It can be hard to stay motivated on the days when you don’t feel like doing much. One way to ensure that you keep going when the going gets tough is by using a productivity journal.

A productivity journal is a journal that keeps track of how productive you are in a day, a week, a month, and so on. It takes a deeper look at your habits to help you see which ones work better for you and which ones don't. You can use it to keep track of your goals, record your successes, take note of your failures, and use the information you gather to improve.

Benefits of Keeping a Productivity Journal

Keeping a productivity journal is a powerful tool to organize your day and find ways to work smarter. Those who use their productivity journals will say that it is a practice they swear by.

If you aren't sure what a productivity journal can do for you, here are some of its many benefits. A productivity journal helps you:

• Gather and express your thoughts
• Define clear goals
• Express what you are feeling
• Take note of your goals
• Record your progress
• Reflect on past experiences

How Can You Use a Productivity Journal?

What should you put in a productivity journal? How do you start one?

There are many ways and formats for a productivity journal. The key is finding what works for you, but just to get you started, here are some ideas:

Use Your Productivity Journal to Keep Track of Your Goals

When you write down things, you end up recording what you wrote in two ways:

1. External storage - You store information in a tangible location (like a notebook) that’s easily accessible so you can review what you wrote whenever you need it.
2. Encoding - You go through a biological process where the things you perceive travel to your brain’s hippocampus and get analyzed. Some things get stored in your long-term memory, while others get discarded. Writing improves that encoding process, which helps you remember more what you wrote.

Numerous studies have shown that you will likely remember what you wrote down. And it doesn’t stop there—writing things down helps you focus on the important stuff, such as your goals. People who describe or picture their goals are more likely to achieve them.

How many goals should you set in a day? Well, that depends on you, but ideally, you should only set 1-3 major goals every day. If you have more than that, it can be overwhelming, and not being able to tick them off could discourage and demotivate you.

Use Your Productivity Journal to Make Lists

In his book, Essentialism, author Greg McKeown writes about the importance of making lists. With lists, you can zone in on what is important—what you should be saying yes to, what you should be focusing on. He recommends using lists to keep track of the things that matter the most so you can tell if you're using your energy to do what you like.

For example, you can list the things you need to do at the start of the day. And at the end of the day, you can list the things you were able to accomplish or experience and cross-check them with the list you wrote at the start of the day. Did they match? What did you decide to scrap? What did you do that wasn't part of the list?

You can also use the list format to say what you like or do not like or what worked or didn’t work to help you build better productivity habits.

Use Your Productivity Journal to Analyze Yourself

We’ve often talked about how journaling is key to self-reflection, which helps us become better people. After you’ve journaled for a while, you can start noticing patterns as you set your goals or the various things you include in your journal.

You can write down your thoughts on your productivity. Ask yourself the following questions:

• When are you most productive?
• How long do you take to finish a task?
• What keeps you focused?
• What distracts you, and how can you avoid it?
• What slows your productivity?
• What increases your productivity?
• Are you able to get enough sleep?
• Are you able to eat well?
• Is there something causing you stress? What is it, and how can you avoid it or get rid of it?
• How can you organize your things better?

When you set aside time for self-reflection and to analyze parts of your day, you’ll be able to find out what works and what doesn’t so you can adjust accordingly. For example, if you wake up full of excitement and inspiration and mornings are your most productive hours, you might want to consider doing the more challenging tasks first.

Similarly, if you find that being fully awake is a slow burn, you might want to ease yourself into doing your tasks by first doing smaller tasks before tackling bigger goals. Knowing your productive habits and applying them to your life can help you better manage your professional and personal life.

Use Your Productivity Journal to Express Yourself

We all have good days and bad days. What you might not be aware of is that when you have a bad day, it often leads to lowered concentration and productivity. When you’re going through negative thoughts and emotions, it’s best to let it all out rather than keep it inside. It’s therapeutic to have an outlet where you can express feelings of anger, sadness, and frustration. You can also write about what makes you happy and what gets you excited, inspired, or motivated.

Once you get all your pent-up emotions down, you’ll find that your head is clearer so you don’t have to take it out on the emails you compose or the colleagues or clients you come across. You’ll be able to better move on with your day when you leave all the negative emotions behind you.

Separately, if you don’t feel comfortable expressing your feelings on what you think should be a professional page, you can always get another notebook. If you want to keep your journal online to access it anywhere, websites like Wondr Journal allow you to create different notebooks. You can have a journal to take note of your productivity and then have a separate journal to store all stream-of-consciousness writings, including rants, raves, and everything else under the sun.

Use Your Productivity Journal to Note Thoughts, Ideas, and Lessons Learned

Found an inspirational quote that struck a chord deep in your soul? Note it in your productivity journal. If you suddenly come up with a thought or idea while working, or sipping your coffee, or taking a shower, make sure to note it in your productivity journal. That way, you can refer back to it when you need it in the future.

You can also use your productivity journal to keep track of the lessons you’ve learned, including what went well, what didn’t, what you could improve on in the future, and what you learned from the entire process.

Use Your Productivity Journal to Celebrate Your Wins

While you work hard to reach your goals, don’t forget to celebrate your wins. Taking note of what you did will inspire and motivate you to do an excellent job in everything you do. When you read your previous journal entries, you’ll be able to see your progress. Reading those old entries may boost your self-confidence and self-worth on hard days.

How to Get Started with Your Productive Journal

If you’ve never tried keeping a productivity journal and need some advice, here are some tips for you:

Be Consistent

If you want productivity journaling to work for you, you must work for it. That means showing up every time and being consistent in writing entries. Set aside a specific time during the day—for example, 15 minutes every morning—to write down key goals. You can also set aside time at night to reflect on learnings, or express yourself, or celebrate your win.

If you can, commit to a daily habit. If it takes some easing to get into it, start by doing it weekly or every other day until you get used to it.

Consistency, however, doesn’t mean perfectionism. If you get hung up too much on the details, on perfecting each word, you’ll never get anything done. Instead of over-analyzing small mistakes like spelling errors, choose to focus on what you can accomplish among your big goals. You can adjust your journaling along the way as you find out what works best for you.

Take Your Time

Journaling is never about getting there by using the fastest route. The goal isn’t to write down anything just to have something. The goal is to help yourself become more productive, and you’ll only do that if you’re patient with yourself and take the time to analyze yourself. Spend time thinking through what you’re writing, outlining your goals, and even thinking about what you’ve learned for the day. You’ll be able to understand yourself better and build better habits, which will help you become more productive.

Try Different Ways to Journal

There’s no one ultimate way to have a productivity journal. What might work well for others might not work well for you and vice versa.

Some will find that writing out lists helps them a lot. Others prefer their entries to be in paragraph form. Others will use different colored pens or even sketch illustrations where they need them.

You can try out different formats of productivity journaling until you find the one that works best for you.

Create your productivity journal on Wondr Journal today!

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