Have you ever wondering what journaling is and what all the fuss is about? I’ve heard many good things about journalling and know a lot of very successful people past and present have used journaling to drive them towards their goals.
Journaling is a process of writing down your thoughts and feelings often in a notebook, diary, an app or even a post. The act of journaling will slow you down and allow you to focus on capturing these thoughts and feelings. Journaling is a good habit to help you to achieve goals. A daily journal habit can break down that large goal to daily achievable goals. By completing smaller goals daily, your large goals can be achieved.
I started journaling over a year ago and now forms part of my daily routine. I use journaling as a tool for me to be more present and focus on what is the most important thing in life to focus on. Prior to starting journalling, I did a lot of research on the topic and would like to share it with you.
You can find many examples of successful leaders who attribute journaling to their success. The stoic masters Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus all have one habit in common: Journaling. Histories greats like, Benjamin Franklin had a regular journaling habit. Every morning, Benjamin Franklin asked himself, “What good shall I do this day?” and each evening, “What good have I done today?”
What Are Some of the Benefits of Journaling?
There are a lot of benefits to journaling, I can talk about both from the first-hand experience.
Journaling Improves My Discipline
I find having a regular journaling practice is the driving force behind my discipline. What I mean is, journaling is like a daily meeting with myself. In the morning, I review what I have not the day before and determine whether I need to do it today.
Journaling is a Daily Self-improving System
In the evening, I assess how I went during the day with the things I did and whether I need to learn from anything or what I can improve.
Journal Adds Clarity to My Daily Life
When I look at my journal and start writing, it lets me think about now, think about today. This is important because for the 10 minutes I spend in the morning on the journal, I get to review what my purpose is, what my goal is, what is important in life. This is forcing me to think about priorities and goals every day and not drift off day by day aimlessly.
Journaling Can Help You Know Yourself Better
Yes, I write down my thoughts at the time of journaling and any ideas I have. I capture some of my emotions both positive and negative and determine how I can improve myself emotionally. When I feel angry, I ask myself why I was angry and work out what I can do to not be angry in the future.
Journaling Reduces Stress and Anxiety
By taking the time to think, plan and write down what I am doing today, I am able to be more organized and have a direction for the day. Imagine driving in a car with not knowing where to go? Does this sound weird? A lot of people are like that every day and throughout life. Journaling lets me take a step back and think every morning and every evening about my direction. Being organized can definitely reduce unnecessary stress. Anxiety is caused by worries about the future. By knowing what your plan is (reality may be different), it can reduce anxiety by providing direction everyday and life.
Journaling Boost Productivity
From a productivity perspective, journaling helps you be more organized and focus on the important things that you need to do today and not waste time and effort on something that is less urgent and important.
Now that I have covered the benefits of journaling, I will go through the main types of the journal in the next section.
What Types of Journaling Are Out There?
Journaling can be anything from writing on a piece of paper to keeping a diary and writing a letter to someone. In modern-day, there are many forms of journaling like a food journal, travel journal, health journal, etc.
I will focus on journals that help with mental clarity, productivity, and motivation.
The Dream Journal
A dream diary (journal) records dream experiences. It keeps your nightly dreams and personal reflections. It is common for someone keeping a dream journal to be the first thing you do in the morning. Brilliant ideas often come from dreams. I was listening to world-renown memory expert Jim Kwik’s Kwik Brain Podcast recently where he stressed the importance of recording dreams. One of his reason for this is to help with problem-solving from our subconscious minds. Our subconscious mind is very important and some of the world’s most important discoveries came from dreams, for example, Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity in a dream.
The Bullet Journal
I recently read THE BULLET JOURNAL METHOD by Ryder Carroll and would like to share some of my findings. The Bullet Journal Method was designed to help people with Attention Deficit Disorder and combines a planner, notebook and journal in one. The goal of the Bullet Journal is to make you more present and productive. Key benefits include
1. Rapid Logging – it uses symbols, short-form notations (dots -tasks, circles – events and dashes – notes)
2. Migrating – migrating the incomplete task to one of the three homes: Tomorrow’s Log, Current Month’s Log and Future Log. It forces you to rewrite the task to one of the three homes. It determines whether the task should be migrated or not avoids hoarding the task.
3. Indexing – A Dynamic table of content and shows the page numbers for the futures and current logs and stores the location of our current list.
The Five-minute Journal
Based on proven positive psychology research, the 5-minute journal trains your brain to focus the good in our life. In the morning start the day with practices that support gratitude and bring awareness to actions that enhance your life. This conditions your brain to begin the day positive and with purpose. In the evening it makes you reflect on the good things you have done for the day and how you can improve on it tomorrow. This helps calm your mind before your sleep. Over time the 5-minute journal helps your counter negative thought loops. I use the app version of this journal and I like the daily quotes that appear in this app and motivates me to keep journaling. For more information go to www.fiveminutejournal.com
The Clear Habit Journal
The Clear Habit Journal by James Clear and Baron Fig is a semi-structured journal that combines a notebook, daily journal, and a habit tracker. The main advantage of this journal is to track habits and also maintain a journaling habit. In my opinion, this is more of an advance form of journaling and is beneficial if you want to change your habits.
For more information go to www.jamesclear.com/habit-journal
Get a Blank Note Pad and Start Journaling
If you want to start journaling and think the above journal types are too complicated, why don’t you start with a blank Note Pad and do the following:
Write down the date on the top of the page and then write down 3 things you want to accomplish today for yourself and 3 things for work. In the evening, write down which things you did well today and what you can improve on. Write down tasks you didn’t do today that needs to be carried over to the next day.
What do I use for My Journaling?
Dream Journal
I start the morning with my Dream Journal. It’s a blank notepad I keep next to my bed so it is accessible when I am awake. I write the date and record my dreams and any ideas I have when I wake up in the morning. I do this immediately while I can still remember my dream. It is important to write in your Dream Journal straight after you are awake. If you do something else and go back to writing recording your dream, it’s likely you will forget it. A tip is to think you will remember your dream and your subconscious will for some strange reason make you remember it. When I first started I couldn’t remember my dreams. After trying the method of thinking I can remember my dreams and in additional having a daily practice of writing down my dreams first thing in the morning, I found I can remember the most dreams I’ve had in the morning. Of course, if you ask me to recite my dreams on the 25th December, I cannot remember on the top of my head. But if I go back to my dream journal to that date, I can most likely remember some of the core ideas or stories from my dream. This is because I have written some of it down and when I look at my notes it triggers my memory to recall my dream.
My own combined journal
I spend about 5 to 10 minutes in the morning writing in my normal journal. This is the main journal I use a normal diary and divide my page into four quadrants. These quadrants include: Self Development, Work, Health & Food.
Quadrant 1 – Self Development
I write down 3 things I plan to learn today. This can be from the podcast I plan to listen to new concepts I wish to learn.
Quadrant 2 – Work Action List
I write down 3 things I aim to complete today that are both achievable and important. It has to be three things that will help me move ahead. I may not always complete the 3 things but I at least have a clear direction of what I need to do for the day to get me one step closer to my goals.
Quadrant 3 – Health
I write down 3 things I want to accomplish for my health. This is in effect my sports journal. This can be completing my 5 minute ab working out in the morning and 100 push-ups to going to the park during my lunch break.
Quadrant 4 – Food
This is part of my meal plan I prepare on the weekend and I write this down so I can focus and stick to it.
The key is each one of my actions must be specific, measurable and achievable.
How do I use it?
Each evening I will review my list of tasks I said I was going to do in the morning and cross off the completed items. I will move the incompleted ones to the next page. I write the next morning’s journal during the evening and will tweak it the next morning. The reason why I write it at night is that I can start actioning the task the next day without the need for any decision-making.
5-minute journal
I use this on my phone on the bus to and from work. The purpose of this journal is to setting a positive mindset and preventing any negative thinking. The thing I enjoy about this is the daily motivating quotes.
Now we have covered the main types of a journal, I will go through a few ways to develop the habit of journaling. To be honest, this is the journaling I am the least discipline with. This is because the days I do not use public transport, I tend to miss doing this.
How to Develop a Journaling Habit?
Start with Why?
Like in the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek, we need to find out the Why before we start our journaling. So why are we keeping a journal? Is it because we want to reduce anxiety, be more organized, remember dreams and have a positive outlook in life. You need to define the why first and the rest will follow.
Make it Easy to Start Journaling
Remove any barriers to starting journaling. If getting a new note pad is too much for you, just grab an old note pad that you used previously and start on the next page. If journaling twice a day is too much effort, then do it once. If writing 3 items, write 1. My point here is to remove all barriers and make it as easy as possible to start so you don’t have any excuses.
I suggest you start with a blank note pad and set up a time for journaling. The best time of the day is before your sleep and first thing in the morning. Buy a small notebook and keep it next to your bedside table. Keep it simple and start with building the habit first and then you can experiment with the type of journaling or you can combine various forms.
Build a Journaling Habit
Like anything, it’s best to start with small and easy steps. If we make anything too complicated and tedious, the chances of doing it will be less likely.
Week 1: Start with doing 1 small action each day and build up your habit. You can start by recording 1-3 things that you want to for the next day before you go to bed. Repeat this over the week.
Week 2: You can review each one of these journal entries in the morning.
Week 3: Track your progress each night and move any incomplete task to the next day. In the next morning focus on the task, you journaled the night before.
Week 4: Repeat the process every day and on Sunday night plan out your entire week’s actions at a high level.
This is how I started and it’s now apart of my daily habit.
What to write in it?
Some tips about this include:
- Check with yourself and how you are feeling
- Reflect on what happened during the day
- Work through something that you’re going through
Final words…
Journaling is a very interesting concept and when I started I didn’t know whether it was beneficial or not. After journaling for over a year, I can say it is a very good habit to both bring positivity, productivity and focus to my day. Why not start journaling today?