Ultimate 9 Reasons to Journal Weekly

Many people journal every day about their days: plans, wishes, gratitude, challenges, worries. Some handwrite and some capture in digital notes.

My suggestion here is to journal every week about the professional aspects: what you liked, what was challenging, conflicts, what increased your energy, where you should have been faster, new things you learned, new people you met, aspirations and plans.

The Benefits of the Weekly Journal

Documenting for yourself every week has several benefits:

A reflection that helps thinking: what you’re already good at and feel comfortable with, which skills to acquire, what you still find challenging, what type of work takes energy, new technical learnings, new non-technical things, what was interesting and why
It helps prepare for the 1:1 with the boss and direct reports
It expedites your learning as you go over it again and integrate better
Derive a career management document: a more concise document about your achievements and responsibilities. You won’t remember details and stories in a few months. This document makes it easier to write or refresh your resume, prepare for job interviews with achievements, talk about projects, changes you led, and growth – you’d only need to pick to most suitable ones
You can use this raw material to write a blog and share knowledge with others
It can help improve prioritization – compare time plan vs. spend, or what you perceive as your highest priorities vs. time invested in them
Improve writing skills
Improve verbal capabilities (stakeholders) by seeing where you succeeded and faced challenges
Prepare for performance reviews

Journal Format

Journaling less frequently than weekly might reduce effectiveness, as you won’t remember things, and this is the main advantage of the journal.

Besides handwriting, which integrates better in the brain according to research, you can record yourself and use AI to transform it into text, which is easily searchable.

Scheduling this on the calendar increases the likelihood of you taking the time.

Reflection Points

Things I accomplished (including my team)
Challenges I faces and how I behaved
Something to pay attention to next week
Things I learned (tech or not)
How energetic was I this week
What mistakes I made and how I reacted
What I regret
Places where communication played out well or not
What made me proud
What was eventually not important or urgent
How I contributed to relationships
How I made my colleagues better
How I took care of my physical and mental health
Which values of mine I lived
Which metrics moved
What I am thanking my previous self of 6 months ago

Yaniv Preiss