5 Ways Morning Journaling Powerfully Boosts Your Effectiveness
Jump start your day by not plunging straight into work
It seems a little counter intuitive.
How can taking 15–30 minutes to write in a journal make you more productive during the day? Wouldn’t you be better off working for that time to get more done?
Studies say, no. You’re actually more productive and effective if you start your day with journaling.
I know, I’ve found that to be true in my own life. I fill up two large (8"x10") journal pages each morning. It takes me about half an hour. And by the time I’m done, I’m clear, focused, and excited to begin my day.
Here are the five ways that writing in a journal each morning helps your productivity.
1️⃣ It focuses your attention on your wins
Every morning, my journal pages start with a short list of three ways that my life is measurably better than the day before. Usually, these are three milestones or accomplishments from the day before. They show that I am moving forward in my business.
Sometimes they are more emotional wins, such as receiving good news from a doctor. One of my wins from this morning was that yesterday I got a set of bookshelves for my office. I gave a home to books that had been piled on the floor, and totally transformed the atmosphere of my office.
This is especially important if you are striving toward “high, hard goals” as Steven Kotler describes them in The Art of Impossible. Those goals can take years to reach. At the beginning, it sometimes seems like you’re not making any progress.
Marking down three ways your life is better forces you to acknowledge that you’re moving in the right direction. You’ve got momentum. It lets you start your day with a running start, giving you a boost of self-confidence.
2️⃣ It clears out worries and trapped thoughts
By getting your thoughts out onto paper, you know they’re always there for you to go back and revisit. You don’t have to keep reminding yourself to do something. It closes mental loops, and frees up mental processing power.
You can also work through your emotional reactions to things in a journal. It’s sort of like having a silent conversation with yourself. Just putting down on paper that you’re mad about something, or hurt, or scared, validates those feelings. It lets you move on, instead of stewing about the emotion and holding it close.
I’ve found it extremely helpful if I’m upset by something my husband accidentally did. Talking through my emotions with him will only get him upset, and serves no purpose, since it was an accident. But it helps me understand my reaction. And if I come to any great insights that will help our relationship, I can always share those.
In a scientific experiment to show the impact of releasing negative thoughts, people who journaled about their feelings were dramatically faster to heal from an injury.
3️⃣ It reduces stress and boosts immune strength
Stress hormones in your body are responsible for a host of diseases and chronic conditions. Journaling has been scientifically proven to improve your health. It lowers your stress reaction, drops your blood pressure, improves your liver function, and increases your immune response.
In other words, it helps you recover from stress-related illness and then stay healthy. Healthy people can be more productive than those who are sick or dealing with a chronic health condition.
Part of the stress-release is, no doubt, the ability to express your emotions in a safe space rather than holding them in. Part of it may also be the benefits you get from regularly entering a meditative state, which journaling can facilitate.
I know that I feel very calm and “in the zone” when writing in my journal. Oddly, this is true even if I’m writing about something emotionally distressing such as health scares of family members.
4️⃣ It helps you become more creative
Journaling helps you to develop the ability to have better, more-creative problem solving. It’s easy to see why this is so.
For the length of time that you are writing in your journal, you do not have any time pressures on you. You can explore various options, think them through, and write down your thoughts about them. Since you can’t get up and take action on any of them until you’re done journaling, you can also explore side thoughts and follow connections.
You don’t have to make a decision until after all of your thoughts are down on paper. That keeps you in the creative, idea-generating part of your brain, rather than the logical, decision-making part.
One of the people in my mastermind group fills her journals with decision trees. She walks through all the steps of what happens if she chooses each option. Then she builds out branches for all of the options underneath each of those options. And so on. Until she is many levels down from her initial decision point, with a robust understanding of what each option entails.
5️⃣ It improves your memory
Studies show that the act of writing something down increases your ability to remember it. This is true even if you never go back and reread what you wrote.
Further, you can prime your subconscious with a problem before you go to sleep. Then, first thing in the morning, you write in your journal everything that came to you in your dreams or in that twilight state between waking and sleep. This is the practice recommended by Josh Waitzkin in The Art of Learning.
The practice of daily recall of dreams improves your memory. Writing them down further enhances your brain’s intake, processing, retention, and retrieval of information.
It often happens to me that as I record the details of a dream, more details bubble up into my memory. With the greater level of detail, I am often able to spot repeating patterns that I would miss at the higher level of abstraction.
I will also record details of experiences that I want to be sure not to lose. Special moments with my husband. Explanations by home repair experts on the arcane arts of plumbing. New birds or animals that appear in the nature preserve next to our home. Television shows or movies we enjoyed. Exotic vacations.
Years later, rereading those passages will bring the memories into brilliantly clear focus.
Conclusion
Taking time every morning to write in a journal can dramatically increase your productivity.
It does this by improving your self-confidence and focusing your attention on your wins. It lets you release negative emotions, helping you to reduce stress and improve your overall health. It increases your creative problem solving skills. And it boosts your memory.
Being calmer, thinking clearer, and being better at problem solving helps you to be more productive for the rest of the day.
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