Journaling is one of the best things for your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Although we often think of journaling as a practice that boosts our personal lives, it’s also incredibly beneficial for our professional lives.
No matter the profession you’re in, journaling can positively influence your performance. With that being said, business leaders and owners, in particular, can make great use of journaling. Not only does it prompt self-reflection and better leadership, but it also helps business leaders stay organized, on task, and engaged in their roles.
Before providing guidance on how to use journaling to your advantage, let’s explore why journaling is essential for business leaders in a little more detail.
Why Journaling is Essential for Business Leaders
First and foremost, journaling enables personal and professional growth through reflection and self-analysis. Journaling can help you make thoughtful decisions in your leadership role, help you overcome job stress, and allow you to plan for a productive next day.
Also, business leaders often have to navigate unforeseen circumstances, like the recent forceful shift to fully remote and hybrid work models. Journaling can be beneficial when navigating sudden changes like this because you can document your journey managing a hybrid or fully remote workforce.
By doing so, you’ll become aware of your current leadership habits and find ways to adjust them so that you’re doing everything you can to ensure your hybrid workforce is supported and thriving.
Furthermore, journaling can help you stay organized. Organization is integral for businesses, big and small, especially when running a business from home. Keeping a leadership journal can help you find the best ways to organize your at-home workspace, paperwork, inventory, and other business essentials.
Here are a handful of other reasons why journaling is essential for business leaders:
● It helps grow confidence
● You can better examine what worked, what didn’t, and how to adjust
● You can grow your emotional intelligence
● You can release negative emotions in a productive way
● You can talk about your personal life and what's going on there
● Wire your brain for positive emotion
● Make acknowledgments that significantly improve your business practices
● It helps you find meaning in each day
● Emotional healing
Now, let’s tackle how you can use journaling to your advantage and get the most out of the practice to better support your business and team.
How to Use Journaling to Your Advantage
Journaling can take several forms, but these general tips can help you use journaling to your advantage:
Be open to the process
Many people write off journaling as trivial and don’t consider it a gateway to leadership excellence. As a result, they’re missing out on an opportunity to explore what could be a superpower in their leadership structure.
Don’t make the mistake of deeming journaling insignificant. Instead, be open to the process. Forget everything you thought you knew about journaling and be receptive to what it can do for your leadership and growing a productive team.
Also crucial for getting the most out of journaling is consistency.
Be consistent
We’ve all heard the saying before, but it fits here: consistency is key. The more you journal, the better at it you’ll get. The more committed you are to the process, the more you’ll get out of it. Even if you start with journaling on an as-needed basis, you can always ramp up your efforts over time.
Blocking off time on your calendar to journal effectively makes it more of a regular practice. You can also implement it as part of your morning or night routine.
In addition to making time for journaling, be sure to choose an amount of time to journal for that you can stick to. Even if you start with just five minutes a day, make journaling something you look forward to. Pick a place that inspires your writing, buy a stylish journal and cool pen to make it a fun experience. The goal is to start journaling and stay in practice.
In addition to being consistent, be sure you’re journaling with total honesty.
Be honest with yourself
Simply put, you won’t get too much out of journaling if you aren’t being honest with yourself. It’s okay to express negative emotions, talk about your issues with certain employees, or share your fears and concerns about your business in your journal. In fact, being honest about these things in your journal opens up the conversation about how to make them better.
So, check in on yourself, be present in the moment, and don’t hold back on how you’re feeling while journaling. Also, don’t self-edit or try to be perfect when you write. Instead, just let your thoughts flow with honest and authentic emotion.
Using journaling prompts can also help ensure you’re using journaling to your advantage.
Use journaling prompts
Some days you won’t know what to write about in your journal. Other days, you’ll be unmotivated. Or, you may not know where to start with your journaling process. That’s where journaling prompts can come in handy.
Journaling prompts can help you focus on what to write for the day or spark your writing flow. You can use questions as prompts for your journal entries, explore hypothetical leadership situations, or dive into the wonders of the internet to get some inspiration.
Also, when you journal, be sure to make action plans and set goals.
Make action plans and set goals
It’s been said that journaling can be a negative thing for people if they just throw up negativity on all of the pages and don’t end entries on a positive note or with an action plan to make things better.
It’s best practice to talk about the leadership challenges you’re facing in your journal and brainstorm solutions for them. Then, you can put together long and short-term action plans for bettering your leadership techniques, team, and overall operation. It’s also a good idea to set goals to monitor your progress toward better leadership.
Lastly, don’t beat yourself up if you get off track.
Don’t beat yourself up if you get off track
If you haven’t been able to keep up with the journaling schedule you set, don’t beat yourself up about it. You can always resume journaling at any time.
If committing to journaling every day is too much right now, try a few times a week, or even take it down to journaling on an as-needed basis until you can commit to more. Sometimes, life gets in the way, but journaling is always there whenever you’re ready to recommit to the habit.
Conclusion
Ultimately, you’ll get the most out of journaling when you find and do what works for you. However, you can implement the tips above to find your groove and ensure you’re using journaling to your advantage. Your leadership, team, and business depend on it.
Author bio:
Frankie Wallace is a freelance writer from the Pacific Northwest. She writes about a variety of topics and spends her free time gardening.
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