How did the idea behind writhentic come about?

Back in the 2010s, I had developed a template model for journaling that I used to reflect on my own behavior and consciously change it. I called this model LouderSofter, inspired by a trance song from the early 2000s.

The model consisted of two categories: “Louder” and “Softer”.

Whenever I felt that my thoughts and my actual actions were in line with my own expectations, I documented the situation under “Louder”.

If, on the other hand, I felt blocked in a situation and had not acted the way I had actually intended to, I created an entry under “Softer”. In addition, there was a section called “Changes”, where I described how I wanted to behave in a similar situation in the future.

I had surprisingly good experiences with this simple model. I found that within a relatively short period of time, I was able to consciously change my own behavior in the direction I wanted.

Over time, the model continued to evolve, and I noticed something else: It was not enough to document only those situations in which my actions and reactions had not matched my thoughts and expectations. As soon as I stopped documenting positive developments as well, old behavior patterns resurfaced more easily.

💡 Learning

Even when you subjectively feel that your own behavior has already changed for the better, it still makes sense to continue documenting situations and thoughts in which your own actions felt right and authentic.

After a while, however, I found using this model in a traditional journaling app too cumbersome. Above all, there was no contextual connection between the individual entries. For a conventional journaling app, they were ultimately just individual pieces of text.

This led to the idea of developing a dedicated app for this concept.

My original LouderSofter model, however, only distinguished between my own internal blocks and balanced, authentic behavior. For writhentic, I therefore expanded the concept to include another aspect: boundary violations.

This category is primarily intended for situations in which personal boundaries are crossed due to external influences – regardless of whether your own behavior was the trigger.

When choosing a name, I deliberately decided against one that included the word “Louder”. After all, writhentic is not about simply becoming louder. Rather, it is about becoming more aware of your own behavior, dealing with situations in a more balanced way, and discovering what kind of behavior feels authentic and right for you.

After several hours of brainstorming, I finally came up with the name writhentic – a play on the words write and authentic:

writ(e) • (aut)hentic

Andreas Stein