Benefits to Keeping a Work Journal

Summary: Keep a work journal to organize your thoughts from the day and track your progress to your big goals at work.

A work journal provides the opportunity to get ahead. When we have the big picture in mind, we can regularly reflect on our career. The way to do this is through looking at what we have accomplished, going above and beyond, and even checking in on our feelings of work. A journal is a way to keep all of this visible and easily accessible.

Now something to keep in mind is a journal is not a gushy secret filled diary. While it is perfectly fine to keep a private place for our thoughts, you shouldn’t be using it as a place to keep track of the workplace drama.

Reflect, focus and consider how the steps you take each day add up to your future goals. Keeping track of your accomplishments will help you ask for a promotion later down the road. You can also keep track of others accomplishments so that you can congratulate them.

Use your journal at work to answer these simple questions about how each day or week went:

• What is one lesson that I learned?
• What did I accomplish?
• Did I do anything that was above and beyond my job description?
• What can I do tomorrow to go above and beyond?
• Did I receive any compliments on my work? What did they say?

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