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Write your autobiography

A few months ago I wrote a column about the benefits of writing a journal, including providing raw material for a possible future autobiography.

So, today, I want to follow up with an encouragement to you to get going on that autobiography – whether you have been keeping a journal or not.

And here I am not just appealing to older readers, as whatever your age it will help you with self-discovery, introspection and reflection. It can also act as therapy and self-counselling.

I have been keeping a detailed daily journal for quite a long time, conscious of these trapping memories for reference.

But I was not expecting to get going on my autobiography for several years given how busy I was… until I came down with some health issues and took a flight to London to be assessed at a hospital there.

I was confined to a stretcher throughout the flight, so I asked myself how I was going to spend all that time lying flat.

The thought occurred to me to reflect on the flow of my life, as a first go at developing the content and sequence of chapters for my autobiography.

It was, as it is called, the “initiating incident” to my writing, as since then in the hospital and now back home I have been hard at it, making excellent progress – although with a long way still to go.

I have also been an initiator for others to begin writing their stories. I’ve helped edit the autobiographies of some of my friends, and I was recently invited to contribute an introduction to the one by James Foster, written for his family.

Our life story can be more about personal, and emotional issues, to do with relationships between us and family and friends (Prince Harry!), or more about our professional life.

It all depends on what moves us and to whom we want to appeal. Is our goal to titillate with a “kiss-and-tell” series of revelations about intimate encounters, as some such stories reveal?

Not mine, and most likely not for most Business Daily readers. To amuse and entertain? To inspire and educate? Some combination thereof?

Do we see ourselves as uninhibitedly frank, and relaxed about revealing a “tell-all” account of our life? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, do we unduly need to always be uncritical and positive, not offending anyone by omitting delicate issues?

Somewhere in between, maybe. And how do we deal with negative episodes that risk us being sued for libel by the bad guys we have had to deal with? (They’re the most gripping stories!)

Next, how do we avoid appearing to be bragging? For that’s how life stories started, with the self-promotional Egyptian pharaohs of 3,000 years ago in their tombs… and how they continue today with characters like Trump.

If that’s the idea, then better have a biography written about us! While a memoir is not meant to be an extended sales brochure or CV – except for politicians as preludes to their campaigning – it’ll hopefully boost our self-esteem, with me as the hero of my story.

My suggestion is that you just start writing elements you can get going with easily and enjoyably, without inhibitions or worry at this stage about the quality of the writing.

Feel free to rant and rage; jot notes about topics; capture memories as they reveal themselves.

Initially, at least, you can be writing just for yourself, just for the grandchildren, or already for a wider audience.

And there can then be different versions for different audiences.

Ask yourself about your life’s shape. What is your story, told through a pattern of events, so you and then others get to know what your life means?

What do you believe in and why? What is your purpose in life? What were your triumphs and setbacks, crises and breakthroughs? What were your dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled; opportunities grasped and missed; moments of fun and hilarity?

Most importantly, why would anyone want to read what you have written? What will they learn from it and do differently as a result?

Who would want to publish your story and why? Who is your audience and who are you not interested in writing for?

Finally, talk to your previous generations for background before it’s too late – or you’ll regret not having done so.

Why keeping a journal of events is a good idea

I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 16 years and each day, no matter how tired I am, I key in the day’s activities and my reflections on them into my laptop. I even did so during my time in hospital with Covid earlier this year, including when I was at my weakest.

I started writing such journals while I was in London undergoing several weeks of radiotherapy treatment. I was told I would feel increasingly tired, so I thought it would be a good way to keep engaged that didn’t require much energy. As it turned out though, my strength sustained and I became an enthusiastic tourist around town, offering me much to write about.

When I returned to Nairobi I continued journalising my life, and it simply became something I did each day, like checking my mails or brushing my teeth. Every three months I design a cover page to the volume covering the previous quarter, with a suitable title and picture, and I write an introduction. I then take it on a memory stick to my “publisher” in Sarit Centre, where I have it printed and spiral bound.

The quarterly volumes – now 64 in number – have evolved over time, with more pictures and more elegant and varied layout and content. They have also tended to become longer, typically now exceeding 200 pages.

So for whom do I do it, and why? I do it for me, which means that what I write can be uninhibited and personal. As for why, there are multiple benefits, the most obvious of which is not forgetting anything I’ve been up to or my reactions to it. So if I ever get round to writing my memoirs, at least this period of my life is trapped as raw material from which a finished product can more readily be produced.

I particularly treasure writing about the hardest of times, or engaging with a really unpleasant character. (Extreme cases drive me to poetry.) The writing helps to distance me emotionally from the experience, as I become more of an objective observer, and the worse the situation the more therapeutic is the writing. Travel writers (and I have enjoyed being one) find that awful journeys result in the best scripts. But awful or wonderful, what is a journal but an account of one’s journeys through life?

Many of my articles for this column result from what I do in my professional life, and my journal entry on the subject is likely to be the first step, which I then adapt (and sometimes sensor!) appropriately.

The idea for writing this article came from Josphat Mwaura, who recently posted on his LinkedIn page the link to a Harvard Business Review article titled The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal, by Dan Siampa.

In it Siampa writes that he started keeping a journal when he took over a manufacturing research, software and consulting firm.

“I was very young, we were in crisis facing a challenging market, and I wasn’t sure whom I could rely on,” he remembers. “I kept a journal through my 12 years as chairman and CEO and have since recommended it to people moving into any senior position for the first time.”

Like me, he found the quiet reflection that occurs during journal writing to be very valuable, allowing for calm analysis and creative thinking.

“Journal entries should provide not only a record of what happened but how we reacted emotionally,” he agrees with me, adding that “writing it down brings a certain clarity that puts things in perspective.” It can also be “a form of mental rehearsal to prepare for particularly sensitive issues where there’s no one to talk with but yourself,” he says.

In my coaching work I sometimes suggest to my clients that they keep a journal as a way of keeping tabs on the progress they are making relative to what we will have discussed and agreed together.

So if you are not a journal writer do also consider becoming one – however busy you may be. Indeed the busier you are the more beneficial standing back from the 24/7 pressures of deadlines and dilemmas and decisions is likely to be.