The Productive Benefits of Journaling (plus 11 ideas for getting started)

The key to learning is to stop passively consuming information and start actively engaging with the ideas we encounter.

One effective way researchers have found to reinforce learning is through reflective writing: It promotes the brain’s attentive focus, boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns and gives the brain time for reflection.

• Recording your thoughts in a medium outside your own head helps your mind to become quieter: It stops returning to the same worn-out mental loops over and over. 
• When you recount and reflect upon your thoughts and experiences you are, in effect, telling your own story. Journaling helps us clarify, edit, and find new meaning in these narratives.

It serves as a tool for identifying what you should prioritize on a daily basis, and what you should let go of. And it also gives you a record of the progress you’ve made toward your goals to keep you motivated.

• Use pen and paper, to reap the psychological and productive benefits of journaling;
• Make it a habit: Keep your journal in the same spot where you’ll see it at the same time every day.
• Embrace slowness. Resist the instinct to rush through it to get to the next thing.
• Don’t edit; just write.
• Experiment and find out which approaches work best for you.

• The Gratitude Journal: Simply write about something that you’re grateful for.
• Morning Pages: Before starting work each day, write 3 pages, long-hand, of anything that crosses your mind, to clear your head.
• The Goal Journal: Incorporating your goals into a daily journal is a huge step to getting them done.
• The Values Journal: Identify the values that are important to you. Then write about how the events of your day connect back to your values.
• The Curiosity Journal: Challenge yourself to write about one thing every day that made you stop and ask a question.