It is no secret that writing is a great skill for a marketer to have. But, did you know that writing in a journal is one of the greatest productivity hacks you could ever use. You don’t have to keep a journal to simply write your story. It can be used for much more — ultimately, success. Here’s how you can make the most of journaling and walk into productivity bliss.

Fiction: It is Counter-Productive to Expend Extra Energy on Goal Writing

It may seem like extensive goal setting, and taking the extra effort to include how you will reach a goal, is counter-productive to smart professional behaviour. But, this is simply not true. Knowing what you want, how you will achieve it, and what you need to do to fully understand the process is an invaluable productivity booster. First, as you visually see the progress on your goals, your confidence increases, and the overall status of your workflows will move along more smoothly. Second, research has proven that goal setting has more than one step.

Fact: Writing Goals in a Journal Helps Keep You On Track

Harvard released a study that explains goal setting as a two step process. In their research they found that you not only want to write down what you want, but also how you plan to achieve it. And, you have two types of “hows” that you will work with: procedural and outcome. Goal journaling for optimal productivity is a three step process:

1. List Your Goals

2. List Outcome Hows

3. List Procedural Hows

What Are Outcome Hows?

Outcome hows are task-specific lists of events needed to reach a goal.

What Are Procedural Hows?

Procedural goals are cross-situational tactics for achieving something. They are used for building up to outcome hows.

This is what a proper goal-setting journal entry looks like:

Goal: Get Rich Pins to show up for Pinterest shares from Website-A.

Outcome How: Setup Website-A for Rich Pin enabling.

Procedural How: Watch Rich Pin tutorial.

Fiction: Journaling is a Waste of Time; Work Projects Are More Important

By taking the time to write creatively, expressively, and/ or therapeutically, in a journal, you will actually open up creative parts of your brain that are useful in the workplace, and enable yourself to better manage everyday tasks. Haven’t you ever wondered why teachers often ask students to keep a journal in class? Writing isn’t just for kids; it is a measurably effective mind-booster.

Fact: Journal Writing Helps Combat Negative Thinking And More

Some of the most prestigious universities will tell you that journaling is extremely beneficial for well-being and productivity, both personally and professionally. A robust attitude and positive thinking are proven to increase well-being and coping strategies under stress. By using your journal as a tool to let out the negative thoughts, you will ultimately make more room for positive thoughts. Positive thoughts lead to positive actions. Positive actions are the stepping stones to success. This is why negativity purging via written expression is so helpful.

How to Write for Productivity Enhancement and Negativity Purging

You can use any method of writing negativity purging, but there are some methods that are popular for productivity enhancement. Try them all, and choose the ones that provide you with the most value.

● Creative Therapy Journaling — Writing fantasy is a way to enhance creativity and help get that part of the brain working.

● Expressive Therapy Journaling — Writing things like prose or philosophy can give you deeper insights, and this can leak through to your work projects while you are opening your mind.

● Fictional Autobiography Therapy Journaling — Writing a biography about yourself, including creative changes to the characters, events, and places described can allow you to let go of negativity, emotional baggage, and the like, which will leave you with a clear mind for work related thoughts.

● Narrative Therapy Journaling — With this type of journaling, you express a painful story and resolve it with the lesson(s) you learned . This opens up room for forgiveness of people, places, and things, including resentments you have toward co-workers, managers, and the company you work for.

Summary

You can use your journal to write down your goals for the day and the steps to reach those goals. You can make notes and lists about how to achieve what will ultimately make you successful. Then, at the end of each day, use the same notepad (productivity tool) to analyze your accomplishments or lack thereof, and figure out what you can do better tomorrow. Another great way to use your journal is to pour out all of your negative thoughts onto paper in an effort to clear your mind of them. And this is what will bring you all the success in the world.

References:

● Stock photo sourced from Pixabay.

Marry McAleavey has a degree in Marketing, is an online marketing enthusiast at the essay service and loves crafting exciting content.