By Anne Evenson
Journaling is a great way to document personal experiences, but it can also help you on your professional journey. Here are some tips to incorporate journaling into charting your career path.
“Journal writing, when it becomes a ritual for transformation, is not only life-changing but life-expanding.”
Jennifer Williamson, American attorney and politician
People journal for various reasons in their personal lives to record events and milestones and all their associated thoughts and feelings. For many, keeping a career journal is a great way to document professional experiences. Career journals are excellent tools for ongoing professional development and advancement. They can help you process your thoughts and feelings, work through emotional issues, solve problems, track ideas and chronicle your accomplishments. Let’s explore how you can use journaling to evolve professionally and chart a clear path forward in your career.
Assists With Organization
In its simplest form, a journal is a great way to add structure to your workday. Whether you work in an office or remotely, there are more distractions now than ever, so losing control of your day is always a risk. Listing your to-do’s with deadlines and other pertinent information can help you stay on task and keep you motivated and productive throughout the day. This will also help you document what you worked on that day and throughout the week, which can help you envision the evolution of a project as it transforms from one iteration to the next. You’ll also have a log of tasks, events and situations should you ever need to recall them.
Tracks Your Accomplishments
Record all accomplishments, achievements, awards, commendations and milestones in your journal. Write as much as you can remember about each instance, its significance, and related metrics. Remember your smaller wins, too, like when you pitched in to help your colleague finish a project on a tight deadline or covered for a sick coworker at an event. Looking back on all these positive things allows you to appreciate the full scope of your day-to-day and how it supports your team and organization. Having this detailed information at your fingertips makes yearly performance reviews and interview prep much more manageable and can even translate into a higher salary.
Helps You Gain Perspective to Learn & Grow
There’s little point in positive or negative experiences if you don’t learn from them, and a great way to begin is by recording them in your journal. For example, every workplace has misunderstandings, conflict, disorganization and poor communication, and it’s crucial to document all instances that involve you. When feeling more objective, you can conduct an after-action review to examine what did and didn’t work in a particular situation. This clarity can help you resolve any ongoing problems and navigate similar situations in the future with less turmoil.
Sometimes it’s not an interpersonal issue but a task you’re stuck on, a project that makes you feel defeated or a decision you’re confused about. Documenting and defining these roadblocks can help you identify areas where you might need assistance from a colleague or specific training or development. Weekly or monthly check-ins with yourself in your journal can help you track trends over time and help you reflect on your preferred work style so you can course correct for future success.
A Compendium to Foster Your Creativity
A journal is an excellent place to collect and curate all your thoughts (random or specific), opinions, theories, concepts, doodles, lists, notes and other ephemera floating around in your brain. These physical manifestations of your mind are a compilation of all the ideas that feed your thought processes, inspire you and nurture your creativity. Studies show that drawing and doodling engage your imagination by helping you make connections between unrelated things and imagining new ways to solve problems.
Offers a Safe Space to Vent
We all need a safe place to vent our frustrations, especially work-related ones. Journaling has long been used to process thoughts and feelings about a particular issue or event. There’s something satisfying about getting things out of your head and onto a piece of paper that can be therapeutic and restore you to a place of more equilibrium.
Provides a Place to Record Tips & Advice
Most likely, people in your life, both at work and in your personal life, have offered career guidance and counsel. Document any constructive criticism, invaluable feedback and great advice from your managers, mentors, colleagues or career coaches. Always bring your journal to conferences to document industry experts’ or thought leaders’ knowledge and experience. Use these pearls of wisdom when you’re struggling or searching for inspiration.
Offers a Way to Plot Your Career Path
The best use of your career journal is as a tool for introspection, exploration and evaluation to help you carefully consider your current work and how that affects what you envision for your future. Once you’ve settled on a career path, write down your plan step by step and include 30, 60 and 90-day goals in your journal to help you stay the course.
How to Choose a Journal Format
Analog journals like notebooks or sketch pads offer a tangible experience for writing and drawing and for collaging printed articles, images or quotes that convey ideas or experiences that connect to your work. Many also find putting pen or pencil to paper to be meditative and calming, something they can’t replicate while typing. Physical journals are also private and secure; no need to worry about hackers or data breaches.
There are certain advantages to digital journaling on a computer, tablet or smartphone. There’s no denying the convenience and accessibility when you can write, type or dictate your entries onto platforms that you can easily access anywhere you have an internet connection. You can store various types of multimedia in your digital journal that you couldn’t in an analog journal, like audio files, digital images and hyperlinks. If you’re struggling with maintaining your journaling habit, many apps allow you to set push notifications and reminders and even have prompts and questions to encourage self-reflection. You can also reduce the risk of loss or destruction by syncing your journaling records from multiple devices and backing them up on the cloud. Some apps also have robust search functions and even let you categorize and sort your entries. Try apps like Day One, Momento and Grid Diary to see if a digital journal will work for you.
Whichever method you choose for your journaling, consider what works best for you so you can turn to it for inspiration whenever necessary. We all know that some of our best ideas come to us at the most inconvenient times (just as you’re nodding off or showering), and you want to keep those nuggets of wisdom!
How to Establish & Maintain a Career Journal
Staring at a blank page at the end of a long day can seem daunting unless you’re prepared. Try answering some or all of the following questions daily or weekly:
- What lesson/s did I learn today?
- What possible challenges should I prepare for tomorrow or next week?
- Did anyone comment or compliment my work today? What did they say?
- Describe something I’m thankful for at work.
- Did I go above and beyond in any capacity today?
- How can I exceed expectations tomorrow?
- What significant task did I complete today?
- How have I felt at work recently, and why?
- Did I devote time to tasks or projects that will help boost my career?
- How can I prioritize my action items this week?
- What are ways that I could improve my work?
- How am I aligning with my 30, 60 and 90-day goals?
Even if you can only devote time to this exercise once a week, keeping a career journal will nurture your career in numerous ways, so don’t wait; treat yourself to a beautiful leatherbound journal or a cool new journaling app so you can express yourself, reflect, learn, grow and chart a path forward in your career that’s fulfilling and meaningful!
Anne Evenson is a native Austinite and a proud Veteran’s spouse with over 20 years of marketing, communications and program coordination experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She is also a sculptor, jeweler and all-around dabbler in the arts and loves to help military-connected individuals discover their inner creativity.
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