Yes, keeping a journal helps, and no, it’s not a waste of energy. A journal is an important tool whose significance is highly under rated. No good writer can move in his/her career without the added advantage of being a journal writer, and yet, few of us ever realize the role journal writing can play to increase our overall effectiveness, both personally and professionally.
Positive effects of Journal writing
1. Organising your thoughts:
A journal helps you in organising your thoughts. Most executives often use journals or business planners to keep a track of their ideas and presentations at work.
2. A Tool for Remembering:
Writing down of thoughts often help us remember our list of things to do, or our past experiences.
Remember the classic book, Diary of Anne Frank, where incidents written by a thirteen-year old girl, while in hiding, went on to become one of the most gut-wrenching stories of the holocaust?
The book will forever remain a classic example of journal writing and its effects.
3. Therapeutic Effects:
Journal writing can be remedial for the writer. Pouring out our thoughts and anxiety, our pains and troubles in form of a written work often helps in identifying a problem and work towards reaching a solution. While putting down an emotional issue on paper, it’s possible to discover new angles of the issue that may be used in coping with the angst itself.
4. Goal Setting:
Journals help in setting our personal goals and helping us keep a track of our progress. I have come across business journals with special pages for keeping track of projects, in their various stages of development. My aunt is a compulsive list maker who lists everything to do meticulously in her journal, from shopping and household chores, to planning a party.
My aunt is known in the family circle as the most organised person, who can be trusted to organise an event perfectly.
5. Concentration:
For women going back to work, or people who multi-task too many things, keeping a journal allows them to practice concentration or focus on themselves, allowing them a special me-time to relax and rejuvenate. As concentration improves with practice, regular journal writing is bound to increase concentration specially in people who often feel a certain inability to concentrate for long.
6. Increases Written Communication Abilities:
Keeping a journal regularly helps in increasing written communication abilities. Writing out the thoughts encourages a clarity in writing abilities, which makes us a better writer. And practice makes perfect.
7. Is a technique for happy life:
Interested in knowing how journal writing can help in personal development and help you lead a happy life? Read our post on gratitude journal
Conclusion
So all of you out there, who have struggled to put into writing what you want to say, try out writing a journal regularly. It needn’t be every day, but keep a journal in a place where you can reach out to whenever you want, like a work desk, or beside your bed, and make it a point to write in your thoughts almost every other day.
Begin with a to-do list every day, and you can graduate to writing down expenses and trivia, and finally to narrating incidents and ideas. You can use a paper or an electronic journal, whichever suits you the best, as the idea is to keep on writing, and the medium isn’t that important. Once you have started on your jour journal writing, do remember to write to us to tell about your own experiences.
Article by Moumita Basu
Moumita has written 9 articles.
Moumita Basu is a writer and a soft-skills trainer. She works for a news agency. When not writing, she loves spending time with her family, reading and travelling, preferably doing all three together..
