This article was written in order to bust many myths about diary writing: about the process being boring, useless, requiring skills and simply taking a huge mass of time. Let’s pass each of them separately.
It is not boring. Things here depend on preparations: the chosen topic, correct mood and environment. If you keep up to further tips, then diary writing will turn into a pleasant and involving process.
A diary is useful. When there are so many tasks around and you absolutely do not have time to think about yourself and your life, a diary is what allows bringing yourself back to “here and now”, to stop and to think a bit.
You don’t need any skills. If you do not think that you are a creative person, if you are unable to compose beautiful texts as writers do, it does not matter. The point is to write sincerely. With time, you’ll learn how to express your thoughts more precisely.
Diary writing takes 20-30 minutes daily. Of course, you can devote more or less time to that activity, but averagely half an hour is more than enough.
Now let’s speak more precisely about the usefulness of a diary and about writing it.
Diary Writing Usefulness
A habit to write down your thoughts regularly is valuable on its own. Moreover, it can give you additional advantages:
Physical Health Improvement
Regular diary writing practice can become a stress buffer for your everyday life. For instance, people write thanksgiving journals: they help them understand there are many good things in their life and stop insulting themselves about things they do not have for some reason.
Your self-esteem will increase if you write about your successes or fill pages with affirmations. Your mood will get improved if your goal is to describe something cute or funny. You can “live through” tough events in a safe environment on diary’s pages and analyze things that happened.
In regular life, you often have to say things others expect you to say, and to behave accordingly. You don’t have to do that in a diary; you can relax and be who you are.
Creative Thinking Development
You probably often heard about the fact that the best way to learn how to write is to do that regularly. Diary writing on purpose will teach you processing and shaping complicated ideas effectively.
A diary can help you remember important info and provide a brainstorm to look for new ideas. Writing about your experience is a good way to notice possibilities you could miss before for some reason.
The fact of diary writing itself helps starting a brainstorm. In life, you and many other people usually think out one or two ways and start acting. Having a diary, you get time to analyze any problem carefully and to find several dozens of creative solutions. Stop walking through the surface; get as deep into the topic as you can.
Conscious State of Mind
Regular diary writing can literally make you live through every minute of your life: you know you are going to write about it later.
If you put a goal to write about what you think and how you feel 4-5 times a day, the process will be very similar to a meditation. In return, you’ll get consciousness, and this means the ability to make your own decisions.
Mistake Processing
How many mistakes do you make during a regular day? Not many people ever think about that. As a rule, they notice one mistake, decide to correct it. Then they forget about the decision, and go on making the same mistake again and again. Shouldn’t you start getting rid of them?
Mistakes can be hidden in various fields: communicating, studying, job, business, etc. If you start dividing them into groups, then you’ll see which ones are the most often. And what is the most important, you’ll notice that there are certain reasons causing the biggest part of them to happen.
Personal Organization Improvement
Your brain is an excellent instrument, but it can lag or switch off periodically because of the influence of emotions. You’ll become more organized if you write your diary often through excluding negative feelings and having neutral view onto things.
You can write about your plans, think out possible ways, and organize conflict fields of your life. You can reveal habits that eat your time or deeds that do not let you put your schedule to order.
Memory Improvement
Memory improvement is one of the most important tasks every human has. It helps you find unexpected answers; it is closely connected to creative thinking and influences your ability to successfully go in for complicated projects directly.
Diary writing is going to make your memory more solid, as you have to remember about past day events.
“Processing” Life Events
If your life is full of various events but you do not have time to think them over, then you look like a person who takes various dishes form the table in order to taste them all. But you eat just because, not in order to get satisfaction.
Diary Writing Tips
Write it in the Morning
Yes, you can do that in the evening, but it is in the morning when your mind is fresh and not loaded with heavy problems yet. When you come back home from the university, it is easy to find an excuse in order not to do that. Like, you’ve got enough things to do without diary writing.
So, devote 20-30 minutes of your time to that process in advance. Do that on a daily basis.
Think What to Write About
There is a technique of freewriting, when you can write about anything appearing in your mind. It is useful, but you still can combine it with a certain topic.
If to think about that during just one hour, you can understand there is an endless amount of topics to describe in a diary. You won’t believe: you can write about whatever you want. About how you spent your day, about your goals, about meeting someone close to you, and many other things. But if a blank page is what kills your fantasy, think over the topic in advance.
Re-Read Your Diary
This practice brings unbelievable emotions: you’ll see mistakes you had made in your past and ones you go on making. That is an effective psychotherapy method; it allows looking on you and your own life from aside and getting a lot of interesting and useful information.
People always forget about many things, and diary reading helps them remind about events that once happened.
Be Frank
There is no point to write a diary if you are afraid of telling yourself the truth or worrying about someone to read it. Take all the safety measures and be as frank as possible. People often cheat themselves in everyday life, so tell about things as they are at least for 20 minutes of writing.
Use Every Free Minute
Remember that diary writing is not an obligation. But still keep it open and have a pen nearby. If you need to think about something, think on a paper.
To Conclude
So, as you can see, diaries really can be helpful for anyone. And if you use your one correctly, it is able to assist you in becoming a successful student and person.