The usefulness of journaling is uncontested. It clarifies our pondering and improves our choice making. It helps us discover our emotions and join with our inside life. It captures the questions we’re mulling over. It grounds us in the place we’re, who we’re, and the place we’re headed.
However most individuals don’t journal. If you happen to’re studying this, you’re most likely one in all them. So, let’s make constructing a journaling behavior simpler with a number of ideas.
Tip 1: Select Unforgettable Cues
Each behavior (intentional or unintentional) has what’s referred to as an activation set off: a cue that prompts you to motion. And you may create one on goal.
One of many best cues for journaling is your journal itself. Put it in a spot the place it’s exhausting to overlook. In entrance of the espresso maker, so that you choose it up whereas the espresso brews. On the counter, so that you see it while you go to make breakfast. Or on prime of your laptop computer, so you may’t miss it earlier than beginning work.
You possibly can additionally tie it to one other exercise. What’s one thing you already do daily with out fail? Might you journal in your freshly made mattress? Within the parking zone of your office after pulling in? Proper after doing the dishes from dinner? Simply earlier than you prove the sunshine?
If you happen to don’t wish to neglect, make it unforgettable.
Tip 2: Leverage What You Love
Since you’re human, you may have cravings. Your cup of morning espresso. Your favourite TV present. Your stroll across the block. Settling down with a novel earlier than mattress. Tinkering in your storage. Catching up on the information. What do you sit up for every day? Bundle your journaling behavior with that exercise.
It additionally helps to have instruments you get pleasure from. Spending much less on instruments you received’t use isn’t a very good funding. If it makes journaling extra fulfilling, spend just a little extra on these fancy pens, high-end pencils, or that handbound leather-based journal. Select the instruments you wish to use.
Tip 3: Purpose for Straightforward
If a clean web page is intimidating, purchase a journal with prompts (like our Full Focus Journal).
If you happen to simply don’t wish to journal, observe what you discover your thoughts returning to through the day—concepts, quotes, issues, conversations. Return to this checklist when it’s time to journal. Free your self from what you suppose journaling “ought to” be. Make your journaling serve you.
And set a timer. Don’t begin with half an hour. Don’t even begin with ten minutes. Begin with three. You possibly can spare three minutes a day. And you are able to do something for 3 minutes, proper?
If journaling appears exhausting, discover a solution to make it simple. Eradicate the intimidation.
Tip 4: Monitor Your Streak
Streaks are satisfying. So observe it. Put a “checkmark” by the date in your calendar. Discover an app that can observe it nearly. And, after all, there’s all the time the streaktracker within the Full Focus Planner.
Monitoring your streak offers you a lift when you wait till you begin seeing the advantages of your behavior. Then, journaling will change into its personal reward.
Make right now the day you began journaling. Select the next move and go for it.
P.S. For extra on habits, take a look at No Fail Habits.
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