We love journaling. It’s a ritual for writing about, tracking and recording your life down in paper or in digital form.
It is not about teenagers keeping a secret diary, but a methodical and mindful practice that actively improves your life over time. We recommend everyone to have a journaling ritual because it has so many benefits. Just to name a few:
- Recorded memory. By writing things down, you have a record of what has happened to you, daily. This is especially great if you have a leaky brain (bad memory).
- Ability to see what you did on any given day of your life.
- See and track progress across different areas of your life.
- A unique opportunity to align day-to-day task with longer-term vision and goals.
- End every single day knowing that you did well – this creates motivational momentum.
- Helps bring other Rituals into your life through questions and reminders.
- Capture your own personal history.
As part of our Rituals course we’ve helped thousands of people with their journaling ritual. We have a whole module on how to build a journaling ritual inside the course and now we’re going to release the main video for free on the blog. You can watch it here:
Getting started with a journaling ritual
Here’s a simple checklist to help you get started:
- Pick your medium – pen and paper, or digital. Personal preference.
- Work out how your journal will be structured (examples below).
- Decide on your structure and questions (examples below).
- Start journaling.
The most common question we get from people who want to start journaling is “what do I write about?”
Well Padawan, we’re here to help. If you’ve never made journaling a successful ritual before, then we recommend you only answer 2 questions on a daily basis:
- What did I learn today?
- How can I make tomorrow better?
When you have to answer too many questions it can be hard to make it a ritual. That’s why you want to keep it as simple as possible and these two questions are extremely effective in helping you grow.
If you already have a journaling ritual and you want to take it to the next level, our examples below will help you with that. Pick the ones you like and slowly add 1 or 2 new questions to your ritual over time.
Daily Template
- What happened to you that day (events).
- Outcomes, tasks, questions.
- Outcomes are the big things you want to achieve for the day.
- Tasks are the smaller steps to achieving outcomes.
- Write down 3 accomplishments.
- Questions (all optional, pick as you please):
- What did I read?
- What did I learn?
- What did I do to help my future?
- How did I help someone today?
- Who do I love?
- What am I grateful for?
Weekly Template
- What happened to you that week (events).
- Outcomes, tasks, questions.
- Review of how the week went.
Monthly Template
- What happened to you that month (events)
- Outcomes, tasks, questions
- Review of how the month went
Annual Template
- What happened to you that year (events).
- As important things happen, put them into your annual journal entry.
- Outcomes, tasks, questions.
- Review of how the year went.
- Questions:
- Where did I travel?
- Who did I meet?
- What is my net worth now?
- Where did I spend most of my time?
- Where did I spend most of my attention?
- How did I improve at what I do?
- How have most of my close relationships improved?
- How has my health improved?
- How has to my contribution to the world improved, or my charity increased?
- How has my purpose evolved?
- What do I want from the upcoming year?
- What roles have Rituals played in my life this year?
- How can I sustainably create better Rituals for next year?
Zachary’s Sample Questions #1
- How has the resistance shown up today?
- How is my girlfriend amazing?
- What did I learn/read?
- What did I do for exercise?
- What was I focused on?
- Morning
- Day
- Night
Zachary’s Sample Questions #2
- How am I feeling right now?
- What am I thankful for right now?
- How much sleep did I get?
- What did I do really well today?
- What did I improve upon?
- What did I learn/read?
- What did I do for exercise?
- How can I do things better tomorrow?
- What value did I give away today?
- What did I enjoy today?
- What was I focused on?
- Morning
- Day
- Night
- What could have been delegated or automated?
Zachary’s Sample Questions #3
- What am I grateful for?
- Who do I love?
- Why am I so happy?
- What am I committed to? (health, relationships, projects)
- How committed am I?
- What is my intention?
- What is my wish?
- Why am I here? (time, place)
Did you know that we have our own productivity community and we discuss Journalling extensively?
The Productivity Academy is our exclusive members-only community that is jam-packed with trainings, courses, masterclasses, podcasts, coaching calls, action plans, and productivity-focused individuals just like you. Click here to learn about joining the Productivity Academy.