Time is short and you have a million and one things to do. You wish you had more time for sitting down with your journal but…
Listen, I get it. I really do. And no one is going to force you to journal or blame you for not doing it. But you’re missing out on a whole lot if you don’t.
Five minutes is enough
The first thing to get out of your mind is that you need a huge chunk of time to journal. In fact, you can reap many of the benefits of journaling with just 5 minutes here and there. And even the busiest of us have five minutes that we would otherwise fritter away.
Understand the benefits
Once you realize deep down how much journaling can do for you, you’re more likely to use spare moments you have each day to write and to make it a priority. There are many potential benefits to maintaining a journal practice, including better mental health and well-being, improved self-awareness and problem-solving, greater creativity, better communication skills and generation of new ideas, and so much more. See this article on the benefits of journaling if you want to get better motivated to journal.
Just begin
Actually get started so that you experience the benefits and will want to continue your journaling practice.
Getting started can be as simple as just grabbing a pen and opening your journal. Once you do that you are more likely to write something. It’s a principle I learned from time management expert Mark Forster that he calls “Just Get the File Out”. He maintains that doing the first easy-to-achieve action on something you’re resisting is the way to get over that resistance.
Use prompts
With journaling you have an extra potential block which stops you from finding time and getting started and that’s the blank page. Or even worse, the new journal!
You don’t want to spoil your bright shiny new book by writing nonsense. It feels like it has to be profound.
But it really doesn’t have to be so.
Prompts can help enormously if you spend too long at any stage in your journaling thinking about what to write or otherwise hesitating over the blank page.
To start a new journal, you could choose one of these prompts to kick things off:
- What are you planning to explore in your journal?
- What are you hoping to achieve?
- What is a typical day is like for you now?
- How would you like to change that?
To keep your practice going, gather a list of prompts together for things you would like to think and write about or use the same prompts that you’ve found to be useful each day.
Easy access
Keep your journal with you at all times, so you can write in it whenever you have a few spare minutes.
Forget the rules
You’ll get more out of journaling if you just let your writing flow from your thoughts and don’t worry about spelling or grammar unless you’re planning on publishing your private musings to the world. (And even if you are, the editing can be put off until later!)
If you’re really pushed for time but you have thoughts you want to capture, jot them down in bullet point form so you can explore them fully later.
Use time blocking
If you’d like to spend more than the odd five minutes here and there writing in your journal, you may find time blocking can help. This means scheduling a specific time each day or week to journal. This could be first thing in the morning, before bed, or during your lunch break, any time you can find a quiet space where you can focus on your writing without distractions. Try experimenting with different times and locations to see what works best for you. Mark it off as an appointment as if you had a meeting. You do – but it’s with yourself. Try setting a time limit for your session with a kitchen timer, pick up your pen, and just write until the timer goes off. You’ll probably find you’re amazed at how much you write when you have only one focus on your journal and you’re not thinking of the hundred and one other things you have to do.
Remember, journaling is for you. It’s a tool for you to use and not an obligation to beat yourself up over. Give yourself grace if you don’t touch your journal for a while and you’ll come back to it like an old friend you meant to keep in touch with. Once you make contact it will be like you’ve never been away, and you can pick up where you left off.
