The Benefits Of A Work Journal

The classic to-do list can be useful tool to facilitate productivity, but it’s not without shortcomings.

For instance, assignments on your list may involve a series of interconnected tasks, or require multiple steps that you can’t easily describe in list format. Sometimes in the midst of carrying out one duty, you’ll identify other issues that require attention, but which you don’t necessarily have time for right now. Instead of crossing out items on your to-do list, you may find yourself modifying and even extending it as the hours march on.

For these reasons, you may find it useful to keep a work journal, to either supplement or substitute for your to-do list.

Self-awareness

By simply taking the time to write down your goals, lessons, and experiences you draw from each day, and any feelings or thoughts you have about them, you afford yourself a chance to troubleshoot, and engage your self-awareness and critical thinking skills.

Have you been avoiding, procrastinating over, or struggling with a task? If so, your difficulties may owe to an emotional obstacle, such as the fear of failure, an unwillingness to check your ego and ask for help, or confusion over the next steps in the process. Journalling forces you to put these barriers to success into words.

Paper or digital?

Of course, this is a matter of personal preference. A digital version offers the advantages of searchability and easy modifiability. A paper (book) version helps to reduce your daily screen time, and you won’t risk losing your journal entries due to a computer malfunction or virus.

Regardless of the medium you choose for your journal, organization is key: each entry should be clearly dated and easily retrievable. You may also benefit from headlining each entry with two or three main themes, for purposes of future reference. For example, “Order confirmation for Mrs. Jafari; keyboard shortcuts”.

Honesty and confidentiality

Like a personal diary, your work journal should be a safe forum for you to express thoughts and concerns related to your job, including the state of interpersonal relationships at the workplace. For this reason, confidentiality is important.

If you believe there’s a risk that another person will discover your journal, and that this discovery may affect your relationships with colleagues or superiors, you’ll censor yourself. The more extensively you engage in self-censorship, the less meaningful your journalling will be to you, especially as the passage of time places distance between your present state of mind and the content of older entries.

Learning from experience

By writing down observations about your own performance, new information you encounter, and lessons you learn from day to day, you’ll stand a better chance of recalling those items when you need them. For example, if an IT technologist at the office shows you a nifty trick for accessing files on a database more quickly, your journal is a great place to record the steps involved. Journalling can also help you learn from your mistakes by noting both the specific details of an error, and the reason(s) why it occurred.

Consider making two daily entries.

A morning entry allows you to envision the day ahead, and draw up your game plan. A second, follow-up entry in the evening allows you to handicap your performance and hold yourself accountable.

Did you accomplish all of the goals you had set for that day? If not, why not? Did you exceed your own expectations? If so, what were the keys to your success?

Emotional Intelligence: Another Kind of Smart

In addition to integrity and resoluteness in decision-making, great leaders often possess an intangible knack for mobilizing people of disparate backgrounds, personalities, and values toward common goals—maximizing the potential of the team.

How do they do it?

Over the past three decades, researchers have identified emotional intelligence as a crucial component of professional success, self-actualization, and exemplary leadership.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, sometimes abbreviated as EI or EQ, is a term that first appeared in the 1980s, and came into popular usage after a 1990 essay by social psychologists Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. EI encompasses motivation, emotional self-management, and the capacity to ascertain and appropriately respond to the feelings of others.

In business, EI has numerous practical applications: for example, knowing how and when to ask for a raise; expressing one’s own thoughts, feelings, and ambitions in a tactful and effective manner; soliciting and evaluating input from colleagues; managing stress, both personal and environmental; boosting morale; and avoiding procrastination.

People with higher EI scores tend to have a competitive edge

Studies indicate that, on average, individuals with higher EI scores enjoy higher salaries, and in some areas, can even outperform rivals with higher intelligence quotients (IQs) than themselves.

Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman has noted that people with higher EI are also perceived differently by those with whom they interact. Prospective clients and partners prefer to do business with professionals they like and trust, and subjective likability and trustworthiness both correlate to EI.

It’s possible to both measure and modify EI

A quick internet search will yield a series of EI tests, ranging in length and complexity. A simple one can be found here. Your results should give you a rough idea of where your own strengths and weaknesses lie.

Although EI is partly a function of innate features like personality and genetics, many experts agree that EI can be more readily modified than IQ.

How to improve your EI

One key component of EI is emotional self-awareness: the ability to identify one’s own feelings, the physical reaction that attends them, and the precise reason for that sentiment.

You may find that it helps to keep an emotional journal. Write down the thoughts that occur to you and the physical sensations you associate with particular emotions. Note that certain emotional states tend to trigger the same physical response consistently; for example, stress often leads to shallow breathing, tense muscles, and an elevated heart rate.

By recognizing and addressing these physical symptoms (through breathing exercises, for instance), you will increase your chances of managing intense emotions and their impact on you.

A few other tips:

•   Daily meditation can help immensely in dealing with anxiety, anger, and negative thoughts, and empower you with mental techniques for dealing with them.

•   Listen: Give others your undivided attention, allow them to finish what they’re saying, and leave time for them to think and respond to your statements. Pay particular attention to body language. Ask clarifying questions—your goal should be to attain as complete an understanding of your interlocutor’s ideas and point of view as possible.

•   Figure out exactly what you want, then decide how best to articulate it, and why it is important to you. Know how to ask for something: “I’d like...please.”

•   Empathize: How would you feel if you were in someone else’s position? Reflect on instances in which you felt you behaved empathically, and others in which you believe you could have done better.

•   However, don’t ruminate excessively over your past shortcomings—after all, the past is beyond your control. Acknowledge your errors, try to make amends to the people you feel you’ve wronged, and commit to avoiding similar mistakes in the future.

•   Respect and openness: Encourage others to share their thoughts and concerns. Emphasize that open, honest, respectful dialogue is an important component of the professional atmosphere you hope to cultivate.

•   Stop procrastinating. If you find a task difficult, unpleasant, or time-consuming, break it up into smaller parts. Create a to-do list, and remove unnecessary distractions from your work space. Try the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes of work, interspersed with short breaks of about five minutes. If you’re the type who thrives on time pressure, but would prefer to finish a project well in advance, impose (in writing) a deadline on yourself, and stick to it.

Nearly everyone would benefit from better EI, especially those with leadership aspirations. Put some effort into improving your EI, and the results may pleasantly surprise you.