Maybe I’m stuck in my own social media bubble, but it feels like there’s been a huge resurgence in journaling as a hobby within the last few years. Everywhere I look, I see people using journaling as a way to set and track goals, capture life’s memories, and even collect the random scraps and stickers they come across in a day (lovingly known as junk journaling). Well it’s almost the end of the year, and there’s no time like the present to try out a new hobby for the upcoming new year.
But can journaling be used as a tool to improve the work that we do? In an effort to find a definitive answer to this question, I’ve been experimenting with journaling for work over the past few months. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far:
Why bother with a journal for work?
- To set a boundary with work. When something frustrating happens at work, how often does it become a two-hour long vent session with your partner or work bestie? Writing down your thoughts and emotions at the end of a work day can help you process them individually while also making sure that work isn’t living rent-free in your head.
- To continuously improve workflows. Do you ever feel like work is either super busy or super quiet, with no in-between? As someone who has a hand in planning a lot of recurring long-term projects, I feel this in my bones. Having a physical record of project timelines can be a helpful tool when that project cycle rolls back around.
- To keep the essentials all in one safe place. Whether physical or digital, your work journal is something personal to just you. That means your notes are safe from accidental deletion, rewording, prying eyes, revoked access, and yes, even FERPA.
- To track your productivity. I’ve seen some people with irregular schedules use their journal to track the hours they work, but that doesn’t serve much of a purpose for those of us with a 9-5 job. Instead, you could use a work journal to track and analyze which hours in the day you feel the most productive, which can help you reorganize the flow of your workday.
What do you actually put in a work journal?
- Weekly productivity timelines: I draw a graph of days of the week and hours of the work day, filling in the hours I am most productive with a highlighter.
- Habit tracker: This is another graph of days of the month/week and the daily habits I want to practice at work, such as taking a walk during my lunch break.
- Meeting notes
- Meeting schedule: I fill this in after the week is over and use it as a reference. Even though I have a digital calendar, I like having my meetings and the notes for those meetings in the same place.
- To do lists
- Workday summary: This can be especially helpful when you update your resume. You’ll have a physical record of your day-to-day responsibilities.
- Inspirational quotes
- Thoughts and feelings about work
What have been my main takeaways so far?
- Work journaling has helped me focus more on the positives in my personal life. Before starting a work journal, I would use up entire pages in my personal journal just to talk about work. Now that work notes have a separate place, my personal journal has become a place where I can focus on the joy of life outside of work.
- Work journaling is a great memory tool! Sometimes when I’m at work, I think about all the to-dos I have at home. Although it’s not strictly work related, I found that writing down these miscellaneous tasks in my work journal helped me remember to actually do them when I got home.
- It’s okay to be messy! When I started this experiment, I wanted my work journal to be as aesthetic as the journals I saw on Pinterest and Instagram. Over time, I learned that striving for perfection was actually holding me back from using my journal to the fullest. I would hesitate to write at all, worrying that my handwriting might come out too messy or that the charts I drew would have wobbly lines. At the end of the day, a journal is meant to be written in, so aesthetics are secondary.
- Start simple, avoid the stationery rabbithole. In the last section of this post I make some product recommendations, but the world of stationery is incredibly vast and innovative. You will find hundreds of products you didn’t know existed and pens that come in a thousand different colors and tip sizes. I don’t want to admit how many times “just browsing” has turned into a $100 shopping cart, so just take my word for it and start small.
- It’s nice having everything in one place. This is probably my biggest takeaway. In the past I’ve wasted so much time looking for digital documents and cross referencing them, so it’s been refreshing to have all that information in one place.
Feeling convinced, or at least a bit curious? If you want to start work journaling yourself, here are some tools and products I recommend:
- Start with what’s free. I’m always struggling to be a thoughtful consumer, so before you take the plunge, experiment with what you can find for free. For me, this meant finding some free online templates and using a different one each week until I could identify what I did and didn’t like in a planner.
- The Hobonichi Weeks. This is the journal that I have been using and will continue to use in 2025. I like that this journal has a weekly view, a monthly view, and lots of notes pages in the back. Hobonichi is a Japanese brand with a huge array of products, but they are a bit pricey for a journal ($35+), especially if you’re not sure you’ll use it for a full year.
- Any dot grid or grid notebook. You can find these at craft stores for a few dollars. These are completely blank so you have the opportunity to customize them exactly how you like, but designing your layout may take some time.
- Etsy templates. These are usually pretty cheap and have a lot of variety. The nice thing about Etsy templates is that you are buying something that can be used physically or digitally.
- Notion. Notion is a free website that has a lot of ability to be customized. There are free and paid templates, and the website has a built-in AI tool if you need help designing your own template.
- A waterproof pen. If you are going physical, make sure you have a pen that has waterproof ink! Your notes may be safe from coworkers, but coffee spills are a different story.
- A stencil. If you like the idea of drawing charts to track habits or productivity,or if you’re opting for a completely blank journal, you may want a stencil to help you quickly and effortlessly draw straight lines, pie charts, and more. I own the Tsuki Bullet Journal Stencil set from Notebook Therapy, but there are so many more affordable options out there.
If you are still reading, thank you for joining me on this wild ride of a blog post. It’s always a pleasure when I get to incorporate a personal passion into my work. If this post inspired you to start a work journal (or any kind of journal), I hope you find it a valuable exercise.
