My dad recently plopped a box of my old childhood things on my doorstep. It was filled with old newspaper clippings of my soccer game reports, letters from my pen pals, and a stack of detailed daily diaries. Paging through these melodramatic journals was painfully cringe-worthy.
Given my history as a prolific journaler, it may be unsurprising that one of the most impactful pieces of advice I’ve given to team members is that they should start a work diary. It may sound like such a silly, pre-teen, scrapbooky idea for a manager to suggest, but I’ve seen it work quickly and effectively in reducing anxiety, leaving work at work, and improving professional-life EQ.
A work diary is a private log where you track the events or conversations at work that stoked the most emotions for you. To help you detangle facts from assumptions, words from intentions, enemy from…someone simply bad at communicating.
If you regularly find yourself overthinking every unimportant interaction, or not knowing for sure which interactions were even important or not, and it’s taking what little energy you have away from actually focusing on the job—try out a work journal.
Not sure where to start? At the end of your work day, write out three separate sections:
- What actually happened—just the facts, as truthful as if you were recording them for court.
- What emotions you felt about those events—leave assumptions about other people’s motives or feelings out of it; this is just about your own reactions.
- What assumptions you’re making—for example, your guess as to how someone else is interpreting you or the situation.
This practice will likely lead you to ask yourself things like:
- Are my emotions proportional to the events that took place? Am I upset over something minor, or am I shrugging off something traumatic?
- What did I previously think was a fact but is actually an assumption? What can I do to debunk or confirm my assumptions?
- Am I showing up as my best self? What would need to change to make that true?
- And finally, is there a pattern in what I’m journaling about over time?
Now, no one needs a real-life Harriet the Spy. So, record your journal entries in a smart place, not on your work computer’s file system or a notebook you leave hanging around the office. The point of the journal isn’t to call out your coworkers and have it enter the public domain, but to help you be a better and less anxious coworker yourself by evolving your EQ at work.
Finally, if this practices helps you, but you feel like you need something more comprehensive, I’ll put in a not-so-subtle shoutout to therapy. Perhaps the best thing I've done for my career is go to therapy.
