Do you remember those fascinating old adventure movies you used to watch when you were a kid? Remember how captains and pirates kept journals about their adventures in them? Now confess, you tried to start writing a diary at least once. But you’ve stopped.

It’s a shame that you stopped because keeping a diary can bring a lot of positives into your life.

1. Journaling leads to better decision making

How many times have you caught yourself on the idea that you should have thought better? Our guess would be more than once. The reason it keeps happening to us is because we never stop to weigh the pros and cons.

Journaling helps you disconnect from stress and analyze the situation in slow motion-leading to better decision making. While writing, you tend to organize your thoughts in a more structured way, so that the reader – in this case, the future you – can understand you better. You structure the events according to the timeline, priority, impact and so on. You create an opportunity to view the situation from another angle without involving too many emotions that often distort your view on things in stressful situations.

2. Journaling improves your relationships

We are often driven by emotions. Something we sometimes say in the spur of the moment or anger often leads to many regrets.

Your diary can be your psychologist, who will listen and understand how you feel about things. This is when you will naturally cool down and clear your mind enough to see the other points of view and ultimately compromise.

3. Journal writing helps you stay focused

Our lives are made of goals. Grand and not so much. A route to a goal is a plan. However, sticking to this plan is not always easy. we often get distracted by something else.

Journaling helps you stay focused on your goals. A journal gives you a wonderful possibility to look back and track your progress towards your desired outcomes.

4. Journaling helps you be more productive

Juggling several tasks at once sounds familiar? You are not alone. Oftentimes our bosses tend to fill our days with enough tasks that will never let us get bored. Often it gets overwhelming, and keeping up becomes hard.

When you write a journal, you can dig deep into the meaning of your daily tasks and chores. This is when they become easier to understand and prioritize your load. Writing helps establish the cause and effect connections in your mind, from where it is easier to divide your load into little boxes and decide when to open each one of them.

5. Journal writing helps you preserve memories

“Sometimes you will never know the value of something until it becomes a memory.”

― Dr. Seuss

As we advance further in life, we tend to leave more and more things behind. We also often take many things and people around us for granted. Often we lose someone or something. This is how life is.

With a journal, you can always take a little journey back in time to the earlier you. How you looked, how you felt and how you thought. The memories of the days long gone will keep you warm when you are older.

So what are you waiting for?

You don’t have to be a professional writer to start journaling. You have everything you have for it. You can do it the classical way with pen and paper, or you can do it digitally, it’s your call.

You don’t have to spend too much time of your day on writing a diary. During the day you can snap photos and record sound and video of something that happened or your that day. You can write down your feeling of the day or you can just say “Hi” to your future self.

There are no rules, just stick to it. It’s a great way to spend time and get to know yourself better.