I don't write in it daily, not even weekly. But every milestone, every stage, everything that has given me particular pleasure, I set down. By now it happens almost automatically, practically in passing.
The principle behind it is simple. Our brains are wired to store the negative and our mistakes more reliably than the things that went well (the so-called negativity bias). A success journal turns the tables. It trains your perception toward what's going right, and on grey days the written proof is there, ready: everything I've already managed to pull off under my own steam.
Maybe that sounds a touch too uplifting, and to be honest I keep the journal mostly out of habit. But yesterday was one of those days when I simply opened it up. To my surprise, it goes all the way back to 2006, right to my beginnings. It holds milestones I'd barely remembered myself.
It's also a kind of witness to its time, showing how much has shifted in society over two decades. A few examples:
In 2011, I had more than nineteen thousand visitors to my website in a single day. Those are numbers I can only dream of today; they feel positively astronomical. A lot of people (you, dear reader of this article, thankfully not among them) now live entirely inside their apps and barely open a website anymore.
I look back fondly on the photo series I put together to apply to Playboy, the one that landed me the interview. The title "Endorphinated" still nails it, and Christiane is as wonderful a model as ever.
A ten-page interview in TRIP magazine. A commission from a major corporation that had to stay secret, because the word "influencer" hadn't even been born yet.
In 2013, I was on the newsstand in three magazines at once: Playboy, TRIP and Men's Health, my work in all three. From today's vantage point it sounds completely surreal.
Then the book releases. Those dates are lodged as firmly as World Cup years. You could wake me in the middle of the night and I'd rattle them off instantly: Frisky 2014, Sublime 2018, Mellow 2024. Set in stone.
That the magazine LUI, which I hold in such high regard, once ran an interview with me, though? That I'd plain forgotten.
In 2021, in the thick of the pandemic, my calendar sold out within four days. Another record, and utterly mad.
On top of that, no end of press appearances and television features, from RTL to Hessischer Rundfunk. For a guy as camera-shy as me, hardly a given.
The cover of the anniversary issue marking fifty years of Playboy remains a particular highlight, both because of the celebration in Munich and because, after so many years, I finally got to meet the esteemed Playboy photographer Ana Dias in person.
And to this day Google dutifully sends me its emails with little trophies (a bit silly, I'll admit) telling me that more than five thousand people searched for me in a single month. These days mostly from a smartphone.