The Benefits of Maintaining a Career Journal
Whether you’ve embarked on a job search, considering a career change, or you’re content with where you’re working, creating and maintaining a career journal is easy and beneficial.
It’s a fundamental tool for successful career management. Proactive career management and an active career journal go hand-in-hand when plotting your course to your next opportunity. It serves as the single repository for all the names, accomplishments, goals, introspections, new ideas, to-dos, and any other lists that you maintain that are the moving parts of your career.
You can keep a journal on anything; from an electronic file on your laptop to a spiral notebook. It allows you to record your research, design your plans, and chart your progress to the goals you set. A journal is the place to evaluate your strengths and skills and document your accomplishments. Here new ideas take on a life of their own rather than trailing off into the ether when we don’t write them down. We have all had those moments of inspiration and insight where ideas have formed in absolute clarity but lost for lack of paper and pen.
The Value Of A Hand Written Career Journal
According to the Center for Journal Therapy, journaling has several benefits:
Writing by hand, can make learning easier. Picking up new skills? Researching a topic? The process of writing, even doodling, stimulates your brain and helps to form connections when learning something new.
Writing by hand improves memory. According to the center, digital note-takers tend to transcribe meetings and lectures, but writing by hand is more effective in assimilating information.
Journaling by hand maximizes the benefit of the journaling process. Unlike a digital device, a journal you write in is an instant-on tool. It’s a more “personal and relatable experience.” You don’t have to wait for a device to fire up – open your career journal anywhere and jot down your thoughts.
Writing can have benefits similar to meditation. Need to focus sharply on a problem? Looking to define and clarify your next set of goals? The act of journaling allows you to be in the moment.
Journaling can unleash your creative side. Writing on a screen can be transient and more cumbersome if you hit your stride in brainstorming. Write, scribble, doodle at speed, and later review those ideas.
Whether you prefer the convenience of an electronic tool that allows connection to the powers of the internet or the intimacy and focus offered by a page and pen, the important thing is to make it a habit to write thoughts down.
Different Types Of Lists You Should Consider
Your career has many moving parts and the journal can help you keep track of them. Here are some to include when you start a career journal:
Lists that are based on self – assessment including:
The strengths, skills and competencies, especially those that allowed you to achieve your most significant accomplishments.
The qualities, elements, and characteristics that you value most in people and in a corporate culture.
Those elements, characteristics and qualities that you do not want to have as part of the work that you want to do.
Think about and describe the work that you do well and then describe the ideal position for you in the greatest detail possible.
Create a “Bright and shiny object list,” including career options you may consider, ideas for new ways of doing things, anything that seems to be a good idea at the time, and can be held for future consideration. The key is to save the thought for future review and prevent distraction from your current objectives
Produce a list of several job descriptions whose content resonates with you and can help you describe the work you want to do. This is helpful for identifying keys words to include in your resume, LinkedIn profile, networking brief, and branding statement.
Write down a target list of companies - this will evolve as you research these organizations.
Compose a list of people who should be in your Linked In network but are not. See your collection of business cards for ideas.
Jot down goals that you have for yourself for the next 12 months or more with specific objectives and timeline. Think in terms of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Time-Bound) Goals
Review your journal regularly, especially your goals, to see your progress, consider opportunities to take advantage of and obstacles to overcome and pitfalls to avoid.
Most importantly, make a habit of writing in your journal the more frequently you do, the more indispensable it will become.