Leadership Minute - How To Journal

Journaling can be a life-changing habit if you follow this guidance

Sometimes a simple habit can change your life in ways you never expect. For me, that transformative habit was journaling.

Over a decade ago, I began journaling each morning as part of a morning routine. At first, I jotted down personal reflections, goals and ideas I found interesting. Over time, many of these writings found their way into speeches, books and Friday Forward.

My experience illustrates why journaling can be very helpful, especially for leaders. Daily writing concretizes the ideas and insights swirling around in your head, including ones you aren’t conscious of, and improves the depth and clarity of your thinking.

Journaling is a varied, deeply personal practice. Some people write pages of free-flowing thoughts, while others write affirmations, goals and ideas in short bullet points. The key is to find an approach that you can do consistently.

There’s no single right or wrong way to journal, but there are some approaches I recommend.

Best Practices For Journaling

At its core, journaling is about reflection, clarity and self-accountability. Use journaling to think intentionally about what’s important in your life—present and future—and to clarify how you’ll align your life around those important things. When you do that, your journal entries will hold you accountable for doing what you tell yourself is most important.

There are a few topic suggestions:

• Explore and document your principles: Write about the principles you live by, the goals you have, and how you’ll serve them each day. I know someone who writes down their core values every morning and reviews them before starting the day. This type of small act reinforces what matters to you and reminds you to structure your day around those values and goals.

• Write what you’re grateful for: Starting your morning with work emails, social media or cable news places you in a state of agitated anxiety when you wake up. Instead, put yourself in a fresh, positive place by writing five things you are grateful for in your life. Bonus points if you share those five things with a partner or friend and ask them to do the same.