What Is A Journal?

When most people think about journaling, they imagine a diary. A place where you document your thoughts, fears, and deepest secrets. However, a journal can actually be a very useful planning tool. If you’ve never written in a journal, or even if you have, consider using the practice for your business.

The Journaling Habit

The first step is to create a journaling habit. A consistent time and place where you’ll journal. Consider journaling first thing in the morning as you drink your cup of coffee. It’s the time when you’re less distracted and able to achieve better focus and creativity.  Journaling can be at the end of the day as well, where you make notes and document your day – what was good and bad about it and what you want to do the next day.

Julia Cameron wrote a wonderful book on creativity called “The Artist’s Way.” In the book she describes a habit she calls “Morning Pages.” The practice requires you to write every morning until you’ve filled three pages. It’s essentially a stream of consciousness approach. You write everything that you’re thinking and feeling onto the page. It helps clear the cobwebs. It allows you to complain. And more importantly it helps you brainstorm ideas for the future. You create solutions.  You find yourself rambling but also just getting it out of the way instead of staying in your head.

You can embrace this same habit but rather than focusing on your personal life, goals, and needs you can focus on your business.

Another approach is to simply sit down at your kitchen table each morning and brainstorm ideas and problem solve for your business. You might use the same freehand approach or you might prefer a more structured approach. The wonderful thing about journaling is that you get to make the rules.  There is another site called http://750words.com/ that allows you to do the same thing as morning pages – you type about 750 words which is the equivalent of 3 pages of writing.  It will give you analysis of your words and it’s a secure place where your words are safe from others.  Just you and your thoughts.

What to Journal about and What to Do with the Material

Journaling supports you to write down your thoughts about your business without any direct objective. The benefit is that it allows you to think and express yourself freely. So often anything that’s related to your business probably has to have a goal or a productivity objective. Journaling gives you the space to work on your business without expecting any type of outcome.  Just write about your vision and what you want to happen, or get your frustrations off your chest about what is going on at work.

This is surprisingly productive because when the rules are set aside, creativity is allowed to flow. You’ll find that your plans and ideas for your business grow. You may find that your enthusiasm and motivation for your business grow. And your passion for your business may be reignited. You may find that you are able to come up with fantastic and exciting content ideas too.  Your subconscious will work on those problems you write out and give you ideas and solutions at the strangest times.

Give yourself the opportunity of experiencing what journaling can do for your business. Try the “morning pages” approach for a month. You will likely be quite surprised with the results. All you need is a notebook and a pencil to get started.  Take the time to do it and see what happens, then let us know.