relaunch our website in the summer, we'll have some exciting news. We have a lot of work to do-- and we're all learning from it.

Venturing into the Courage Gap, #1

By James Robinson • February 21, 2026
Pushing and Pulling The "push" connotes aggression whereas the "pull" connotes invitation. The "push" is a criticism, and the "pull" is coffee and advice at a nice cafe selected just for the advisee. Both are needed in different measures, at different times and often towards the same ends. In 2024, I engaged in a sabbatical to step back, read, study, think, and reflect about schools and leading through the pandemic. It was a very prolific period. However, what made it prolific was the "push"-- spending days reviewing data and learning to criticize the sector I worked in. The Courage Gap Talks document those learnings, in the most lo-fi way. They're ugly, but they inform the work and solutions we're imlpementing at the park, where our goal is to "pull" folks into a transformative educational envioronment. Originally, they were called "Career-Suicide Notebooks", the original plan being to walk away from education all together. Instead, what I learned will inform my work for years. It's been said that Buddhist monks can see the world in a grain of rice. After being immersed in education for several years, I see the world in a school ecosystem. Thus, schools enter my creative work and the way I think about creativity enters my work in schools. The first video is called 33% and it looks at the proficiency scores of 4th grade students on the NAEP Assessment. Additionally, it looks at the broad economy that works to maintain the status quo.