My personal journalling system

Cognitive journalling (CBT), intention and goal setting and gratitude.

Journalling is the most important habit I have developed. It’s has countless benefits but for me, I journal for two reasons:

1. Mindset shift: to live every day or week with the right mindset and intentions by unlearning unhealthy habits and thoughts

2. Long-term growth: to celebrate successes, reflect on challenges and take steps towards a more fulfilling life

It has not only helped me through the toughest times of my life but also helped me appreciate every little aspect of life. But it took many years (decades, actually) and iterations to create a journalling routine and system I actually stick to.

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An overview of my journalling system

Every month, I do a combination of the following journalling practices, which all have different objectives, structures and hence, outcomes:

• Monthly journalling (30 mins at the start of every month): to set new priorities and intentions and reflect on the last month

• Morning journalling (10 mins, as soon as I wake up): read through monthly intentions, gratitude and priorities for the day

• Evening journalling (10 mins, before bed): great things that happened that day, learnings, challenges and growth

• Cognitive journalling (ad-hoc, as needed): a form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that I use when I am experiencing high levels of anxiety or heightened emotions.

Before we get further, I want to emphasise that I do not do all of these all the time. Firstly, I am actually terrible with discipline and routine (yes, hard to believe given the type of content I write). Secondly, I don’t actually need to do all of this.

That’s because every single journal has a certain objective and structure that I follow to achieve a certain feeling or outcome. And sometimes, I just don’t need it. For example, my evening journalling routine has been incredibly effective when my brain is overloaded and I need to decompress to improve my sleep. Fortunately, I have been sleeping pretty well so I skipped most evening journalling sessions.

What a good month looks like lol (most of them are not like this)

Monthly journalling

While I sometimes slack off with my daily journalling, this is the one practice I have been consistently doing for the past 2 years. I highly encourage anyone interested in journalling to start off with something like this — it’s a low-friction way to get started.

Note: I chose the least personal month 😂

Objective 🎯
To reflect on how last month went and mentally prepare for the next month by setting intentions.

Structure 🙌

1. Reflection: I start off with a general reflection on how the last month went

2. Intention setting: when I do my intentions, I typically reflect on what happened last month and look at what the next month looks like for me to decide how I want to feel or behave. Some examples:

   1. If I know I’ll have a lot of deadlines at work, I might set intentions about having a healthy work-life balance and setting boundaries.

   2. If I feel like I have been overly anxious and the previous month was hectic, I set my intention to be able to be present.

3. Priority setting: deciding what the top 3-5 priorities are for the month — I always try to make the majority of these NOT work-related.

4. Key dates: any birthdays, celebrations or gigs that you may be seeing! I honestly just love having things to look forward to.

Morning journalling

If you have read my post on morning routines, you will know how important journalling in the morning is. When I first started this practice, I used my morning journal session to organise my work day. Doing this had a negative effect on my stress levels as work was the first thing I thought about.

Over time, I started to include gratitude, intentions and priorities outside of work. This enabled me shift my mentality from work being the top priority in my life and start my day with positivity, not stress.

Objective 🎯
To feel good and that get my shit together in the morning.

Structure 🙌

1. Gratitude: top 3 things you are grateful for right now. Believe me, thinking about one thing that you’re grateful for first thing in the morning is hard enough. But take a moment and you’ll realise you have plenty to be grateful for.

2. Top personal priority: outside of work, what do you want to get done? Ever since I put this over my work priority, I noticed that I subconsciously would put energy aside for things outside of work. For example, if I have a badminton training session that evening, it would be my top priority to be present and focus during training. This means that I would be more forgiving to myself if I didn’t get everything I needed to do at work, as long as I left enough energy to do that one thing.

3. Top work priority: although we’re probably very familiar with work priorities, I like to just have one work priority that I need to get done if all else fails. The reality is, we’ll never finish our to-do list and there are many things that happen outside of our control. This practice allows you to deprioritise everything else and still feel good if you make progress on that one thing.

4. Assess how you will demonstrate your monthly intentions: every morning, I look at my monthly intentions that I set (see above) and will think of ways that I will demonstrate that intention. Otherwise, these intentions are simply just words you put on a page every month. For example:

   1. If my intention is to be “present” then I will reflect on ways I can achieve that in the day. This might include being present in meetings and not having Slack notifications on OR not looking at my phone when having dinner with my family.

   2. If my intention is about “setting healthy boundaries between work and life” then I will demonstrate it by leaving at 5.30pm or NOT cancelling that fitness class to do more work (yep, I used to do that 😥).

Evening Journalling

Do you ever have vivd dreams about work? So vivid, you wake up feeling like you never slept at all? No? Just me? 🙃

My evening journalling practice started in response this very phenomenon. It emptied my brain and improved the quality of my sleep. Luckily, I’ve been sleeping well so I haven’t done this recently but I know it’s here when I have a lot on my mind

Objective 🎯
To end the day on a calmer and more positive note (amidst all of the stress and negativity) so that I can get some damn rest.

Structure 🙌

1. Reflect on three amazing things that happened: take a moment to celebrate the amazing things that happened, no matter how big or small.

2. What you’re proud of doing: identify something that was hard that you’re proud of doing. Without this prompt, I find myself focusing on things that went wrong without recognising my own personal progress.

3. Learning of the day: this could be something that you just randomly came across or you could reframe something that was challenging into a “learning”.

4. What else is on your mind: after a busy day, you might have a lot of things on your mind — this is the place to let it all go and declutter your brain. On the more challenging days, I might spend up to 30 minutes on this section alone.

Cognitive journalling

Cognitive journalling is essentially self-therapy between therapy (it doesn’t replace it!). Cognitive journalling is a way to perform “cognitive behavioural therapy” — one of the most effective ways to challenge unhelpful beliefs and thoughts that we have that drive strong negative emotions.

Example of cognitive journalling

Objective 🎯
Depends, but typically I am trying to understand certain feelings I am having and to challenge any thoughts (typically anxiety-related thoughts).

Structure 🙌
I could write a whole article about this alone, but instead, I will link you to a few amazing resources provided by qualified people that are already out there:

• Cognitive Journaling: A Systematic Method to Overcome Negative Beliefs. A good article on how cognitive journalling works and frameworks to approach it.

• Bloom app: CBT therapy and journal. This was an app I used during the pandemic that helped relieve anxiety. Super user friendly and easy way to get started.

A habit built over decades

I have tried to journal consistently for more than a decade. Journalling apps, templated journals, bullet journalling, pen and paper — I have tried them all. Only now, do I feel like I have a grasp of it.

So for those who are all interested in the practice but have not managed to do it consistently — I feel you. It’s hard.

Remember Notepad? One of the earliest forms of my journalling career.

The secret is to journalling is to consciously understand why you want to journal and the objectives you want from it. In my upcoming post, I will be sharing some tips and tricks to create a personal journalling routine you’ll actually stick to.

In the meantime, I’d love to know:

• Are there any questions about journalling that you want me to answer in my next post?

• If you already have a journalling routine, what does it look like and how often do you do it?

I am constantly evolving my own routine, so please do share any learnings or questions you might have. Until next time! 👋

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