The Benefits of Journaling for Female Entrepreneurs

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Jan 22

Written By Viveka von Rosen

Older female business women writing in their journals.

Being a woman in business - and a female entrepreneur - is not easy. There's just so much to deal with all the time. The idea of doing one more additional thing is overwhelming. That being said, I am going to ask you to do one more thing. Every single day. Whether it's for 5 minutes or 50, I'm going to ask you to commit! What is that single thing I'm going to ask you to do? Start a practice of journaling! The benefits of journaling for entrepreneurs far outweigh the time investment.

As an entrepreneur, you know the business world is a balancing act. You've got to keep ALL the plates spinning, and sometimes that means putting in 20-hour days. (I actually think this is a VERY bad idea - but more on that in a different blog post!)

Your time is already spoken for - so how can you add one more thing? I get it, I do. It's hard enough finding time to walk the freaking dog! (sorry Cal!)

Calloway patiently waiting for his walk while I journal.

But here's the thing - adding journaling to your day actually helps with work-life balance and may help to keep you organized and sane.

The benefits of journaling for entrepreneurs - especially women - stretch far beyond simply keeping track of ideas—it's a practice that fosters clear thinking and innovative solutions.

Just Start Journaling

The practice of journaling, whether it's in an online platform or a physical journal, can actually begin to feel exhilarating. There are a ton of benefits:

The act of journaling, by expressing your thoughts, frustrations, fears, and irritations, can help clear your mind of any negative thoughts that may be lingering.
The practice of writing down your Gratitudes may drastically improve your mood.
The setting of goals - and the acknowledgement of tasks and goals you have accomplished - can help you feel more capable.
The identification of the good in your life helps you to uncover treasures hidden in your subconscious.
You can track ideas - not worrying that they will be forgotten 3 minutes later. (Hello, 55 yr old brain!)
Reflecting on your thoughts nurtures personal growth and can ignite a spark of unparalleled creativity.

Jotting down thoughts does more than just combat writer's block; it's about turning those flashes of insight into actionable strategies.

As you progress through your journey as an aspiring entrepreneur, journaling becomes a valuable tool and a trusted companion in your decision-making process.

The Transformative Power of Journaling for Female Business Owners

Journaling is not just a way to document the day's events; it's a powerful tool in an entrepreneur's toolkit. I should know, I started journaling when I was 11 and a tortured pre-teen. Hormones withstanding, that journal helped me to discover who I was and wanted to be.

My first book sprang forth from my daily journal pages.
My first business manifested in my journal.
I expect I am still married because of my journal.
The "downloads" for my meditations come through my journal.

I journal every day - and almost all my intuitive business direction actualizes first in my journal's pages.

The journaling process has the power to influence your entrepreneurial journey by sparking new ideas and providing guidance when building something significant.

Right Brain Journaling: Organizing Thoughts for Clarity and Direction

Starting a legacy business is like embarking on a treasure hunt where each entry in your journal serves as a map. When thoughts are jumbled like puzzle pieces, writing them down helps piece together the big picture.

According to Forbes, a recent study suggests that regularly jotting down thoughts improves cognitive function—essentially making you sharper at tackling those tough business challenges, and more able to achieve them. By laying out plans and potential outcomes on paper, entrepreneurs engage in proactive problem-solving rather than reactive scrambling.

Whether you use an online mind-map, a paper journal, or scraps of foolscap, there is no doubt that journaling helps mental clarity and function.

Journaling and Setting Goals

Setting structured goals on a quarterly, weekly, and daily basis, possibly using a journaling app, a journal specifically designed for this (like mine!) or even an old notebook you might have lying around is crucial for several reasons:

Provides Direction: Clearly defined goals guide your daily actions, ensuring every task contributes to your larger vision and business growth. This process turns entrepreneurs into decision-making champs, making tough business decisions with clarity and value judgement.
Enhances Focus: Setting and reviewing goals regularly helps you stay focused on what's important, avoiding distractions and making it easier to find efficient solutions.
Boosts Motivation: Achieving smaller milestones provides a sense of progress, which increases motivation and drives further action, a bonus tip for maintaining enthusiasm.

Now it's time to break it down - you want to make sure that, somewhere in your journal, you have your 90 day, weekly and daily goals written down.

Quarterly Goals:

Lay out 90-day objectives to envision substantial periods of growth. This duration is optimal for setting significant milestones and strategic pivots in your business, ensuring you're not just journaling long but acting strategically.

Weekly Goals:

Strategically organize tasks while staying open to new opportunities:

Primary Goals and Tasks: Start each week by aligning activities with your larger objectives. This approach ensures consistent progress and keeps you on track with your business growth. By clearly defining what needs to be accomplished, you're effectively setting the stage for a productive week.
Surprise Opportunities: Maintain a section for unexpected tasks or opportunities that arise. This isn't just about staying flexible; it's about adapting quickly and turning potential surprises into advantageous outcomes. Keeping your creative juices flowing, these opportunities can lead to brainstorming constructive solutions.
Weekly Financial Tracking: An essential aspect of any business is financial oversight. Keep a diligent record of your income and expenses, both expected and unexpected. This continuous monitoring helps maintain financial awareness and control, crucial for making informed business decisions and value judgements.

Daily Goals:

Focusing on your daily achievements:

Push Back Task: Each day, prioritize and tackle your most challenging task first. This not only sets a productive tone but also ensures you're making the most of your energy when it's at its peak.
Daily Schedule/Goals: Detail your daily tasks and how they align with your broader goals. By integrating this into your routine, you make every day count towards your overarching ambitions, acting as decision-making champs in your entrepeneurial and personal journey.
Revenue Building Activities: Identify and focus on tasks that directly contribute to your financial growth. These activities are the fuel for your business's engine, driving it forward towards success and profitability.
Wellness Tracking: Incorporate a holistic view of success by tracking your food, exercise, journal, and meditation scores. Balancing these elements is key to maintaining the stamina and clarity needed for effective entrepreneurs.
Daily Financial Tracking: Like its weekly counterpart, daily financial tracking helps you stay on top of your business's monetary movements, fostering a habit of financial mindfulness and ensuring you're always aware of where you stand.
Reflections: End each day by reflecting on your successes, improvements, and what you're grateful for. This practice doesn't just keep your gratitude juices flowing; it ensures a mindset geared towards continuous improvement and appreciation, crucial for successful entrepreneurs facing a hard time or celebrating victories.

In integrating these weekly and daily goals into your entrepreneurial practice, you cultivate a proactive, organized, and reflective approach to business and personal growth. This structured yet flexible system ensures you're prepared for both the expected and unexpected, turning every task and opportunity into a stepping stone towards your vision of success. These habits are what make the journey of entrepreneurship not just manageable but truly rewarding.

Tracking Your 'Good': Acknowledging Growth and Prosperity

In addition to structured goal setting, tracking the good in your life—both monetary and non-monetary—is vital for several reasons:

Fosters Positivity: Regularly noting down positive events and abundance shifts focus from lack to plenty, cultivating an attitude of gratitude and getting the ideas flowing.
Encourages Reflection: Tracking helps you to reflect on and appreciate the progress made, not just in business but in personal growth and well-being. This reflection can be a turning point for those having a hard time, turning ideas into useful solutions.
Builds Momentum: Recognizing small wins and blessings builds momentum and confidence, encouraging you to push forward even when faced with challenges. This is often what separates successful entrepreneurs from the rest – their ability to see a million small victories where others don't.

In essence, integrating structured goals with the practice of recognizing abundance and expressing gratitude creates a balanced and effective approach to not only managing your entrepreneurial and business journey but thriving within it. It's about steering your business with intention, brainstorming effective solutions, and celebrating the journey as much as the destination. This comprehensive strategy ensures that your ideas help forge the path to success, keeping your entrepreneurial spirit and business growth robust.

Reflective Journaling as a Catalyst for Growth

To foster both personal and professional growth, engaging in the simple yet profound practice of journaling can be incredibly transformative. Journaling helps us gain wisdom by reflecting on our journey, acknowledging achievements, and learning from mistakes. This simple journaling practice of writing down thoughts, feelings, and experiences serves as a mirror reflecting our true selves, helping us to understand and appreciate our complex identities beyond just the roles of "business owner" or "entrepreneurial pioneer."

Journals are a powerful tool for reflection, providing a private space to explore ideas, face challenges, and express visions that might otherwise not be shared. This practice encourages a mindfulness that is crucial for long-term success and well-being. Regularly documenting and reflecting on our experiences helps us become more self-aware, leading to better decision-making and problem-solving in business.

Moreover, there's compelling evidence suggesting that reflective practices are linked to higher performance levels. This correlation exists because reflection contributes to a greater sense of happiness and contentment. Happiness isn't just a fleeting emotion; it's a state of being that significantly contributes to resilience. This emotional resilience becomes especially vital amid the adversities and uncertainties inherent in entrepreneurial paths.

Happy individuals are more likely to approach challenges with a positive outlook, adapt to changing circumstances, and recover quickly from setbacks—all essential qualities for thriving in the dynamic world of entrepreneurship.

Left Brain Journaling: Unleashing Creativity with Freewriting Exercises

Equal (and perhaps even more important) to right brain tasks is using the left brain in stream of consciousness or "freewriting".

I love free writing. I was first introduced to it as "morning pages" in Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way."

Stream of consciousness journaling can be a "writing exercise call" to the deeper parts of oneself. It's a powerful and liberating exercise involving continuously writing, allowing thoughts to flow freely as a form of "conversation starters" with your subconscious.

This unfiltered expression of thoughts and feelings is more than a mere exercise; it's a pathway to clarity and creativity. By engaging in this free-form writing, you often "brainstorm effective solutions" to problems that have been lingering in the back of your mind.

The very act of letting ideas help without censorship encourages a deeper exploration of potential and creativity.

As a daily practice, it is important to commit to understanding and exploring the layers of your mind, which can lead to personal growth and important insights.This stream-of-consciousness writing allows ideas hiding beneath layers of structured thought processes to emerge. It's one of the ways journaling allows you to dip down into your subconscious and uncover the gems lying in wait!

Jotting daily notes has been shown:

To break mental barriers limiting innovative thinking,
Prompt unexpected solutions bubbling up spontaneously,
Enable entrepreneurs to consistently operate at their peak creativity despite busy schedules and frequent task switching throughout the day.

Word of Warning: Treat your journal like a sacred vessel. It's a space where unfiltered thoughts and the most unconventional ideas help catalyze personal growth and understanding. Always keep your journal private because it's where you allow yourself the freedom to explore and release all thoughts - those brilliantly clear and the seemingly crazy - as they all contribute to your personal and professional development.

Scheduling Your Journaling Time

You HAVE to make time to journal. Uninterrupted time. It might mean getting up earlier and hiding in the bathroom (or car) away from your family's demands on you. If you only have a spouse (or a pet), then explain to them why this writing time is so important to you and ask them to please respect this time you are setting aside for yourself and your journaling practice.

I can't promise your spouse or cat will always respect your request for solitude. But you have to ask, otherwise they 100% will not. (I'm talking to YOU Alan and Calloway!!!)

Key Takeaway:
Journaling is a game-changer for entrepreneurs, helping to organize thoughts and spark creativity. It's like having a secret weapon that sharpens your mind, boosts problem-solving skills, and reflects on past lessons for growth.
Freewriting breaks through mental blocks and brings out the best ideas—ones you didn't even know you had. Make sure to carve out time in your busy schedule; it'll help keep your goals realistic yet ambitious.

Embracing the Physicality of Pen and Paper

There's something undeniably grounding about putting pen to paper. For entrepreneurs over 50 looking to create their legacy business, journaling practice offers more than just a nod to tradition—it taps into deeper processing that screen-based alternatives struggle to match.

The Sensory Experience of Traditional Journaling

In an age where digital devices are omnipresent, writing on paper is a conscious choice for tactile engagement. Feeling the nib scratch the surface and the ink soaking into the fiber can enhance your creativity in a way that tapping on glass cannot. IMHO.

A physical journal acts as a silent partner in your entrepreneurial journey. It doesn't bombard you with notifications or tempt you with endless tabs; it exists solely for your thoughts and ideas. Maintaining this level of focus is essential when trying to balance personal reflections and professional plans. It's like searching for clarity among the distractions of daily life.

The impact isn't purely anecdotal either; this Science Daily article suggests writing by hand allows our brains time for deeper processing of information which could be crucial during brainstorming meetings or while fleshing out business ideas. And let’s face it, sometimes we all need those extra moments free from pings and pop-ups when trying to track progress or schedule time for goal setting.

Finding Your Ideal Time to Journal

There is no "perfect" time. Follow your own internal clock. I love my morning pages à la Julia Cameron. My husband, a lover of Atomic Habits, is an evening journaler like Tim Ferriss. You must find the time that works for you! It's a creative process. So, if you are a morning person, carve out the time in the morning. If you do your best work in the late hours of the night, then choose that time for your journaling journey.

It may feel overwhelming at first to make more time in our busy schedules, but starting with small changes can make a big difference. There is no perfect set amount of time. Even five minutes at the beginning or end of the day can make a huge difference.

Finding the "Right" Journal

You don’t need fancy writing tools or an expensive leather-bound journal; start simple. A blank notebook can serve equally well whether capturing stream-of-consciousness musings pre-coffee or detailed action steps at the end of the day. You don't need a table of contents or beautiful pictures in your journal (although I happen to like those features). You just need a surface where you can spend time writing.

Whatever you decide to use as a personal or business journal is not as important as discovering a personal system for tracking progress that works for you.

Whether it's through high-tech journal apps or old-school notebooks, the key lies in consistent reflection. By implementing a structured approach to gathering thoughts, you can effectively safeguard them from being lost amidst the chaos of everyday life, ensuring they are readily accessible when you require them the most.

Research emphasizes this approach, demonstrating how taking notes by hand significantly improves memory retention and comprehension compared to using laptops — a valuable skill not only for developing creative solutions but also for effectively navigating business challenges alone.

Key Takeaway:
Journaling with pen and paper offers a tactile experience that enhances creativity for entrepreneurs over 50, giving them focus without digital distractions. It supports deeper brain processing, ideal for developing legacy businesses and setting goals.
Whether you're an early bird or a night owl, journaling can fit into your routine to offer fresh perspectives after reviews or meetings. Starting simple is key—no need for fancy tools; just grab a notebook and go.

Harnessing Journaling for Stress Relief and Immune Health

Harnessing journaling for stress relief and immune health is rooted in its ability to offer a safe, private space to express emotions and thoughts. This practice goes beyond merely recounting the day's events; it serves as a therapeutic outlet for releasing pent-up stress and anxiety, which, if left unaddressed, can detrimentally impact one's physical health.

Reducing Stress: Getting it out!

When individuals engage in regular journaling, they initiate a process of self-dialogue and reflection. This process helps in identifying and understanding stressors, thereby reducing their impact.

Writing about difficult experiences or emotions can greatly reduce stress because it helps release emotions, leading to a sense of calm and clarity. This reduction in stress directly benefits the immune system, as chronic stress is known to suppress immune function and make the body more susceptible to infections.

Sleep Better?

Journaling can lead to improved sleep patterns, another crucial factor in maintaining health. Organizing thoughts and concerns during the day or right before bed can make it easier to fall asleep and have a restful night, helping the body repair and strengthen its natural defenses.

Conclusion

Journaling is more than a writing exercise; it's a strategic tool for female entrepreneurs, enhancing creativity, decision-making, and stress relief.

It's a practice that molds itself to fit your unique journey, offering a blend of structure and spontaneity, reflection and innovation, all while keeping you grounded and driven.

As you turn each page of your journal, you're not just documenting your journey; you're actively sculpting it. So, embrace the power of journaling and watch as it transforms not just your business, but your entire perspective on success and fulfillment.

FAQs

1. Why is journaling recommended for female entrepreneurs?

Journaling is recommended for female entrepreneurs because it helps in balancing the demands of business with personal growth. It aids in clarifying thoughts, fostering creativity, setting and tracking goals, and reducing stress, all of which contribute to better decision-making and business strategies.

2. How can journaling improve my work-life balance?

Journaling helps improve work-life balance by providing a structured way to reflect on your day, plan ahead, and release stress. It allows you to prioritize tasks, set personal and professional goals, and reflect on personal well-being, which together enhance overall balance.

3. What are the benefits of incorporating structured goal setting in my journal?

Incorporating structured goal setting in your journal helps provide clear direction, increases focus, and boosts motivation through the tracking of small victories. It transforms the journal from a space of reflection to an active tool for achieving both short-term tasks and long-term objectives.

4. How often should I engage in journaling as an entrepreneur?

The frequency of journaling can vary based on individual preference and schedule, but daily journaling, even if for a few minutes, is beneficial. It ensures consistency and allows for a regular check-in with yourself, your goals, and your business's progress.

5. What's the difference between right-brain and left-brain journaling?

Right-brain journaling focuses on creativity and free-flowing thoughts, often through methods like freewriting or stream of consciousness. Left-brain journaling is more structured and analytical, focusing on goal setting, problem-solving, and systematic reflection.

6. Can journaling help with stress and overall health?

Yes, journaling can significantly reduce stress and contribute to overall health by providing a therapeutic outlet for emotions and thoughts. Regular journaling has been linked to better sleep, improved mood, and stronger immune response due to its stress-reducing effects.

7. What should I include in my daily journal entries as an entrepreneur?

Daily journal entries can include a range of topics such as reflections on the day, lessons learned, achievements, challenges, gratitude, financial tracking, and specific tasks or goals. Tailor your journaling to fit your needs and support your entrepreneurial journey.

8. Is digital journaling as effective as traditional pen and paper?

Both digital journaling and traditional pen and paper have their benefits. Digital journaling offers convenience and accessibility, while traditional methods offer a tactile experience that some find more reflective. The effectiveness depends on your personal preference and how consistently you use the method.

9. How can I protect the privacy of my journal?

To protect the privacy of your journal, keep it in a safe place, use digital tools with strong passwords, or simply ensure that it's understood by those around you that your journal is a private document. If privacy is a significant concern, consider methods like password-protected digital journals.

10. What if I don't know what to write about in my journal?

If you're unsure what to write, start with simple prompts such as how you're feeling, one thing you learned today, or what you're grateful for. Over time, as you become more comfortable with journaling, the process will become more natural, and you'll find it easier to express your thoughts and ideas.