Journaling isn’t just for teens. Here’s why keeping a career work journal can help you get ahead at the office.
We’ve probably all fallen into this trap. We are so concerned with accomplishing the many tasks on our to-do lists that we forget to stop and look at the big picture. We forget to think about how we can go above and beyond, consider what we’ve accomplished, or to check in with how we’re feeling at work.
One of the best ways to make sure you’re regularly reflecting on your career? Keeping a work journal.
The benefits of journaling have been well documented, and many of us associate it with our personal lives. For example, it can be helpful to create a journaling routine when you're working through a tough transition in your personal life.
However, there's no reason why these benefits can't be translated over to your career. Let's talk about the work journal.
What Is a Work Journal?
Similar to a personal journal, the goal of a work journal is to provide you with a blank space for your thoughts on your career. These thoughts might include your goals, actions, feedback, plans, interpersonal challenges, or frustrations.
Depending on your preference, you can document your thought in a regular notebook or use digital tools. Where you document your work thoughts matters less than how you do it.
We find that the most successful habit to create with journaling is consistency. To help you create a journaling routine, it can be helpful to start with some structure by way of prompts, templates, and scheduling.
Additionally, it can be helpful to think of your work journal documentation in general themes such as:
- Where you are right now: Assess your current situation and determine what is going well, how your actions are aligning with your goals, and where you're coming up against challenges
- Where you've been: Take the time to consider past situations and identify the insights you gained from them
- Where you want to go: Take a forward-facing approach to your goals, including what is motivating your future goals, plans, and actions
Over time, keeping a work journal will be like having your own career coach combined with a personal assistant. It can help you stay organized with your daily and weekly tasks, recap meetings, help with time and project management, and ensure you stay focused on your goals.
This new habit will help you accelerate your success, and it doesn't matter if you're an entry-level employee, experienced manager, freelancer, or person transitioning back into the workforce. A work journal can improve your productivity and performance.
The Benefits of Keeping a Work Journal
Let's start by sharing the benefits you can't see or touch but can feel. The cognitive benefits of journaling include mindfulness, gratitude, creativity, emotional processing, memory, and attention to detail.
In a Harvard Business Review article, "The Power of Small Wins," Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss the concept of what they’ve termed the “power principle.” The authors asked professionals to keep diaries at work and, after studying these diaries, they identified the power principle, which states:
“Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.”
The authors wrote about how managers could effectively use work journals and the power principle to motivate employees. You can use their findings to motivate yourself by making sure that you’re regularly reflecting and celebrating your progress and small wins at work.
Keeping a daily journal on office life and career progress allows you to keep track of just that.
On top of progress and the power of small wins, here are some other benefits of keeping a work journal:
1. Structure and Clarity
We are big fans of being in the driver's seat of our careers—which means proactive planning and creating structure wherever possible. It doesn't mean that things will always go as planned—it means having enough structure that you can be flexible when needed without losing your whole day.
Losing control of your day can be confusing and unfulfilling. It's that feeling of "what did I do all day?" even though you spent eight hours in front of the computer.
In order to be more proactive, start your day with an organized plan that you document. What do you hope to accomplish today and why? What's on your to-do list for the day and the week? Spend some time organizing your calendar so you can plan where and when you might get these things done.
The structure you create by planning ahead will give you clarity that motivates you throughout your day. No more feeling lost or losing two hours to Instagram scrolling.
2. Focus and Prioritization
When you create structure, follow a plan, and start to gain clarity at work, a quick change of plans in your schedule will be easier to manage. In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown emphasizes the importance of doing less by discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.
By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is essential, you'll better understand how to prioritize your action items, increasing organization, efficiency, and productivity.
A work journal can help you do this because as you consider your plans for the day, you can simultaneously focus on your future goals. You're less likely to get caught up in the day-to-day.
3. Manage Your Negative Emotions
There's a reason why so many people find journaling therapeutic. It really works! And putting your emotions into words—especially if you’re having a hard time with something—can help you work through them faster.
Using a work journal to write about your interpersonal challenges at work, unpleasant feelings like impostor syndrome, and recognizing patterns that lead to negative self-talk can help you cope with them.
4. Decrease Decision Fatigue
Work requires us to make decisions, and if we're going in circles trying to come up with a solution, stuck in analysis paralysis, or confused about what to do next, it wastes your precious energy.
Break free of indecisiveness! A work journal helps decrease decision fatigue by providing a filter through which you can run your decisions. When you know your North Star, it's faster and easier to use that as a guide for your next steps.
5. Accelerate Your Career Growth
By tracking your progress, you'll be able to make improvements in the areas that matter most. Keeping a work journal provides valuable data on how you are spending your time, feedback, etc. so you can improve your work performance.
A work journal also gives you the opportunity to reflect often and then make tweaks to your processes, communication, and/or time management skills.
How to Start and Maintain a Work Journal
Sitting down and staring at a blank page at the end of a long workday can seem like just another thing to cross off of your to-do list unless you come prepared. Instead, it may be helpful to write the answers to these questions daily (or weekly, if you prefer):
- What is one lesson (or lessons, if you have many) that I learned today?
- What potential challenges should I be prepared for today or this week?
- Did anyone compliment or comment on my work today? What did they say? (Bonus: This makes it easier to remember your accomplishments when you want to ask for a raise or promotion!)
- How have I been feeling at work lately and why?
- What’s something I’m grateful for at work?
- What is one big thing that I accomplished today?
- Did I spend time on important tasks that will help accelerate my career?
- Did I do anything above and beyond my basic job description today?
- What is one way that I can go above and beyond tomorrow?
- How would I prioritize my to-do list this week?
- What are some ways I could improve at work?
- How am I tracking against my 30-60-90 day goals?
Even if you can only fit this in once a week, this exercise will help you reflect, focus, and consider the big picture of your career.
