How a Journal Habit will Improve Your Leadership Now
2024-01-04 Invite Champions Weekly
WHY YOU NEED TO (RE)START A JOURNAL HABIT IN 2024
“Writing is trapping thought on paper.” - Tim Ferriss
The purpose of this weekly note is to help you think and lead as a champion.
Thinking well is perhaps the most critical skill to leading people. And writing is an excellent way—perhaps the best way—we think.
So as we kick off the new year together, I want to encourage you to write. Specifically, to journal. Let commit to one another to capture our thoughts well this year.
Consider: Our thoughts matter—a lot. People take action based on what we think. They rise to higher levels, a la Pygmalion Effect1, or they can quit in a huff—all based on the quality of our thought life.
So we need to take thinking seriously.
To be clear, not every thought is good. Writer Julia Cameron writes that much of what tumbles around our mind are “muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations]”.2 So how are we supposed to discern the useful and actionable thoughts from the incidental or even the incidineray ones?
This is why journaling is so important.
Journaling is a daily discipline that helps us gain clarity about the thoughts that matter.
Today’s Bottom Line: Journaling helps clarify and articulate my thoughts.
Why Journaling Works
I’ve discovered in my own life that journaling is quite revolutionary: I first began a regular journaling habit in April 2011, at the age of forty. I was going through a real night of the soul. I’d gotten lost in the woods and I turned to journaling to get back on the path. I’ve basically continued the process ever since, with a few gaps here and there.
What I discovered, and why journaling works, is that I thought as I wrote, not before.
Many people bring a bad assumption to writing, whether it’s private journaling or writing to publish, for example to fulfill a contract, that they’re somehow supposed to have the finished idea in mind first, and then commit to the purely tactical exercise of writing it down. That has not been my experience.
Sure, I’ve had moments when the thought preceded the act of writing. But as I began the discipline of journaling, I discovered the much more common result was that the act of writing produced thoughts that I would have otherwise never captured.
Have you ever looked back at your own writing and thought, wow, that’s pretty good? Then you too have had this experience.
In other words, the act of writing is the same as the act of thinking itself.
Journaling is going to the gym of the mind. It is working out the discipline of your own ideas.
Traps to Avoid
Now, a warning: You can also get sideways in your journaling.
If you journal simply to meet a goal, you’re missing the point.
If you journal to put down paragraphs you can later publish, you’re missing the point.
If you even journal to discover actionable ideas you can later monetize or weaponize or routinize, you’re missing the point.
Each of these is a by-product, not the raison d’être. I know because at various points, I’ve let the by-products derail the process.
But I eventually come back to it fresh, because in its simplest essence, writing is the best and purest way to think.
Best Techniques
I prefer to write long hand. Studies have shown that writing something out on paper is a better mental exercise than using a digital device.
I’ve tried various tools, but go back to a trusty bound journal. Moleskines have been popular for years, but you can buy an Amazon Basics version for cheaper, or make your own system like Beth Moore does.
I commit to a single page a day minimum, with room to grow as the Spirit strikes—which is why I like an open book.
You may enjoy other features, too: What is your favorite way to use a journal?
Thanks for your feedback. We may create an Invite journal in the future specifically to respond to this need.
Today's Takeaway: Journaling is a critical part of a strong thought life. To think and lead like a champion, (re) start your journal habit this year.
Championing Invite
Meanwhile, I said I’d spend January finishing up the marketing series. I will post them straight to Substack in the next few weeks as separate entries and link them here. My goal in 2024 with this weekly note is to bring you value on ideas to help you better execute your mission: how to find good ideas, how to develop them, and how to spread them. As I like to say about Invite, we are biased toward innovation.
2024 is going to be an exciting year for Invite Resources. We are glad you are along for the ride with us!
For more on the Pygmalion Effect, watch for the forthcoming book from Edlen Cowley, coming from Invite Press summer 2024.
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (New York, 1986), page viii, as cited in Tim Ferriss, Tools for Titans.