Month: April 2025

Life after 60 is often characterized by significant transitions. Journaling has been my go-to method for navigating transitions, as it provides me with the ideal space for reflection, problem-solving, and setting meaningful goals.

As effective as journaling is for me and many others, is it the ultimate life hack for women over 60?

In our previous article and video in this new series for Sixty and Me readers, we introduced the concept of life hacks for women over 60.

If you are new to this concept, life hacks are techniques and strategies that can immediately enhance the quality of key areas of your life while minimizing stress, discomfort, or unnecessary complications.

Journaling is a powerful and all-encompassing life hack that can enhance the quality of your life, foster personal growth, and be applied to literally any life hack you feel called to use.

Journaling Is an All-Time Great Life Hack

It is well known that journaling encourages inner reflection and reframes outer perceptions, which is essential for the successful application of any life hack. Journaling also provides razor-sharp clarity on what changes can be most beneficial to you and your loved ones.

Because of the level of clarity it delivers, journaling serves as a foundation for choosing what life hack is most aligned with your needs and desires after 60.

But to attain any level of clarity on difficult choices and life transitions, there is one voice you will need to silence above all others.

Your inner critic.

What makes journaling an all-time great life hack is that it bypasses your inner critic and connects you with your authentic self. By quieting the incessant chatter and negative-based stories that are hallmarks of your inner critic, journaling helps you create an easier path to integrating any life hack when and where it matters most in your life.

The Key to Unlocking Life Hacks

Let’s explore 10 reasons why journaling is so beneficial for women in this vibrant stage of life and how each of these reasons is a key to unlocking life hacks.

Facilitating Self-Discovery and Reflection

Journaling encourages deep introspection, allowing you to explore and reaffirm who you truly are. This period of life can bring many changes, and journaling helps in navigating these changes by acting as a mirror for your thoughts and emotions.

Managing Emotional Health

The act of journaling can be incredibly therapeutic. It allows for the processing of complex emotions, whether it’s dealing with loss, adapting to retirement, or managing health and financial concerns. Journaling also offers a private, safe space for us to express feelings, reducing stress and enhancing mental health.

Enhancing Memory and Cognitive Functions

Journaling can also serve as a cognitive exercise, especially important as we age. It keeps our minds engaged, encourages creativity, and can help us sharpen our clarity, memory, and cognitive skills through the regular articulation of thoughts and ideas.

Tracking Progress and Growth

Tracking personal growth and accomplishments is an important part of any life hack, making journaling an excellent tool for this. By regularly documenting your journey, you can see how far you’ve come, understand what strategies or life hacks have worked, and obtain clarity on where there’s room for improvement.

Goal Setting and Problem Solving

Journaling is a practical way to set goals and brainstorm solutions to challenges. Writing down goals makes any life hack you engage in more tangible. Journaling about different strategies or life hacks to achieve these goals is a proven and effective way of problem-solving.

Building and Sustaining Healthy Habits

Journaling can help you establish and maintain healthy habits. Whether your chosen life hack is focused on diet, exercise, social activities, finances, or mental health practices, journaling these habits helps in tracking consistency and effectiveness.

Encouraging Mindfulness and Gratitude

An attitude of gratitude is essential to developing a growth mindset and can significantly improve your overall well-being and happiness. Maintaining a gratitude journal or writing about daily experiences with your life hacks encourages mindfulness and appreciation for life’s small pleasures.

Fostering Creativity and Flexibility

Journaling allows for creative expression, which can be liberating and invigorating. It also promotes cognitive flexibility, helping you adapt to new situations and find creative life hacks to overcome obstacles.

Strengthening Communication Skills

Daily journaling enhances communication skills and helps in organizing your thoughts clearly. Expressing yourself more effectively is valuable in personal relationships and social interactions, along with being one of the pillars for all successful life hacks.

Legacy Creation

Journaling is also a key to creating a personal legacy. Your journals can offer you and your heirs a collection of thoughts, experiences, and wisdom that can be passed down to future generations.

Enhances the Quality of Your Life

Journaling is a multifaceted tool that aids in self-discovery, emotional health management, and cognitive engagement.

For me, journaling is a cornerstone practice for creating and refining life hacks that enhance the quality of my life. I have no doubt it can do the same for you.

Whether it’s through daily reflections, gratitude entries, or problem-solving exercises, journaling offers each of us a path to a more mindful, fulfilled, and joyful life.

I invite you to join me in the video where I will share three additional insights on how journaling can lead to life hacks, along with three journal prompts to help you integrate what you’re learning.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

In what areas of your life has journaling benefited you? Do you think journaling is a life hack that can challenge you to be a better person?

The Walk the Line tour comes right after the K-pop group’s Coachella debut.

The funeral will be held on April 26 at the Vatican.

They’re podiatrist-approved, too.

You spent an entire weekend decluttering and organizing your garage. But less than a week later – bam! Clutter has already started creeping back in, leaving you frustrated and wondering if all that effort was wasted. Ugh!

Is it time to think differently about how you declutter? Maybe it’s time for an out-of-the-box approach – one that’s faster, easier, and smarter. A way that takes far less time and still gets the job done beautifully.

If that sounds like your kind of magic, listen up.

Learn How to Declutter Backwards. Yep, Backwards!

This is the exact opposite of traditional decluttering. It’s quick, efficient, and a huge time- and energy-saver because…

It’s about what to KEEP, rather than what to GET RID OF.

That one simple, yet mind-blowing, mindset shift flips the whole experience on its head – turning decluttering into a positive, not a negative.

• It takes less time.
• Reduces overwhelm and decision fatigue.
• Minimizes emotion and drama.

So Why Is Backward Decluttering So Effective?

When you start by identifying your essentials – the things you truly need, love, and use – you empower yourself to take control of your clutter. It becomes much easier (and quicker!) to recognize what doesn’t serve you.

It creates a simpler framework for those who struggle to let go.

Once you’ve chosen what to keep, the rest becomes obvious.

You gain control and discipline over things you’ve held onto for years – especially those with emotional weight.

Think of it this way:

If you’re decluttering your closet, isn’t it easier to start by picking out the clothes you always wear – the ones that make you feel fabulous every single time?

Exactly.

Why Try the Backward Decluttering Method?

Let’s face it: most people struggle with decluttering. These are the top two challenges:

1. Not Knowing Where to Start

Shifting your focus to what you want to keep gives you a sense of direction and momentum. You see results fast – and that’s motivating.

2. Not Being Able to Decide

The sheer volume can be paralyzing. But deciding what to keep helps you stay calm, clear, and focused.

How to Declutter Backwards

Let’s test this out – starting with your closet.

Step One: The Keepers

Quickly scan your closet and pull out your essentials.

• What good-quality basics do you wear all the time?  (Think: black pants, favorite jeans, a perfect-fit blouse.)
• What pieces do you love because they make you feel amazing?

Set those aside. Those are your KEEPERS.

Step Two: The Losers

Now, go through what’s left.

Sort into four piles:

• Donate
• Discard
• Sell
• Can’t decide

Step Three: The Maybes

Take a second look at your Can’t Decide pile. Do another quick screen – keep, donate, sell, or toss.

Still unsure? Pop them in a “Maybe” box for 30 days. Label the box. Mark your calendar. No peeking!

Step Four: Time to Decide

On Day 30, open your Maybe Box and go through each item.

Make a final decision: Keep, donate, sell, or discard.

A word of caution: Don’t get stuck on “just in case” or “someday” items.

Decide to decide.

Step Five: Day 29 Closet Review

Before opening that Maybe Box, review how your decluttered closet is working for you.

Ask yourself:

1. Have you missed anything? Example: a pair of dressy black pants?
   • If yes, you might find it in the box.
   • If not, give yourself permission to buy a new, high-quality replacement.
2. Did you edit enough? Still too many white tops or yoga pants? Time to prune again. Donate, sell, or discard.
3. Still haven’t worn it? If it’s been 29 days and you haven’t touched it… it’s probably time to let it go.

Ask: Why am I still keeping this?

If your answer starts with “someday…” – you know what to do.

Step Six: Decision Day

It’s Day 30. Open the box.

Each item: Keeper or Loser?

No more maybes.

Keep. Donate. Sell. Discard.

Let’s be real: whether you like it or not, clutter will try to sneak back in.

But now, you’ve got the powerful, game-changing solution to declutter backwards.

So why not take control and get it done – with less stress and more success?

So, What Did You Think?

If you followed along with me on this Backward Decluttering Challenge – wasn’t it easier? Faster? Kinder to your time and energy? If you haven’t tried it yet, let me know when you do! I’d love to hear from you. Please comment and share!