A New Way Of Journaling: Insta-Journaling

The real life personal growth experience.

7 min readAug 9, 2018

I’ve been reading about journaling since a year but I have started applying into my routine very recently (last 4 months to be precise).

I can tell you journaling ain’t easy!

You may have heard a lot about benefits of journaling such as maximum productivity, achieving all the goals on time, making you proactive.

I can feel you!

I have been doing the same. Going through all the strategies, the recommendations, how people have been journaling, what benefits do they derive from the journaling, and so on.

While I was on my research journey, I had bookmarked a couple of them. So here I’m sharing the initial resources that actually motivated me to start journaling in the first place.

1. Why Keeping a Daily Journal Could Change Your Life by Benjamin P. Hardy

2. How I Use My Journal To Create My Future and Achieve My Goals by Benjamin P. Hardy

3. How An “Experience” Journal Fuels My Daily Writing Habit by Barry Davret

4. Benjamin Franklin: How A Journal Can Help You Lead A Better Life by Louis Chew

Read all of the above if you’re just starting to journal. I did the same!

Although I had most of the data about journaling and a basic understanding of how to start, there was something still holding me back and I was not even giving it a thought to include in my action plan.

My journaling journey happened when I encountered a mess 🏃🏼!

Yes, you read it right. When you hit the bottom, you don’t get stuck, you only rise.

So this was that time of the year when I had just transitioned from a full time 9–8 job lifestyle to a digital nomadic lifestyle. Just like other people want to work remotely, I was shaping this dream.

But here I was caught up in a big big mess.

Being a digital nomad, I have considerable flexibility on work but I don’t have few comforts.

I don’t have a boss who can assign tasks to me.
I don’t have a team who I meet physically on a daily basis.
I don’t have anyone whom I’ve to report to by EOD.
I don’t have a manager who can micro-manage my work.

So without somebody managing me, I suddenly had to be on my own. All by my own!

And, this comfort zone of being myself in my zone brought up a spectacular mess where I was going clueless on how to manage myself.

I do have commitments to work.
I do have a virtual team to sync up with but that’s up to my will.
I do have a list of tasks.
I do have to complete those tasks but I am responsible to make the schedule.

Soon I self-realized that I have to do something about it.

I had to manage myself better so that this comfort of being in my zone actually gives me the comfort feeling rather than giving me the anxiety all the time.

👇🏼 What did I do next?

I went back to my bookmarks of journaling. I figured out a structure that initially used to look like this:

Got up at <Time>
Tasks done <Personal>
Tasks done <Work>
Food < Breakfast + Lunch + Dinner> [I included this one because I had to stick to having home cooked food]
Finance <How much I’ve spent in the entire day>
Remarkable things happened
Priorities for tomorrow

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The above 7 point journal checklist helped me to stick to a routine. Even for a single day, if I missed out noting down any of the points, I ensured I’m doing it the next day.

Result:

Helped me in tracking my time.
Helped me in making me wake up by 6 am ( I used to wake up by 11 am, so my work day was usually post noon).
Helped me to add more time in my life by the 6 am routine.
Helped me to be pro-active to add all the personal tasks for the week.
Helped me to schedule my deadlines for work.
Helped me to see my finance in a better way and eventually helped me in saving a lot.
Helped me in acknowledging every little thing in life whenever I mentioned the remarkable things.
Helped me to prioritize my next day.

👂🏼Result of 3 months of #MediumJournaling: I started managing myself!

Yes, this made me organize my month, week and day in advance. Obviously, not every day can go as per the plan, but I made sure I keep the bandwidth and the flexibility to add the ad-hocs to my routine.

By the way, did I tell you that I never used any diary to journal.

I used Medium Drafts to Journal.

Trust me, it was going really great but soon I realized I had to add something new to this routine work. I had to tweak my journaling strategy so as to make me better than my present one.

What’s That One Thing That Sits On Top Of Your Mind 70% Of The Day?

And what shall you do about it?

medium.com

📜 The Turning Page

While I was journaling, I used to share my daily happenings on Instagram, once or twice in a week, because I was literally excited with my lifestyle and I wanted people to know about it so that this could help them as well.

It used to be a simple image post with few texts related to my super-organized day. I realized people were perceiving it in a good way. I had my personal Instagram profile a private one. So only people in my network could see what I’m up to.

Then one day for a client, I was doing some research on Instagram influencer marketing, how to make a personal brand, how much people make through one post on Instagram, what do followers mean to any influencer and so on.

This gave me my new strategy!

I structured my journaling in a new way and called it #InstaJournaling.

❔ What is #InstaJournaling?

#InstaJournaling is nothing but sharing all your journal things out in public on Instagram. Now you may be skeptical about making your journal a public one. Well, I was on the same page. But for me, my initial 3 months of #MediumJournaling had already organized me and brought the required discipline. It had made a structure about what all I’ve to include in my journal.

Few things such as finance, time tracking moved to automated apps. I started using Dollarbird to better track my finance, and Toggle for time tracking.

Rest of the things on my journal such as food, priorities, morning time, remarkable things of the day could be shared to the public. Sharing also inspires the people, and I don’t see any privacy invasion into this.

Once my new structure was ready with the minimal points to include in my journal, I left #MediumJournaling. Because I discovered #InstaJournaling to be more visual, more appealing, and more accountable.

💭How #InstaJournaling can make you an influencer?

You have to show up every day. So you feel more accountable.
You inspire people with your own organized routine.
You push up yourself to include more new things in your life that you can add to your journal so that you show it to the people.
You start building your personal brand.
Your followers count start increasing.
You slowly start becoming an influencer.
You keep re-structuring your journal posts so that you’re better every day.
You improve by learning what you have to show to the world.
You get better by knowing how people get motivated by you.
You go more productive each day.

I think by now, you have got my point.

You can become an influencer by using this new #InstaJournaling.

You can push yourself to be most productive using #InstaJournaling.

You can easily build your personal brand using #InstaJournaling.

Still thinking?

Just start #InstaJournaling now, and you will see the difference in a week.

Start for your own good, and you will make more good.

👂🏼Massive Result of 1 month of #InstaJournaling: I’m super organized all the time!

💬 Final Note

If you plan to start this and plan to post every single day on Instagram, do use #instajournaling hashtag, will help all of us to identify and connect and learn more from you. Do share what you have learnt new, do share your failures so that people don’t repeat it, do share your achievements so people can look up to, do share events that you’re visiting so that people can step out to, do share healthy food that you’re planning to have so that people can get inspired of maintaining a healthy balance while hustling at work.

Do share all what you feel, what you plan, what you see, what you prioritize, what you learn, what you unlearn, what you dream.

I’m all ears on Instagram.

My Insta Handle: DigiMusk

Comment with yours and I’ll follow you right away to know what you’re up to.