There are very few habits that have been popular across all ages as Journaling. It is an incredible way to keep yourself motivated to be productive and healthy living. Journaling enables you to have a peek of what is on the inside. Your strengths, weaknesses, needs, and fears, that helps you steer on the path of being productive in life.
There are just so much evidence out there to prove how important journaling can be. Hard data from the HBS study shows that between two groups of employees, the group which was asked to write a journal at the end of the day for 15 minutes performed better. As compared to the other group which worked for an extra 15 minutes every day. So in the following block, I have mentioned reasons why you should start writing journal entries.
Why you should write Journal?
There are just so many reasons and benefits of journaling that one can’t simply highlight all of it in one go. Although you should keep a diary for focus, patience, planning, and personal growth.
- Helps you visualize your goals and gain clarity of your real priorities
- Diary acts as a safe house of your ideas
- Helps better articulate your thoughts and streamline plans for future
- It lets you apprehend future obstacles and gives a clearer understanding of your drives and purpose
- A place where you can be honest and not fear any judgments
- Most important of all, it helps you organize your inner convoluted thoughts
Making it a habit
The best thing about writing a journal is that you are writing it for no one but yourself. You don’t have to work to make it entertaining or less boring perse. You don’t even have to care about grammar. Just take 10 minutes out at the end of each day and scribble your thoughts, accomplishments, and ideas. Still wondering how to keep up with the habit of writing. The following are a few tips that can help you start with it:
1. Identify a medium
This is an easy one and the options are just two. Paper or Digital. Make sure you do not waste a lot of time in choosing a medium for yourself. Pick either depending upon the availability and comfort. If you have chosen a paper-based journal, remember it is the process of journaling and not the journal itself, it could be big/small or fat/thin. if you are going for a digital one, there are a plethora of applications you will find for yourself to write a journal. You can google and read reviews about the existing applications and pick anyone. Just make sure whenever you are writing a journal, keep yourself away from the internet and any other things that could potentially distract you.
2. Get on board
If you have chosen the medium, it is time to get on board with the activity itself, which is a writing journal. Get a blank page, don’t stress yourself with finding a perfect set of words, remember that journaling is something you do for your own self. Don’t think twice as to what you want to put in it. Let the things in your head flow as it is You may scribble, sketch, doodle, write to-do list do scrapbooking along with it. Make it the place where your creativity takes its course.
3. Use prompts
If you kinda find starting writing difficult you can always rely on prompts. You may start having conversations with yourself like
- How was your day?
- What did you learn today?
- Did anything make you happy or sad?
- How do you feel in general?
- If you have plans for the days ahead?
This way you can enhance the purpose of your journal too and make it more constructive. The best thing is to craft prompts for yourself.
4. Be truthful
This is an important one that journaling only works if you are truthful in whatever you write. Know for sure that this is probably the only place where you can say anything we want and not get judged at all. Let your darkest of the thoughts be penned down and trust me you will not just gain clarity but also be aided with decision making.
5. Never skip a day
I am sure everyone has those days where they have done nothing to write it in your journal. Or may you are too busy to pick up the journal. Do not skip writing even for one day. Just write something whatever you want to… it can be anything. That’s how habits are formed and believe me this is the best habit in making.