Journaling is one of the greatest habits you will ever have. It will supercharge your creativity, help you to slow down and reflect more, and it's a way to sharpen your leadership skills. A journal will improve your decision-making, writing, and problem solving skills.
When journaling, always strive to delve one more level deeper. If you're writing about a fishing trip, what specifically happened during the event? What were your observations after-the-fact?
Lara Zielin, life coach and author, has a unique program for journaling called "Author Your Life." You make yourself the hero of your own story and speak about yourself in the third person. Allow yourself permission to unleash your imagination in your journal. Zieder suggests beginning with a simple assignment: describe yourself as the hero having an ideal day and incorporate all of the five sense: sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.
Happy Unbirthday! In Lewis Carroll's classic tale, Alice in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter asks why we should only celebrate our birthdays since it's only one day a year. What about the other 364 days - the unbirthdays should be celebrated, too!
Use your journal to celebrate the small things each day. This will help you counteract "negativity bias" - a principle saying our brains focus on the negative five times as much as the positive. So, for every negative emotion, we need to explore five positive ones to even out the feelings!
Gertrude Stein, famous author, had a flash of insight while listening to her poodle lap water. She learned the difference between sentences and paragraphs is paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not. Wait...I need to think about this a while. And how she thought of that by hearing a dog drinking I'll never know.
A study from Harvard said that people who spent 15 minutes reflecting on the lessons they learned each day performed 23% better than those who didn't.
Women who wrote down three positive events (work or non-work-related) each day scored seven years younger on physical-functioning questionnaires than those who didn't. It's vital to include the WHY in addition to the what of the positive event. For example, My boss complemented my work because he knows how hard I worked on it - (Academy of Management Journal, 2013).
You should be fulfilled by your job but your job shouldn't make up your whole identity. You have many other roles that make it up.
Kaizen is the process of continuous improvement.
Here's the Time Tracker Self-Assessment Tool so you can see where you're spending your time.
Podcast Outline:
1:00 Journaling and its Benefits
6:20 Lara Zielen's Author Your Life
8:30 Happy Unbirthday!
9:50 Gertrude Stein's Breakthrough
11:00 Harvard Study
13:00 Kaizen and Continuous Improvement
15:00 Think In Images
Scott Snow is a productivity expert, speaker, podcaster, and life coach. He is the founder of Think Like a Musician, whose purpose is to help you learn the time management skills you need to be joyful, productive, & fulfilled in all areas of life. He teaches a unique and innovative approach to managing your crazy, busy life. It's a musician's approach to time management and work-life balance. Call 774-230-3928 now to customize a training for your organization or to inquire about coaching availability.