Writing a journal each day has lots of advantages
- Good to take stock and have some thinking time
- Good to think about the things you’re grateful for
- Good to have a record of what was happening when
- Interesting to read and see your progress (or not!)
Anyway, I was thinking about what you might want to write in a journal, and of course there are no rules – if you want to just record your exercise and what you’ve eaten, then that’s up to you!
But if I was asked, I think I would consider writing about the following, ideally every day (there are some other things I’d write weekly or monthly, and some others I would consider every year end (e.g. life goals) but this is the daily routine list. I hope you find it useful – maybe just ONE of these is something you’d not normally write about, but could see the benefit of documenting?
Made me happy today – something I’m grateful for, or a moment when I said “This is the life!” – thinking back over these gives you a second hit of happiness, as well as making you more likely to do them again in the future = even more happiness.
Exercise: give yourself a score out of ten so you can easily look at a trend over time, and note what you did – if any. No judging! Though what gets measured gets improved!
Jobs To Do – did you make a list today? How many of the jobs did you get done? Again, no judging, but a box to tick saying Yes/No and 3/11 would be interesting to view over time. And if you always only do 3/11 then maybe your list should only have 3 things on it instead of 11?
Overall feeling – maybe a score out of ten again, and maybe one word to describe your feeling today, overall. Frustrated? Busy? Bored? Overwhelmed? Relaxed? Nailing it??
Unpleasant jobs done: did you overcome procrastination and get anything horrible off your list? Feels good! Feels horrible if you don’t and they are piling up, and you’re hiding from them and just doing the easy stuff. So it’s good to think about this every day – are you getting on top of them, or are they getting on top of you??
Reading – what are you reading, how much time di you get to spend reading, and any notes from the book: any learning points, key ideas, things to help you remember the book in the future.
Negative emotions: did you suffer much today from anger, frustration, irritation, guilt, worry, fear, jealousy, hate, embarrassment, shame, or (hopefully not!) all of the above? It’s good to track your emotions over time, and think about what causes them, and whether you’re making progress getting rid of them.
Activities – what were the main things you did today. This is classic journal / diary, just for the record so you can find out when you did something if you ever need to know, and you can see what you were doing a year ago, or ten years ago.
Learning – what did you learn today? Might not have been from college or a course, just from the things that happened, conversations you had, stuff you read, thoughts that occurred to you.
I’ve made a one page PDF that you can use for the above, which will help you remember it all, but also, if you make a copy for each day and keep them in a file, you’ll be able to easily track and trends – hopefully onwards and upwards in a good direction!
You can download it here, for free.
Onwards and upwards!
CC
