Habit #1 – Daily Journal And a Bonus

Paper has more patience than people.

– Anne Frank

Today marks the end of my successful Habit #1 challenge. This month’s habit was to journal every single morning and I did it and I loved the experience. More on the experience and outcomes below.

Actually, I started a new habit on December 7th (before I decided to do this 12 habit challenge), which is to log my food intake in MyFitnessPal. And when I started January with a new habit, I figured I will tag along my food journal habit as well. So here I am technically with 2 new habits in one month!

What do I journal?

The journal has a monthly, weekly and a daily planner page for three months. My focus for January was to use the daily planner page. I did use monthly and weekly but not to the extent I would like yet.

Below are the prompts for the daily planner:

1. Daily Habit Tracking
2. Three things I am grateful for
3. 3 things I am excited about
4. Focus textbox
5. Exercise textbox
6. Today’s priorities
7. Schedule
8. Tasks list
9. End of day review – 3 wins, One thing I will improve for next week

I filled out #2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9 on a consistent basis. I used #7 to jot down my notes, thoughts, lessons learned, book recommendations I came across etc. I used my monthly planner to track my daily habit, so I can easily see if I followed the habit of the month on a consistent basis.

What was the outcome of journaling daily for 30 days?

To my surprise, there were quite a few:

• I am more grateful. I make it a deliberate practice to think about three grateful things that happened the prior day. There were very bad days where I felt terrible, but I was still able to find at least one or two things to be grateful about.
• I became more disciplined. I would look forward to waking up from the bed, come to my office room and journal immediately.
• I increased my self-confidence.
• I became more productive. Even though I didn’t achieve all my “Today’s priorities” consistently, when I had time and wondered what to do, I know exactly where to look and find the right task. I started being more proactive than reactive
• I know where to go when I am looking for what my next book to read is.
• I look at my “daily wins” during the times I feel down.

If there is one thing I have to say for someone who wants to start journaling but haven’t yet, what is it?

Start somewhere. Even if means starting with one thing you were grateful for that day or previous day (depending on when you journal), that will make a tremendous difference. And most likely, if you consistently do it for some time, that would inspire you to journal more.

I am a much more energetic person than before, yes, with just one new habit. I can’t wait to see what it would look like at the end of the year with 12+ new habits.

Cheers,

Sirisha