When you hear the word "Journal,” what do you think?
Usually, our impression of journaling is sitting hunched over a leatherbound book, endlessly struggling to find the right words as we detail our day. Sure, we know journaling is good for us, kind of like eating right is good for us. This doesn’t mean it’s something you’re going to enjoy doing.
Or can you?
First, before going any further, you need to recognize a fundamental truth about journaling: There are many ways to journal for success. And while there is something some refer to as a 'career journal,' every journal can put you on the road to success if you’re doing it right.
So how do you go about plotting a better career through journaling?
You start by determining what areas of your career you'd like to work on. Journaling to improve the results of whatever you set out to do depends on how you're using journaling and which journals you're using.
Where to begin?

In this article, you will learn 5 different ways to journal your way to career success and contentment. Each method involves learning about a new journal and examining why this particular journal can help you succeed at your goals. You'll even get an example of each type of journal entry, so you can immediately give this kind of journaling a try.

Let’s begin!

Journaling Your Way to Success

How many different kinds of journals are there? It's impossible to guess. One of the best parts of journaling is creating your journal experience however you like.
For some people, this might include creating a travel journal and recording the experience of wandering around the world. To someone else, journaling might be about keeping track of the books they read in a year.
In this blog, I will focus on ten very specific kinds of goals you might have and how to achieve success in mastering these goals by journaling. The idea is to look for a successful outcome at positively changing your career with these journals.
Of course, each journal focuses very narrowly on a specific area of change, meaning not every journal listed in this section will suit your needs.
The key here is to decide what you're hoping to accomplish and look for a journal that can be a helpful tool on your self-improvement journey.

1. Stick to Your Goals

This first journal is all about ensuring you accomplish the things important to you. A Goal Journal is the perfect place to keep track of your dreams, make plans for achieving what you want in life, and record your successes.

Why Sticking to Your Goals is Important for Success

You’re never going to get anywhere at all in life if you don’t make goals and do the work to achieve them. Success never comes about by accident! Having willpower and grit become important traits to cultivate. But how do you keep up your momentum when the going gets rough? How do you dig deep to press on when you’re thinking about quitting? The answer lies in journaling.

How Journaling Helps You Stick to Your Goals

When you write down your goals, you're more likely to stick to them already. Add to this the planning, which you can do in a journal, setting out steps, milestones, and projected dates for completion, and you have a tool that will get you there, no matter what!
But the best part about journaling about your journey is how you can track your progress and take inspiration from the pages. Just seeing how far you've already come will help you to keep going, even on days when you're feeling like you're never going to get there. When used regularly, a Goal Journal is a powerful thing.

Journal Example of Sticking to Your Goals

Start your entry by detailing what you're hoping to accomplish. What does your dream look like? How do you feel about this dream? Why do you want to accomplish it? Why is this important in your life? Once you have the vision down, take some time to work out the first steps. What is the next thing you need to do to set this dream in motion? What can you do today which will set you on this journey?

2. Track Your Progress and Growth for confidence

A journal to track your progress and growth might seem like a Goal Journal, but it has a slightly different emphasis. While you still have goals in your Progress Journal, you focus on the journey rather than the outcome.

Why Tracking Your Progress and Growth is Important for Success

It's hard to feel like you're going anywhere if you don't check in daily to see what's been done and what needs to be done. It's like wanting to lose twenty pounds. How are you supposed to know how your actions affect this goal if you don't weigh yourself periodically or examine what you're doing to make this goal? The whole point of Tracking Your Progress is to know where you are, but at the same time, how far you still have to go. This kind of regular check-up is how you'll determine when you need to really push to work harder and when it's okay to take a breather to rest and recharge.

How Journaling Helps You to Track Your Progress and Success

A journal is a great place to write down how you're doing. Going back to the example for weight loss, you can use your journal to write down what you're eating in a day. You can record what you did for exercise and keep track of weight measurements to see how you're doing. This record will help you to determine what's working well for you. It also helps you discover what isn't working or what needs to change.

Journal Example of Tracking Your Progress and Your Growth – your book of success

Say you have a new habit you want to begin, which has to do with getting better at making yourself visible. You can use your journal to write down when you promoted yourself at work. You can write down every time you managed to combat imposter syndrome and talk about your accomplishments.

Write in the book every evening your success stories so that you keep them in one place and can re-read them when you need that extra boost of confidence.
 

3. Improve Memory

In our very complex world where most of us suffer with mental load, the subject of memory becomes more and more important. Current research shows we really can make a difference in whether we suffer issues with memory loss.
It’s wonderful to know keeping a journal is one of those things which helps your cognitive function and improves memory. What's even more fun is using a Memory Journal to write down stories that you can someday share when you need it e.g. for year-end reviews or when preparing for an job interview.

Why Improving Your Memory is Important for Success

Anytime you can do something which will help you to think more clearly, you're going to make better decisions. Also, professionally speaking, not forgetting important meetings, information will always benefit your work life. To be successful in any walk of life, though, does require we can think well and communicate with those around us.

How Journaling Helps You Improve Your Memory

Just the act of writing something down by hand will help you to remember it. But journaling will take you far beyond the act of writing notes to help you remember. By creating a book of success, you make a concentrated effort to remember the important things to you.

Consider what happens when you write down a memory from long ago. As you write the story of what happened, you’re generally surprised to see just how many more memories come back to you while writing. You’ll start to discover new details, especially once you stop considering things such as what you heard or felt.

But what about short-term memory? Can journaling improve this as much as it does long-term memory? Absolutely! Several studies have shown that writing about even unrelated things, such as hopes and dreams, day-to-day activities, or even traumatic or even emotional events, all positively impacted how well they performed on memory tests even weeks after writing about these events. The more we use our minds in writing about what's important to us, the better they work.

Journal Example to Improve Memory

Write about a favorite experience. It can be recent or from long ago. Take the time to explore all your senses in this memory. Try to find something you tasted, something you heard, something you touched, in addition to the things you saw or did. Explore this memory emotionally, asking how it made you feel inside and what you take away from this memory now in writing about it.

4. Track Your Ideas

A journal is an excellent way to keep track of all your ideas. For one thing, it gives you a central place to jot down important thoughts as they occur to you. No more scraps of paper scattered all over your house or office. This also declutters your phone or inbox if you’ve been sending yourself notes there.

Why is Tracking Your Ideas Important for Success?

You never know when you'll hit on something useful or even life-changing. The problem is that inspiration is everywhere, but our memory isn't always the most reliable tool to properly use those passing thoughts. So, while you might have figured out the perfect solution to a problem at work while standing in the line at your local coffee shop, the idea might be gone by the time you even get your coffee.

Sadly, there's no way to capitalize on forgotten ideas. One other thing to consider is how we frequently use our ideas as springboards for problem-solving. The idea you write down today might not be useful tomorrow but instead, give birth to something else that is even better. All of your ideas together in an idea journal give you a chance to tweak these ideas in new and unique ways.

But idea Journals go even further than this. They can motivate you to explore something interesting you just found out about. They help you notice what's going on around you in more detail. They can even give you a place to play with something new you've only just discovered.

As you can see, keeping track of our ideas has quite a few benefits.

How Journaling Helps You to Keep Track of Your Ideas

When you use an idea journal, you’re not just writing down random thoughts. You’re allowing yourself to think more about the idea you just had. You also have information to remember just what prompted the thought, so you can remember it more fully later. Finally, you’re putting a little organization by adding details and possible plans into the idea you just had, so it’s ready to be worked with later.

Journal Example of Keeping Track of Your Ideas

For the most success, you'll want to have an actual idea journal, which you keep with you wherever you go. You can choose either an app on your phone or a notebook. While either work, remember some experts feel writing by hand is more effective with an idea journal. The physical act of writing really does help you remember things better. Since the whole point of an idea journal is to remember your ideas, you can see why writing by hand could be beneficial.

The key to your entry is to give enough information to remember the idea clearly later. You probably already know the pain of trying to write down an idea you had just as you were falling asleep. There's nothing like staring at a piece of paper in the morning that says nothing more than "water" on it, with no memory of whether you're talking about the color you wanted to paint the bathroom, something for a presentation, or something for the shopping list.

You might try making bullet points, a quick sketch, or a short note which would say, “What has water to do with my career, great analogy how you can move mountains being soft.” Now everything has been made perfectly clear.

5. Reflect

There is no better place to think about things than in a journal. This is why a reflection journal is so popular. The ability to examine one's thoughts and feelings is powerful, as it's where we grow some of our best ideas and come into our own as individuals.

Why Reflecting is Important for Success

Reflection serves many purposes in our lives. We reflect as a means of helping us process the events in our lives. Reflection is what helps us to understand why things happen. Reflection can also be a way to clear our heads. You can see where these skills would be useful in terms of success. Through reflection, we learn what didn't work and understand better what did. Reflection is what helps us to make a plan for going forward. It is these plans which carry us to success.

How Journaling Helps You Reflect

The act of journaling for reflection starts with writing about the events in your life. When you need to process your thoughts, expressing them on paper can be powerful. Writing releases the experience from our minds and invites us to pick it apart and analyze it.

Here is where you ask the questions about why you feel the way you do and what you might have wished could have been different about the event. Sometimes it helps just to see things in black and white. It's easier to notice truths, patterns, and what our takeaway should be when we read these entries over to ourselves. In some ways, all journaling is about reflection in some way, shape, or form.

Journal Example of Reflection

Start with something which has happened recently in your life which made you feel proud. Write about what happened in as much detail as possible. Once you have this information down, now take a step back. Read over what you wrote. What emotions do you see in your writing besides pride? How do you still feel about the event? Write down these emotions.

Now go back and ask why you feel this way about the event. What about this experience gave you a feeling of pride? What did you think you did especially well? Are your feelings in response to someone else's opinion or your own? Keep writing until you feel you've gained some new insight into this memory.

Conclusion

Journaling is an adventure that can help you succeed in so many ways!

From getting organized to realizing your dreams, a journal can be a powerful tool. It’s amazing to think how much power lies in something so simple as the written word.

Of course, journals take time, so be prepared to make a time commitment to this endeavor. You can't rush your efforts at journaling, so give yourself space in the day to write. Once you get into the habit of writing daily, you'll be glad you did.

With this in mind, what are you waiting for? All you need is something to write on to begin.

Ready? Then let’s journal!

(Monthly) Reflection:

The best is to set aside some time in your calendar, perhaps on Friday afternoon as you finish work and prepare for the weekend, to reflect on the past work week.
There will come a time when you are frustrated with your current role, need a change or feel bad and need a motivational boost. When that time comes, pick up your success book!
At the end of the month, create a summary and check if the results are related to your work goals. Consider whether you already want to or have been able to share this with your supervisor, peer group or mentor.

I have noticed that too often we forget to celebrate our successes and take them for granted.
We need to take time to recognize and reward ourselves for our achievements. It's also okay to talk about them. But that's material for another blog post.

And at some point, you will refer back to this book when you feel your confidence waning. You will be inspired by how you have solved critical problems in the past.

In my course SHOW up! we integrate the book of success as part of your daily routine and discover how to use the outcome for your career management.

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