If you do a quick search for ‘creative journals’, you are likely to be inundated with some of the most incredibly curated, pinterest worthy, scrapbook/collage/art project looking notebooks I’ve ever seen in my life. Frankly, I find them intimidating! I wouldn’t have a clue where to start with creating one of those pages and I find the thought of committing to creating one of them on a regular basis induces heart palpitations.
Luckily for me then, journaling for creativity can come in many forms. Yes, it can be wonderfully compiled art splash pages, but it can also involve creative thinking, seeking inspiration, writing without fear of judgement, or making for the sake of making, without worrying that you’re going to have to present your work on Instagram at a later date.
The truth is, there is no wrong way to go about creative journaling. There are as many forms of creative journals as there are forms of self-expression, so hopefully this post will provide some inspiration for how you can get started today.
The power of journaling for creativity
Journaling is a powerful tool that encourages us to analyse our thoughts, behaviours, actions and emotions. Through journaling, we can develop a personal philosophy that covers our values and beliefs, and use these to measure ourselves against. Are we being the best version of ourselves that we want to be? Where is the room for improvement? What do we want to do more of, or less of?
Developing and maintaining a journaling habit can have many great benefits such as:
- Improved physical and mental health
- Better organisation
- Improved communication
- More effective goal setting and tracking
- More clarity of thought and purpose
- Increased self awareness
But beyond all these points, journaling can also be an extremely effective tool for those looking to enhance their creativity. It can be an excellent space to compile creative thoughts and ideas, to explore self expression without any worry that you’re going to be judged and to examine your ideas and styles in private.
You might be thinking to yourself, “I’m not creative at all”. Or that you could never create something like the Instagram journals that are filled with hand-drawn images and calligraphy, but creative journaling is available to anyone, and isn’t limited to any gender or personality type. If you want to express yourself or explore your creativity, you can do it within the pages of a journal.
Why men should start journaling
I truly believe most people could benefit in some way, but the fact is that more women are likely to keep a journal than men, and I think that’s a shame, because journaling offers a lot of benefits to men.
Perhaps it is the reflective, introspective nature of journaling that doesn’t appeal to the ‘traditional’ masculine. It might be that there’s still an element of ‘boys shouldn’t be emotional’, that makes a lot of men uncomfortable at the thought of writing down their thoughts and feelings. But we already know just how dangerous this suppressive instinct can be for men.
Beyond that though, I would say that journaling isn’t a passive activity. Journaling is an exercise and your journal is a tool. A good journaling habit can be a highly practical activity, that is akin to going to the gym or working on your car. It is meant to be challenging and to ask a lot of you, but that is how we improve.
We all face the challenges of additional stress and high expectations, uncertainty around what the future holds, pressure to achieve success in our careers whilst also working on an athlete level body, to maintain friendships and relationships, whilst also being a workaholic, not to mention the still extraordinary levels of emotional suppression amongst men. We’re stressed and burnt out and anxious, and still feel a sense of shame for even considering talking about it. How can we expect to enjoy creative pursuits on top of all this?
Journaling can provide a structured way for us to process thoughts and emotions in a constructive, practical manner. For many men, having this non-judgemental space in which they can express how they are feeling and identify and work through the significant stressors in their lives, can lead to better mental clarity and therefore more creativity. It basically allows you to free up capacity in your mind to have those creative thoughts and ideas.
And creativity can come in many forms, not just artistic. By giving ourselves more room to think and be creative, we can become better problem solvers as we work our way through creative solutions in our journal. We can become more innovative, as we give ourselves permission to explore thoughts and ideas. We can curate and generate a wealth of inspiration and wisdom that we can draw from at any time to help us feel more creative in our day-to-day lives.
The science of journaling and creativity
It’s not just the numerous general benefits that journaling can offer, but actually, specific forms of writing can boost creativity and our ability to express creative ideas. There is research to show:
Journaling can help you process difficult emotions, reduce stress and anxiety and improve your mood, and creative people have been shown to be more creative when they are happier (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2022.2122371#abstract)
An American study discovered that free writing promotes creativity. According to research published in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,” people who participate in free writing are more capable of coming up with innovative ideas than those who don’t. https://www.bolton.ac.uk/blogs/psychological-benefits-of-creative-writing
Habitual reading and writing have a positive relationship with creative thinking, especially the ability of elaboration https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871187111000447
“Brain-dumping” is a technique where you literally get the information that’s in your head onto a page (or in a digital format), and offers numerous benefits for mental clarity and better creative insights. As David Allen outlines in his ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology, keeping too much information in your head can actually make you less focussed, less productive and ultimately less creative.
How journaling can enhance creativity
So now we know why we should journal and the benefits it can have on our creativity, what are some of the actual, practical techniques we can apply to our journaling habit that will help us lead more creative and creatively fulfilled lives?
Mind unblocking
Create space for more creative thinking by getting things off your mind. Simply open your journal and get your thoughts on paper. Use your journal to write to-do lists, important dates, things to remember and any other ‘life admin’ bits. This should create room for you to have more creative ideas.
Pattern recognition
Build up your journal entries for a little while, before going back and reviewing them. Look for patterns or trends in your thoughts, actions, attitudes or behaviours. Let them inform new, creative solutions to situations. A hallmark of creativity is being able to spot similarities and connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and so it stands to reason that the more ideas and thoughts you have documented, the more opportunities you have to spot new innovations.
Creative flow
The “flow state” is an idea coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe the psychological state where people are fully immersed in difficult, worthwhile work and achieving optimal performance. Journaling can be a way to lead into this flow state and get there faster. By using your journal as a space to ‘warm-up’, you can quickly get into the flow of writing, drawing or even just thinking, helping you reach that creative state faster.
Defeat writer’s block
If you’re feeling uninspired or uncreative, using your journal to write down your frustrations, fears and concerns can help to highlight and remove some of those ‘mental roadblocks’ that are getting in your way. Even if you just create a list of bad ideas, this can help you mentally to get them out of the way and start finding good ideas. Your journal is your space to do what you need to do, without fear of judgement, so fill it with all the bad ideas you need until you find the good ones.
Silence the inner critic
Sometimes the most difficult obstacle in the way of our creativity is the one we put in front of ourselves. That little, inner editor who says that your ideas aren’t original enough, or that no-one will want to read your novel, or that your style is derivative. This can be the voice that stops us before we ever get started. But your journal can help you overcome this voice. You can try addressing the voice directly – listening to and addressing each critical point with reasons why you should create anyway. You could write about what inspires you and let that inspiration silence the inner critic. You could even just create in earnest, safe in the knowledge that you’re the only person who will see inside your journal, and when that little critic goes silent, you can move from your journal to your true medium. Writing that book, making that mark on a canvas or presenting your business changing idea to your boss… whatever form your creativity takes.
Test and nurture ideas
Fledgling ideas and innovations can be vulnerable until they’ve had time to fully develop. Your journal gives you a place to work on, test, review and develop ideas. You can poke holes and find faults that allow you to firm up the idea before anyone has the chance to criticise, meaning your ideas are more well-rounded and more likely to stand up to interrogation by the time you are ready to present them to the world. More than that, your journal can be a place for the ideas that you might otherwise just dismiss out of hand. Rather than simply forgetting about them, jot them down. They might lead to nothing or you might come back to them and find they are better than you initially thought, or they might inspire a whole different idea or innovation.
Create a well of ideas to draw from
When you’re feeling uninspired or uncreative, going back through your journal can give you a creative boost. Looking back at your collected thoughts and ideas, quotes and sayings that you’ve collected, images, doodles or cuttings you’ve curated can set your mind working, help you find new connections and get your creative juices flowing once again.
Slow down and reflect
It’s hard to be creative when our minds are going a hundred miles an hour with the everyday stresses of life. With a journal, you are able to get things off your mind, slow down the modern life thought process and find valuable time to reflect on where you are, where you are going and how you are feeling. All this can free up capacity and make it much easier to think creatively and be innovative.
Types of journaling to boost creativity
There are many different types of journaling and they all have different benefits. The best journaling practice will likely end up as a slight amalgamation of lots of different styles, but if you’re just getting started with journaling and want to boost creativity, you might want to explore the following styles:
Stream of consciousness
Stream of consciousness journaling is a form of free writing where you write whatever comes to mind, as it comes to mind. You might set a page goal, or a time limit, but the idea is to keep writing until you reach that goal.
This is a useful form of journaling when you’re trying to boost creativity because it trains your brain to get into a zone of non-critical creativity, and helps you get a whole slew of thoughts and ideas out on to paper before you set your brain to a dedicated task, which can help put you in a creative frame of mind, effectively jump-starting your creativity.
Gratitude journaling
Gratitude journaling is the process of writing at least one thing a day that you feel grateful for. It forces you to seek positivity and seek things that make you feel gratitude. This perspective shift can lead to new ways of thinking and new, creative ideas.
Prompts for creativity
Journaling prompts can help to spark new ideas and force us to ask questions about ourselves that we might not normally ask, which can lead us to find new answers and find new, innovative ideas. Finding high quality prompts that are dedicated to prompting creativity can really aid in sparking innovation.
Dream journaling
Although it may sound a bit strange, making and keeping a record of your dreams can be a way to unlock subconscious creativity and find ideas and thoughts that may not come to you in such an uninhibited way during waking hours. It can definitely provide an interesting perspective that can spark creative ideas.
5 ideas
Similar to free writing, the ‘five ideas’ style of journaling encourages you to try and write uninhibited. With the five ideas journal, you’re trying to actively encourage creative thinking and problem solving, and develop the speed with which you can generate ideas. The idea is simple, you have to come up with five ideas before you can stop writing. They can be good or bad, practical or total flights of fancy, but you have to have five of them. If you can commit to this exercise, you will often surprise yourself with the connections your brain makes and the creative ideas that you can spark.
Practical tips for starting a journaling habit
Starting and maintaining any new habit can be an extremely difficult thing to do, but there are so many benefits to journaling that it can really be worth sticking with it. It can be a rewarding, life-long exercise that perpetually boosts creativity and helps you unlock new and innovative ideas. To help create a habit that will last a lifetime, here are a few tips:
Start small
Don’t overcommit to an unsustainable habit. Writing one page a day, or one sentence a day, or even just one word a day is fine if that is what it takes to keep you going. You may have days where you can write pages and pages, and you may have other days where you can barely write at all. Don’t punish yourself by committing to a set word or page count.
Keep your journal somewhere it’s always available
Make it easy to maintain your journaling habit by always having your journal to hand – that way, you are able to write whenever the mood takes you or inspiration strikes. If you don’t want to carry a physical journal around with you, you can always keep a digital version. I find that having my journal available is great for when I want to capture an idea or write down an inspiring thought or quote but I also like to set a dedicated time to write, so that even if ‘inspiration’ doesn’t strike, I know I’m still going to commit to some writing. Find what works best for you.
Focus on flow
As difficult as it can be, try not to be too self-critical or to self censor when writing in your journal. You aren’t writing for an audience, this isn’t creativity you’re expected to share at any point. This is somewhere you can be authentic and uninhibited so don’t worry about perfection or fully formed, we’ll fleshed out ideas. Explore, question and iterate for as long as you need and allow yourself to get into a state of unimpeded creativity
Mix journaling styles
There are a whole load of ‘ways to journal’ and none of them is more or less right than any of the others, and the best way to find a style that suits you is to try them. Don’t be afraid to pick up, drop, adapt or invent journaling styles. Write lists, make sketches, create habit trackers, make bullet points, collage… whatever it might be. You can use prompts, or free write, or create an introspective diary or any combination of the lot. Over time, you will develop a journal style that is creative and uniquely your own, and easier to maintain for it.
Men who journal for creativity
If you decide to start and maintain a creative journaling habit, you are in good company. There are many examples of men, throughout history, who have used journaling as a tool to boost creativity and aid innovative thinking. Examples include:
Leonardo da Vinci
Da Vinci reportedly filled somewhere in the region of 7000 pages of notebooks. He would sketch, capture ideas, write questions and observations. He used his notebook pages to actively foster a continual spirit of creativity, making him one of the most prolific and highly regarded creative thinkers of all time.
Tim Ferriss
Author of ‘The 4-hour work week’, Tim Ferriss has openly spoken about his journaling habits and the way he uses ‘morning pages’ (another form of free writing) to clear his mind, get himself unstuck and foster creative thought. If you haven’t read Tim’s books or listened to his podcast, they are also exceptional and can benefit anyone looking to find the time for more creativity. Tim also produces an excellent newsletter, 5 Bullet Friday, which is a weekly dose of creative inspiration. I’m extremely picky about only subscribing to newsletters that add value to my life, and Tim’s is one of the best. Tim is one of those people who leaves a breadcrumb trail of inspiration behind him, something I’ve written about being a calling card of great men when asking, is it okay for men to journal?
Bruce Springsteen
The Boss is a prolific and exceptionally talented songwriter with an ability to capture the raw emotion of life and a seemingly endless well of creativity from which to draw, but even he admits that you have to foster that creativity;
“It’s like a garden. You seed it with experience and time. And then you wait. And you don’t know how long you’re going to have to wait. Unfortunately, creativity does not work like the seasons do. If I knew I was going to get a batch of songs every winter, I’d be a lot happier every summer. But you seed it and eventually something—there’s an incident of an event or something in life sort of sets it off and they come.”
Regular journaling, and capturing those experiences, can help you to seed your own garden.
Journaling prompts for creativity
If you’re looking to get creative but you’re unsure where to start, the following prompts could be a good guide:
- If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you try next?
- When and where do you feel most creative?
- Pick an everyday object and brainstorm ways it could be reinvented. How could it be made more functional, artistic, or innovative?
- Who do you admire for their creativity? What qualities or habits of theirs would you like to adopt in your own practice?
- Set a 15 minute timer and allow your mind to wander, writing down any thoughts or observations that come to you within the time. At the end of the 15 minutes, read through what you have written and ask yourself how you could apply this spontaneous thinking to a creative pursuit
- If you had unlimited resources (time, money, connections), what creative project would you pursue? What steps could you take to work toward it, even with your current limitations?
- What did you love to create or explore as a child? How can you tap into that same sense of curiosity and wonder in your current creative work?
- Sketch or describe your ideal life as a creative person. What projects are you working on? How do you spend your time, and how do you bring your ideas to life?
- Choose a creative person who inspires you. Write in their voice. Ask yourself, what would they create? Then come back and apply your own thinking to those ideas.
- Pick a nearby, mundane object and write 5 new uses for that object. The more outlandish, the better.
Make journaling a lifelong habit for growth
Journaling is a habit that can lead to a multitude of benefits, but when it comes to creativity in particular, journaling can:
- Provide mental clarity, clarity of thought and purpose
- Help identify patterns and new connections between our thoughts
- Help get us into the ‘flow state’ faster
- Allow us to test and nurture ideas
- Allow us to create uninhibited, without fear of judgement
- Let us capture observations and thoughts that can inspire creative thinking at a later date
If you are thinking about trying journaling for creativity, whether you want to be a better writer or artist, or you want to foster a more creative, innovative mindset, I would recommend that you take some of the techniques from this blog and apply them to a journaling habit that you commit to for at least a month. See how it goes, and actively ask yourself if you feel more creative,
I’d love to hear in the comments below how you journal for creativity and what the benefits have been for you.
Happy journaling.