Journaling is one of the most essential habits that you can adopt in your life.
It’s benefits include helping with gratitude, relationships, mental health and your productivity. The list goes on, that’s why so many people recommend it.
Why Is Journaling Important?
I’ll get onto why journaling is so beneficial in a separate article, but the main idea is that it is meditative and reflective. It allows you to focus on yourself and check in with how your day (and your life) is going.
Journaling lets your track your day, your time, your attention and efforts and make a more conscious decision as to how you’re spending your most valuable asset – your time.
If you want to look closer at how to be more productive check out all our articles on PRODUCTIVITY.
Journaling Prompts:
Ben Franklin’s Journaling Prompts
- What good shall I do this day?
- What good have I done this day?
Benjamin Franklin started journaling when he became an adult, and he started everyday with asking himself what good he could do in the day. By starting his day with this question he was able to prioritise and keep focused on what he wanted to do. By ending the day with the second question, he was able to check whether or not he’d reached his goals.
The ability to bookend your day and keep focused in the present, and what you’re able to do on one particular day, can be really beneficial. These questions can be taken in a productivity mindset, but also as a way of giving.
What good shall I do this day?
In the day you could ring family or an old friend and catch up with them, you could donate money to charity, you could buy a book for a friend or you could cook a dinner for a neighbour and take it over to them.
What good have I done this day?
Take some time to note down what you’ve done. If you’re working on a project try the following:
Language Learning
1st Jan. Learned 5 words
2nd Jan. Wrote 2 sentences
3rd Jan. Listened to some new songs
4th Jan. Nothing
5th Jan. Learned 10 words
The above is an oversimplified example, but I think it rings true that it keeps you focused on what you have done, it acts as a simple list that you can look back on for how you’ve been progressing. If you don’t feel you’re making any progress on that project – see where your efforts have gone (they’ll usually be telling.)
Conclusion
These journaling prompts are simple.
That’s why they work, you technically wouldn’t even need to journal them. You could simply sit down with your morning coffee and consider the questions and their answers.
So what good will you do with your day?
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