The value of keeping a journal

Journals aren’t just for writing down your secret thoughts or the details of your life. They can also serve as a record of change – in your attitudes, in your life, in your progress toward a goal. It’s not just about feelings. Let’s say you decide you want to save up a $10,000 emergency fund. You start journaling your steps: putting money into a savings account, having to dip into the money because the car broke down, putting more money back in, realizing there’s a better interest rate elsewhere and moving your money to it, cutting out or reducing a monthly bill, etc. When you later review what you did, you’ll see what worked and what didn’t work, and get ideas how to save up your next $10,000 more quickly and/or painlessly. You might get so good at it that you eventually get rich.

You’ve probably heard the saying “Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” Human beings tend to have the same “bright ideas” over and over again, without realizing we’ve already tried them before (and they failed). We repeat mistakes because we forget.

That’s what’s really valuable about keeping a journal and reviewing it from time to time. It’s useful for emotional development (chronicling, for example, your feelings about an unhealthy relationship you’ve gotten into), for learning a new trade (tracking which sales pitches work, as you find yourself trying new things on the fly) and for reaching personal goals (the savings example).

How to keep a journal

There’s nothing wrong with pen and paper. In fact, I believe handwriting actually stimulates parts of my brain that typing doesn’t. But you may prefer an electronic journal for several reasons:

You can password protect it. If fear of someone else finding your journal inhibits you from writing what you really want to write, you can feel secure hiding it behind a password. There are online services for this, downloadable software, or you can just use a word processor (most have a password function available).
You can keep it on a flash drive so it’s always handy.
If you want feedback from others journalers, try LiveJournal* or one of the many similar free websites that allow you to post articles and get comments from “friends” who share your interests. (You can also password protect an entire LiveJournal so that no one but you can see it.)
A word processor journal will be searchable, allowing you to find a topic of interest without remembering what day you wrote about it. (Watch out: most downloadable journals are also searchable, but LiveJournal and others are very hard to search, but do have a “tagging” system for classification and a “memory” section where you can stick memorable posts.)

*Edited to add: I just discovered WordPress.com has a privacy option, making it another good choice for journaling. You can easily open as many free blogs as you want (all under the same login, which is so convenient). It’s extremely user-friendly, especially for novices, and has commenting features if you want to journal publicly.

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