My year and a half of journaling
If you’ve been thinking about having a personal journal or are currently writing one and looking to compare notes on the experience, this my story of a year and a half of journaling. Although this is one person’s experience, I hope this is of some help to you in your personal journey.
Why I decided to do this
Journaling has often been touted as an important aspect of personal development — on the web, in books and in university courses. It’s often presented as akin to motherhood and apple pie and something you need to do to succeed in your goals. I’ve never tried it before, and being stuck in a rut and doing things to move myself forward that weren’t paying dividends, there was a need to think about doing things different to make more progress. I thought why not give it a go, there was little to lose but some personal time.
Uncertain to the causes in why I was failing to progress — was due to personal bad habits, lack of discipline, bad strategy, or philosophy or that I was the problem in my life. One thing that stuck out was Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself HBR paper. Here identifying your strengths, weaknesses and bad habits can be easily found from feedback. The feedback can be from others or from recording one’s own behaviour and monitoring it over time. Hence, journaling could be a means of uncovering the underlying causes, or at least where to look.
Getting started
Getting started journaling is easy and only requires a commitment to do it. I started in September 2020 by repurposing a ring binder, getting some paper (a legal pad) and some pens. I decided to handwrite one-side per day — so a 100-page legal pad would last 200 days, over half a year. Later to make things easier (not having to store and sort papers, find a new ring binder as it filled up etc.), bought a few, on sale simple college rule notebooks.
No need for fancy hardback covers, the really cheap (especially on sale) ones are more than adequate. Just choose ones without perforations; if you keep them in the notebook they can come loose over time. Notebooks can be saved and returned to later.
However, as notebooks take up space you can do this electronically as well. Later I moved onto electronic journaling, but kept the notebooks for taking notes of webinars and other meetings. In many ways electronic journaling is cheaper — if you already have a laptop or old computer a journal entry file is very small, unless you do video entries or have lots of pictures. If you’re that short of space, you can find things to delete or archive. If you can’t afford Word, you can always use notepad (with word wrap) or open office — there are many other free alternatives. Really, if you want to adopt the process you can find a way to do it.
Because of this, the main challenge I found was consistency. Although I did my best, I didn’t do a page every day. But when I did write an entry it was a full page. By keeping with it, there were more days with entries than without entries and it was clear progress was being made, and it was becoming a regular and committed habit, that was stuck with. However, when tired, there was always the tendency to want to rush the writing — and hence it wasn’t always my best work!
Keeping up the momentum
Today in February 2022, I still regularly journal; although a day or two is missed, more days have entry than not, and there are plenty of full weeks of entries. No one is perfect, so missing a day here or there isn’t the end of the world and what I found to be most important was getting back into the habit.
For comparison, I tried to do push-up quotas every day as a New Year’s resolution. At the start I had a good process and was doing my personal targets every day. This was going well until I fell ill. It was a week or two illness, but the effect of needing rest broke my routines. It was the breaking of the routines that after getting back to full health the routines never really stuck again. My habits and routines moved on, and a quota and ringfenced time was not explicitly put into my personal calendar. There was a bit of being hard on myself but, nonetheless, the routine didn’t reconnect. However, the intent was to learn from this if journaling was going to stick.
The personal lessons learnt were not to be too hard on myself and just keep with it; no one is perfect and everyone falls off the wagon. The important point is getting back to it tomorrow and keeping the momentum. The other point is to expressly put time aside in daily planning to do it. If it’s in the plan, it becomes part of the daily habit and routine and it’s easy to do — I don’t have to think about it. I found that putting an easy to see line in the to do list with time put aside for it made sure it was noticed and got done.
There may also be something here about as life changes and different things crop up, plans change. It is important, however, to ensure that there is a plan or a structure that can be returned to. It really helps keep things focussed and time put aside for important things. This was also true of other habits and things that sometimes I forgot about and they went sideways. Hence keeping them available, fresh in my mind and making it easy for me to do them really did help.
To keep up the momentum I tried some experimentation, and extended it to two pages. For a single page it took around twenty to thirty minutes to write. It wasn’t very deep, nonetheless, it didn’t take too much time. When this was expended to two pages, this became more of an effort, about forty-five minutes to an hour to write. For two pages there was a need to maintain content and, it was difficult sometimes to get 2 pages worth of value out of the day. It began to feel that I was writing verbal diarrhoea, and this wasn’t the plan. Each item could not be assessed in detail in the space and often there weren’t enough points to cover in 2 pages. Often this felt like a desperate attempt to fill space to meet targets. Just trying to make targets is no way to use journaling, it will just become a burden and not provide any real use. Therefore, I reverted to the single page entry as this was working better.
Also, when this is the last thing to do before bed, it isn’t necessarily the best time to do thinking. So, one page was more than appropriate for me. One thing that did follow from this was that a Sunday reflection and planning session helps; drawing out the most important points for forward action planning. Also having specific reflections for certain events like critical meetings done separately also helps. Nonetheless, this was my experience, yours may be better with longer entries or other ways of working and reflecting.
It was time to improve
As discussed above, there is an element of discipline. Writing a journal entry because you say you’re going to do it develops some discipline and builds a habit. I’m writing this article for the same reason. But beyond this point of habit building there are so many things I could do and would these benefit me more than journaling? Also am I getting the best return from my journaling?
It was also important, at the outset to get some idea as to what I am trying to get out of this. So, the early days my journal entries represented a brain dump of the day. Often it could get a bit whiny and snotty, or it descended into beating myself with a stick for not being as disciplined as a could be etc. It ended-up being just mainly descriptive and just stuff on a page. If there was something useful and forward-looking I left a few lines at the end of the page to note these. As an example:
a) Write a medium article about journaling
b) Go and get the subscription to the Financial Times
c) Get more active and outside
d) Read and review your yearly goals
e) Consider adopting a weekly reflection.
These items were really action orientated and useful, and I noted this aspect was valuable and kept them. An important point was that many of the same points were raised repeatedly. These were regular points that were shouting off the page that needed to be addressed. This was exactly the point from Drucker that I was looking for, getting feedback and having these points stand out to take action on.
Furthermore, by limiting the number of points in the end of the page was valuable because it became a useful summary of the most important takeaways from the day to do something about. It really helped focussed the mind in terms of forward action. It also identified areas where it might be useful to stop and think about this before making a major decision. Therefore, having a summary in the journal of takeaways really added the value.
I also did end of week, month and quarter reflection on my process and goals and forward planning. Here having these takeaways in the journal was key in capturing these daily to feedback into those processes. Reviewing these regularly meant that the key points can be aggregated on these timescales and included in personal planning. Also, it acted as a quick capture of the specific points that I wanted every day, that can be used and framed for the bigger picture personal philosophy.
It became clear to me, after the initial period of journaling, that it could have a lot of uses. So, to improve it would be useful to do some research. In researching personal processes and learning, specifically for business, I came across Neck et. al., 2014 which presented different lenses and perspectives to reflection that could be useful to adopt.
Here Neck et. al, 2014 Table 6.2 summarises the different theories and models of reflection, and Table 6.3 summarises the different types of reflection. It was interesting that there were many different types of reflection, each one provides a different frame to view experience. This was interesting because although I don’t necessarily have the space and time to reflect on each point every day in the journal, it provided different lenses that I could look at things at the end of the week. So, to do this, what kind of things I should be thinking about, and recording during the day that could would be useful.
For instance, the descriptive and percipient reflection was helpful to do daily. Percipient reflection focussed on understanding the views and reactions of others. This was something that resonated with myself as developing and improving people skills was a personal goal. Recording interactions with others helps to capture those experiences over time, and capturing the “in experience” interaction, or near to it helped to ensure that it wasn’t forgotten over time. It also made a note to think about how you interacted with people during the day. Returning to these entries and monitoring progress in people interactions make it clear where things are going wrong over time; these wouldn’t necessarily be clear after looking at a few entries or trying to remember what happened years ago.
Much of the analytical, critical, and evaluative reflection really need some time between action and outcome to gain the benefits. Some things have quick feedback, but often trying to understand where things are going wrong, or what tweaks that need to be adopted takes time to evolve and become clear by reflecting over longer periods. However, journaling helped provide the prompts, notes and gave a record written at that time which can be referred to; not a hazy memory.
I found it key to reflect on the journal entries periodically through these lenses, as patterns appear from the collation of daily entries reflected on over say a quarterly period; these patterns were not apparent on the day. Over time, I recognised through critical reflection that I had an idea of change, but there was a significant delay before implementing it (months), and there were repeated negative thought patterns that kept occurring in my life and affecting my decisions.
I found it amazing how consistent this was, for instance amongst the many changes I wanted to make there was a regular gap of months. Hence, was a question of whether this gap could be reduced and how? Also, the same faulty thinking became clear in decision-making that I could not ignore. This wouldn’t have been clear on a daily journal, but the aggregation showed the need for change.
Also, the research highlighted how journaling could be used in reflective professional practice in Schon (1984) and Argyris and Schon (1974). Journaling really becomes and important part of the feedback loop and if you have time, it may be worth checking these references out.
The real message I felt was that journaling is useful, but its power came as an important piece in a larger philosophy. Part of any philosophy, will be the reviewing of the journals. This differs to say other methods where the writing is used as a release or other in-the-moment exercise. The real benefit I found was in the need to be disciplined in review the journaling on a regular basis. Personally, it is yearly, monthly, and weekly to support planning and reflection activities, in addition to identifying any major issues that remain outstanding over time.
After awhile I noticed that I couldn’t read old entries as my handwriting was poor. Entries became almost indecipherable after a few days. There are debates on what form of journaling is best for your brain, these are easy to find online, but I found that without being able to decipher what has been written, journaling was useless for the process above so handwritten entries are a major drawback. To use handwritten entries my handwriting would need to be neater and that would take a lot of time on each entry, I felt that this would not be practical.
I could use Word and take benefit of being able to read on the screen, print them and use grammar and spell check. Therefore, these would be easy to read, and likely of a higher quality if I can make sure that there is suitable engagement. Therefore, reviewing and reflecting on the quality of the entry has been something I found useful. For journal writing, as I found that the purpose is more than having a brain dump there is a need for quality.
It is so much easier to read on a screen or printed out text than handwritten scrawl that things can be altered and spelling and grammar updated to improve legibility. By keeping engaged with this process, having a single page journal entry, a read through and a quality edit takes roughly the same time that a hand written entry takes. Also, text can be cut and pasted to make it easier to follow. With clear feedback and engagement from this I could think about things and the writing so freer in my thoughts and writing. Hence it made a massive improvement in my case.
Things I found out
- It can be very easy for a journal to become a burden, a time-consuming aspect at the end of your day. Something that you find when you’re tired and desiring your bed, but the mind says that you need to do this. It’s important to respect this, so make your journaling relevant to you.
- Put time aside in your calendar each day to do a journal entry
- Have a summary of the most important points to act on
- Handwriting can be messy so electronic means may be more useful
- It helps to note when you did things wrong, but using your journal as a stick to beat yourself up about is not going to help you. It will end up being a negativity centre that will eventually amplify your negative thinking. If you constantly feel bad it is important to talk to someone and seek help. You need you journal to help you not be an anchor around your neck, and it’s important to remember that. On the worst of days, think of something good or that you’re grateful for to help you refocus your mind.
- It’s important to work out and be clear on what you want from your journaling and have some prompts to help you capture the information and thinking you need. What types of thinking and reflection are you going to do? What information are you looking to capture?
- Taking notes can be really-useful throughout the day. It is easy to forget things, like great ideas or just what happened that day. Details during the day can still become hazy and whenever possible capturing thoughts, experience and ideas in action are the most useful
- You need to review what you’ve done periodically to get the best out of it. Your memory will get hazy as time passes from when you first wrote the entry. The value of journaling comes from regularly using the output, not just writing it and storing it away. It’s an ongoing story of your life.
- Journaling is a useful exercise, but its real power is when it is combined with other aspects of your personal process. So, using this as information to support planning and forward actions becomes so useful.
References
Chris Argyris and Donald A Schon (1974) “Theory in Practice: Increasing professional effectiveness,” Jossey-Bass Publishers; 1st edition (January 1, 1974)
https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Practice-Increasing-professional-effectiveness-dp-0875892302/dp/0875892302
Peter F Drucker, “Managing Oneself: The Key to Sucess”, Harvard Business Review Press 2017
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Oneself-Peter-F-Drucker/dp/163369304X/
Heidi M Neck, Patricia G Green and Candida G Brush (2014), Teaching Entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach, Edgar Elgar Publishing, 2014
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Entrepreneurship-Practice-Based-Heidi-Neck/dp/1782540695/
Donald A Schon (1984) “The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action”, Basic Books; 1st edition (September 23, 1984)
https://www.amazon.com/Reflective-Practitioner-Professionals-Think-Action/dp/0465068782/
