We live in a time when we are always searching for a better tool to achieve our goals. It might be an app, a gadget, software, or any one of the hundreds of things we have to choose from. We want to get things done with ease. Sometimes, it’s about speed, but usually, it is about making things just a bit easier.
This is especially the case when you are a solopreneur. After all, it’s just you – a staff of one. And all of the hats that need to be worn in a business are still right there, hanging on the rack, just waiting for you to put the next one on.
What we don’t usually look for is something else to do. We want to find things that make what we’re already doing easier. But I’m going to invite you to shift that thinking for a moment.
What if you added something to your routine that made everything else easier? That gives it a different consideration, I think. When I’m looking at my work through a strategist’s lens, my questions are these:
- What can I start?
- What can I end?
- What can I expand?
- What can I compact?
But before I can ask those questions and put the answers to work, I need to ask this question first:
- What impact am I creating?
- What impact do I want to create?
Another way to think about it is by asking what it is that you and your business are here to make possible. Before you can answer any questions on strategy, you have to know what the strategy is meant to serve.
Enter the business journal. You may already keep a personal journal. Many have gratitude journals and personal reflection journals. Those are mainstays for me as well. But I’ve also found that my business benefits when I keep a journal specific to my work.
Exploring the Benefits of a Business Journal
Keeping a business journal offers numerous benefits, both motivational and practical, for any entrepreneur aiming to succeed in the competitive world of business. One of the most straightforward benefits is that a business journal serves as an inspirational and motivational tool. It fuels the inner drive needed to pursue your goals relentlessly and avoid the pitfalls of endless “trial and error” phases.
Ongoing Benefits of Keeping a Business Journal
Creating your Vision: A business journal gives you a place to envision the potential growth and success of your enterprise. This vision can become a source of strength, helping to accelerate your efforts toward achieving your business goals.
Reflecting on Examples of Success: Your business journal entries about other businesses can also be incredibly inspiring. Reflecting on the risks they took and the qualities you admire in them can prompt immediate, actionable changes in your own business approach.
Setting and Revisiting Goals: It’s an excellent tool for setting both short-term and long-term goals. Regularly revisiting these goals allows you to stay aligned with your current realities and future aspirations.
Enhancing Decision-Making: Journaling helps clarify thoughts and streamline decision-making processes. Writing down options and potential outcomes can simplify complex decisions.
Tracking Progress and Growth: A business journal allows you to document your milestones and growth over time. This not only motivates but also provides a valuable historical record for future planning and reflection.
Problem-Solving: Often, the solution to today’s problems can be found in yesterday’s reflections. A business journal can serve as a critical problem-solving tool, allowing you to preemptively think through potential challenges and devise solutions.
Stress Relief: Running a business is inherently stressful. Journaling provides a way to vent frustrations, worries, and challenges, thus clearing your mind and improving your focus on essential tasks.
Development Tool: By recording free-flowing ideas, you create a platform to brainstorm, design, and develop new concepts. This could include innovative products and services needed to propel your business forward.
Improving Communication Skills: Regular writing enhances your ability to articulate thoughts clearly and concisely, which can improve both verbal and written communications with partners, team members, and customers.
Enhancing Learning: Journaling about daily experiences and decisions helps you reflect on what works and what doesn’t, turning everyday activities into valuable learning opportunities.
Capturing Inspirational Moments: Inspiration can strike at unexpected moments. Keeping a journal on hand allows you to capture these sparks of creativity, which can be developed into new projects or strategies later.
A business journal is not just a record. It is a powerful tool that supports growth, fosters innovation, and solidifies your path to success. Whether it’s leveraging past insights, planning future strategies, or simply finding solace during turbulent times, a business journal is an indispensable asset for any entrepreneur.
However, the core value will not be about what you write. It will be in what you discover and the actions that come from those discoveries.
Whenever you write in your business journal, include what you’ve discovered and also reflect on how you will implement and leverage what you’ve learned, not unlike how we create value from reading books written by others.
Let’s go back to our initial questions.
From your journaling, you’ve determined what you want your business to make possible for you and those you serve.
Now, it’s time to create the action plan, and your journal will help you define it.
- What can I start?
You only need to discover the first step as the rest will follow, but if you need a more defined picture, initially allow yourself no more than 3 – 5 steps.
- What can I end?
You may need resources for this work, and that might mean reallocating some of them from where they are today. What resources can you move that would allow you to have complete focus?
- What can I expand?
What are you already doing? Not everything requires that you start from a blank sheet of paper for your business plan. What are you already doing that you can expand?
- What can I connect?
Where can you bundle things to make them more efficient? We’ve all heard of habit stacking, and that’s part of this, but it’s also about goal pairing. What goals can you pair together to serve each other?
If you would like to receive more proven insights for your business and life as an entrepreneur, join our Possibility Seekers community!
By joining now, you will be able to take advantage of an early release on our upcoming course, which is about the power of journaling for your business, your finances, your health, and much more.
Don’t miss out on connecting with peers who share your vision and drive to seek out every possibility for making a difference.
