For the average productivity enthusiast, spending fifteen minutes writing in their ‘productivity journal’ every day may seem like a waste of time. This productivity enthusiast wants to capitalize on every waking minute he has access to in his day, understandably so. Although, what they don’t know is that journaling every day will actually make you far more productive.
How so? In the following paragraphs, we explain three reasons why journaling is important for productivity and four easy steps to start journaling today!
Why Journaling is Important for Productivity
Learn From Your Mistakes
When you journal, you may begin to recognize patterns in your thought process or behaviour. This is a very good thing!
Noticing repeating patterns in yourself can help you quickly identify a negative habit or encourage a positive habit in real-time. For example, when you journal for long enough and you notice that whenever you speak with your boss you become demotivated, you will try to look for a different way to interact with your boss.
When you make a mistake, whether it be failing to follow a routine or a simple lapse in judgement, you give yourself time to reflect when you journal. In this case, journaling can provide two benefits: Mental recovery and error detection.
In some scenarios, a mistake can make you feel really guilty. Writing out the mistake you made and letting your train of thought run across the page can greatly help you recover.
When you journal, it becomes much clearer where the source error originates. When the source error has been clearly identified, it is unlikely the mistake will repeat.
Collect Yourself
Journaling before bed can help relax the mind and ease nagging thoughts before you rest. If you ever lay in your bed and stare up at the ceiling for hours with unending thoughts racing around your mind, journaling at night would be very useful for you.
Journaling in the morning can help clearly outline and define your goals for the day. Writing your goals down improves motivation and the likelihood that you will actually complete them.
Track Your Progress
When you journal, you will notice when you might be falling off track. Due to writing down your thoughts every day, even a small change in your character will be noticed. When you start to fall off course, you can simply look back at your older entries to figure out what you should do in order to get back on track
Alternatively, journaling helps you notice when you’ve kept a productivity streak! Journaling every day makes it much easier to notice when you are consistent. This makes it simpler to encourage yourself since you want to keep the streak alive.
How to Journal for Productivity
Set and Monitor Your Long-Term Goals
As previously mentioned, journaling for productivity makes it easier to set goals and stick to them. When extrapolating this idea into the long-term, writing down any goal, no matter how outlandish, seems much more feasible once you truly reflect on it.
Essentially, writing down your long-term goals will motivate you to achieve them because you can see the end goal right in front of you, it’s not just a thought in your head. When you can see the goal staring back at you, find a way to work towards the end goal today. Try to plan out the next couple of months or years working towards that end goal by doing something to achieve intermediary goals every day.
Journaling in this way makes long-term goals appear much more in the present. It also helps nudge you in a personal way. I remember the first time I journaled like this, I thought, “Oh man, if I don’t act now, I’ll never act at all”. Of course, this may not have been true. But the long-term goal felt so far away, and I still had to work every day in order to achieve it.
Think of writing your goals down as a personal contract. You feel like you betray yourself if you don’t work towards your goals when you write them down.
Make Detailed To-Do Lists
The next thing a productivity journal should be used for is to write down daily to-do lists. Once your long-term goals are well-established and defined, work your way backwards and figure out what must be done today.
Your long-term goal may be years or even decades away, which may make you say, “I don’t have to worry, I have plenty of time,” What you may not realize is that you don’t have much time at all.
When you journal for productivity by writing down your long-term goals and determining what must be done today to achieve them, you quickly realize that your long-term goal is a compound effect. There are not two or three core actions that make your long-term goal acquirable, there are likely hundreds of small actions that accumulate to one final target.
An excellent way to organize your to-do list is using Brian Tracy’s ABCDE Method. We explained how to organize your tasks using the ABCDE method many times, please refer to our article on 5 Stoic Principles for Productivity for information on how to use the ABCDE Method.
Once you’ve used the ABCDE Method, Make sure that 1 – 3 of your most important tasks should be working towards your long-term goal.
Practice Gratitude
When you journal, add a section to practice gratitude. When you practice gratitude, you may notice some blessings that you never noticed before.
Take the time to be grateful, it makes you a happier person overall and helps you take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you.
Practising gratitude is not inherently productive, but it has noticeable side effects on your productivity. More importantly, you just become a happier person when you are grateful.
Express Your Thoughts
Simply write down what happened in your day. When you write down what you did that day, you may notice certain times of the day or specific days of the week that you feel demotivated.
On those days or hours that you procrastinate more than you should, ride that wave. Allow yourself to relax instead of forcing more work out of yourself. If you simply allow yourself to recalibrate rather than squeeze out a few more hours of semi-unproductive work, you will actually get more done when you get back to your full capacity.
Conclusion
If it is not abundantly clear, it is very important to make time for journaling every day. Not only does it make you more productive, but it actually makes you calmer and happier. Through identifying long-term goals, making to-do lists, practising gratitude, and expressing your thoughts, your productivity can multiply! Start journaling every day; you will quickly notice how much more you get done and how much happier you become.