Benefits of Keeping a Journal
Whether you call it a journal or a diary, there is a definite association of this type of task with confiding secret emotions, and generally keeping a very personal record on your life. But a journal is also a highly practical tool, that brings with it a range of organizational benefits, all of which could improve your ability to meet your goals and see to your daily tasks on time.
If a planner concerns the present and the future, we can think of a journal as concerning the past. As it happens, journals are very useful for organization, precisely because they give you the ability to plan better with reference to what has already been completed.
If you embark on a new planning strategy, for example, then you can expect a bit of trial and error before you’re sure that it works for you. With a journal, you can see how you have done things, what has worked best and how much you have progressed in your organizational habits. Then you can adapt going forwards.
Tailoring your daily planning in this way is very important for anyone with concentration issues, as the exact right method of working can take longer to discover for such people. Next Level Daily, a company producing an ADHD daily planner, say that there are even journals specifically designed for those with concentration or learning difficulties.
A Record of Ideas and Feelings
But of course, a good journal shouldn’t be an entirely utilitarian record of one’s daily tasks and what they’ve achieved. Even with more functional journals, there is still space for those loose ideas, thoughts, and illustrations essential for creativity.
Indeed, creating the perfect planner is all about creativity, and you may find many things that work for you which are highly personal specific. Allowing yourself some space to think freely and record your ideas is often the only way to work out what these are.
Therefore, a good journal might be an organized record of your performance and the tasks and goals you have achieved, but there should be ample blank space or margins for additional thoughts and feelings. These can be very useful.
How Journaling Can Help You
With all of that said then, here follows a list of the, often surprising, benefits of journaling:
Achieving Goals
If every entry in your journal records what you did on a certain day, then it can also record what you contributed to your longer-term goals. More simply, there is a great benefit to keeping your longer-term goals in mind every day, and so this means recording them in your journal.
Track Progress
A more utilitarian function, a journal also gives you the ability to look back over a period of time and observe patterns of growth. Knowing what these are is the first step towards doing what you can to keep them going.
Improve Your Writing
Writing may or may not be an essential skill for your job. Butin any case, it is a great skill for life with countless applications. By keeping a journal, you will be writing, and improving, every day.
Gain Self-Confidence
If you are ever unsure you have what it takes to complete a particularly challenging task, or to have a large job done before a certain deadline, then looking back over how you managed it in the past can be a massive help. It can also give you confidence that you will manage it again.
As you can see then, paying attention to the past, as well as the future, is an essential part of effective planning. And a journal is how you do this.
