Keeping a daily journal

February’s new habit is keeping a daily journal, and starting weekly check-ins.

I’m going to be honest. I don’t really know if I’m posting anything useful to anyone else here, or just thinking out loud. Either way, it’s useful to keep me on track while I try to put 12 new habits in place, one a month running through the year.

Keeping a daily journal: the why. 

For me, a journal is a space to examine what’s working in my life, and what isn’t. Whether I’m focussing on the right things, or just doing busy work that isn’t really moving me forward.

It’s a way of remembering what I’ve done, who I’ve met, of seeing progress, celebrating wins – and learning from failures. 

I find my day goes better when I do morning pages, a tool Julia Cameron recommends in her book The Artist’s Way. (Three pages, written quickly in long-hand, as soon as possible after waking.) I’ve done it – on and off – for nearly 20 years now. But lately, it’s been more off than on, and I want to be more purposeful about it without beating myself up if I don’t fill three pages every day. 

I also want to take some time to assess at the end of every week, month and quarter, to both check in on what I’ve achieved and set the focus moving forward. 

Weekly check-ins

Todd Henry’s book The Accidental Creative has useful templates for regular checkpoints, assessing the week that has gone and looking forward to the one to come. The book is well worth reading if you need to be constantly creative for your work, but if you want a preview, he gives a 20-minute overview of his quarterly check-in process in his podcast here.

He suggests looking at your goals and projects, and breaking them into challenges: problems to solve, or your next steps.

You then choose the Big 3 you want to focus on, in the following week/month/quarter. 

You also then look at your diary, and assess the following:

Relationships

Who are you seeing in the next week? Is there anyone it would be useful or interesting to connect with, in the light of your Big 3?

Energy

Check your schedule: both work and personal, if you keep them separately. Are there any conflicts between the two? (You probably don’t want an important 8am meeting the morning after your best friend’s birthday celebration, for instance). 

This is the time to prune or postpone commitments if you have particularly heavy days, or at least make sure you plan and build in short buffers (by walking from one meeting to another, for instance) to keep you energised.

Stimuli

What are you planning to watch, read, listen to or see?  What are you studying or learning?

And how does this relate to your main focus/big 3 projects?

Time

Block out some time for thinking/intentionally generating ideas, some time to experience or create something that has nothing at all to do with work. 

The book goes into far more detail than I can here. Sub-titled How To Be Brilliant At A Moment’s Notice, it offers a framework for continually generating good and relevant ideas. It’s an incredibly useful if you do creative work, or have to come with ideas on a deadline.

Keeping a daily journal: the how

I’m continuing to use the four laws of establishing a new habit outlined in James Clear’s excellent book Atomic Habits.  These work for any new behaviour you want to begin, but here I’m applying them to writing in my journal, at least once a day.

Make it obvious

Set an intention, giving the time and place you want to do your new habit. This month, mine is this:

I will write in my journal every morning, at my writing desk, with my first coffee of the day. 

As with meditation last month, I’m habit-stacking by adding my desired new behaviour into an already established morning routine. 

I’d also like to add a 5-10 minute evening update either after I finish work, or before I go to bed.

Make it attractive

I have a nice new blank journal. I have a large supply of my favourite pens (Pilot V5). I have a space where I like to write. 

I’m going to take my coffee up to my study with me, which is motivation because I only drink two cups of coffee a day, and I look forward to it. 

I’m also making it more of a ritual by lighting a candle while I write, and putting on music. 

Make it easy

I’m setting a timer for 20 minutes for my morning pages. If I’ve written all I want to write by then, I can stop. 

When my schedule makes this impossible, I will still write down three things I’m grateful for, three things it would be brilliant to get done that day, and set an intention for my mood/behaviour that day.

I know this can be done in minutes, and I have the 5-Minute Journal app on my phone. Even when I have an early start, that should be easy to fit in.

I’ve also bought a set of ‘Know Yourself’ cards from the School of Life with questions and writing prompts for those mornings when I really feel I have nothing to say. 

Make it satisfying

After realising how motivating it was to see an unbroken chain of sessions build up on my meditation timer last month, I’ve bought an app called Streaks to track my new habits. 

I’m already enjoying pressing the circle marked ‘Journal’ every morning. I’m also a bit embarrassed that in the end, all it took to get me doing things I’ve wanted – and genuinely intended –  to do regularly was to have a pretty button to press or a box to tick to say I’m done.

So that’s how I’m planning to start keeping a daily journal. I’ll let you know how it went at the end of the month, and whether it’s something I will continue. In the meantime: what new habit would benefit your life and work?