Writing and keeping a journal is not just a vanity exercise or an artsy exercise for creatives. Throughout history, highly successful men have utilised journaling as a habit to promote personal growth, increase their leadership capabilities and creativity and develop emotional resilience.
In this article I’m going to be looking at examples of successful men from history who have utilised journaling to great effect, as well as what their journaling practices looked like, and what lessons modern men can take from this and integrate into their own journaling practice.
Why journaling matters for men
Before we look at examples of famous journalers, it’s worth exploring why journaling matters and what the benefits can be. Journaling is not a performative action, it’s supposed to be a method to question your deeply held beliefs and recurring thoughts and actions. It is a tool for self improvement and development that can lead to significant benefits when done in a consistent fashion.
Writing down our thoughts and emotions can help us to clarify them in our own heads. It might sound strange, when you think that they are your emotions and thoughts, you know how you feel, right? But sometimes it’s not that clear cut. We can have multiple, often contradictory thoughts and feelings in our heads at any given time and we can feel a number of ways about any one, certain topic.
Journaling allows us to explore those thoughts and feelings and better understand what is causing them and how conducive those thoughts are to being the person we want to be and achieving the things we want to achieve. Clarity of thought can lead to clarity of purpose, greater confidence and greater focus.
If you are able to keep and maintain a consistent journaling habit, it can also help to strengthen your self-discipline and focus in other areas of life. It’s not easy to set aside time to sit and write every day, especially when life gets in the way, but if you can show up and make the time, you prove to yourself that you have the willpower and determination to achieve the things you want. This can have a knock-on effect with other aspects of your life.
Not only that, but a journal can be the tool that keeps you disciplined and focused, using trackers and planners to help you set and achieve goals when other people might have given up or lost motivation.
A journal can help to enhance your creativity and innovation, by allowing you the space to explore ideas and the connections between ideas. Over time you will build a library of thoughts and ideas, and identify pain-points in your own life that might lead you to think of solutions for that pain-point.
Not only that, but journaling can both directly and indirectly make you a more creative person. Happier people are more creative. People who habitually engage in free writing are more likely to have a positive relationship with creative thinking. Getting things out of your head frees up space to be more focused, more productive and therefore more creative.
If you are looking to boost your creativity, in any aspect of life, journaling can be a hugely beneficial activity to drive that change.
Finally (although I believe there are many more benefits to journaling), keeping a consistent journaling habit can help build emotional resilience and leadership skills.
Writing about our emotions, thoughts and feelings helps us to better understand them, to come to terms with them, and to identify the triggers for them. This in turn can make us better at dealing with our emotions in a productive way, avoiding situations where emotions cause us to act in a way that does not align with our core values and beliefs, and better empathise with other people’s inner thoughts and emotions, making us more emotionally intelligent and better at understanding people’s motivations and the reasons behind their actions.
Famous men who journaled
If the multitude of benefits that journaling can offer hasn’t been enough to convince you, let’s have a look at some of the famous figures from history who can attribute a consistent journaling habit to their success.
Marcus Aurelius
Arguably one of the most famous journal writers of all time, Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations’ (a translated collection of journal entries) has stood the test of time as a powerful self reflection that continues to offer vital lessons to the modern age, and shows the power of journaling for determining personal philosophy and staying true to a course of action.
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher who, through a series of journal entries, delivered a masterclass of self-reflection and leadership. Through his self-exploration and introspection during periods of political upheaval, war, infidelity and overwhelming responsibility, we are given a powerful lesson in how journaling can help us define and stay true to our own virtues and moral convictions, even in the most trying of times.
Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-mastery and moral reflection.
Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance artist, scientist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most well known and accomplished figures in history. Da Vinci is notorious for his extensive collection of notebooks that he filled with sketches, ideas and observations. Looking from the outside in, it seems as though he was loath to let an idea slip from his grasp. His journaling habit is a powerful example of how journaling can foster creativity and enable us to connect multiple ideas.
Journaling can be a tool for capturing ideas, nurturing curiosity and fueling creativity.
Theodore Roosevelt
Former US President, naturalist and adventurer, Theodore Roosevelt overcame constant adversity and challenges that would have given any other person more than enough reason to give up. Instead, he turned these obstacles into reasons to constantly seek self-improvement and overcome any roadblock he came across. Roosevelt kept numerous personal diaries which chronicles his life events, emotions and philosophies. His writing gives us real insight into the power of introspection and writing for creating a stronger, more resilient version of ourselves.
Journaling can strengthen resilience and help us see challenges from new perspectives, despite life’s inevitable ups and downs.
Ernest Hemingway
Author and journalist Ernest Hemingway is known for his succinct, lyrical and direct style of writing, which was often highly influenced by his own experiences, and inextricably linked with his beliefs and values. He also frequently wrote brief, honest reflections on his experiences and emotions that were highly journal-like in nature. His openness and willingness to expose himself in the written word are inspiring to anyone and demonstrate how we can all benefit from self-awareness and self-discovery.
Journaling can help men connect with their emotions and find clarity of thought, and clarity of emotion through writing.
Benjamin Franklin
A founding father and prolific inventor and entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. He was an extraordinarily intelligent man who famously used structured journaling to define and track his personal virtues and daily progress. He had a list of thirteen life virtues, and would dedicate a month to writing about one virtue, keeping it at the front of his mind and considering the ways he was embodying that virtue or the ways he was falling short. After the month, he’d pick another virtue from his list and work on that, always rotating through the list of what was important to him, and using writing to help him consistently be the kind of man he wanted to be.
Journaling can help us define and implement our personal philosophies, as well as driving self-improvement and intentional living.
Bruce Lee
Famously disciplined martial artist, actor and philosopher, Bruce Lee, was as well known for his clearly defined and eloquently described personal philosophy as he was his extraordinary physical prowess. Lee kept a detailed journal tracking his workouts and keeping him focused on his physical goals, but would also write about his philosophies, affirmations and life goals, helping him define and focus on his world view and his place in it.
Use journaling for goal setting, self-discipline, and personal philosophy development.
Ryan Holiday
Bestselling author and the man largely responsible for bringing stoic philosophy back into the limelight for modern audiences, Ryan Holiday is a disciplined writer and advocate of practical philosophy. If you subscribe to either his daily dad or daily stoic newsletters, you’ll understand how he uses daily writing to ponder and question his philosophical stance on practical, life decisions. He is not philosophising as a thought exercise, but rather, advocates for a personal philosophy to be a guide through life, and something you should be constantly working to develop and implement, something he uses his daily writing habit to do. Holiday advocates for daily journaling as a key to maintaining focus, humility and discipline.
Even in the digital age, journaling remains a powerful success habit.
Michael Palin
The extraordinary writer, presenter, traveller and former Python, Michael Palin has kept meticulous, diarised style journals since 1969! This is a man who has lived an incredible life, travelling the globe, being a founding member of one of the most influential British comedy groups of all time, hanging out with The Beatles. He has recently started publishing his fifty-six years worth of diaries in collections of books which shows the power of journaling as record taking and legacy preserving.
Journaling offers a way for us to preserve and pass on our legacy.
Key takeaways: How you can journal like these men
The purpose of this article wasn’t simply to list men who have achieved success in their life, but to demonstrate how, through a disciplined and structured approach to writing, they were able to use their journals as a practical tool within their toolkit to provide clarity, maintain drive and motivation and examine their virtues, values and personal philosophies. Ultimately, they wrote about the kinds of men they wanted to be and used daily journaling to map how close or how far they were to that goal, and that is something that we can all do. If you would like to turn journaling into a practical tool for self-development, here are some key thoughts:
Reflect daily: Spend 5-10 minutes per day capturing your thoughts, wins and challenges. This helps to provide clarity and direction on a daily basis, and overtime, helps you build a backlog of entries that you can use to identify patterns in thoughts and behaviours. Does the way you act and react in situations align with your personal philosophy or the man you hope to be? You can use prompts to help you get started with writing, or you can free-write whatever comes into your head. The most important thing is that you try and stay consistent.
Set goals: Journaling can be a powerful tool for achieving goals. Use your journaling habit to map out the things that matter to you and to identify areas for self-improvement and self-development. You can then strategise long-term plans and personal and professional goals to help you stay focused and then track your daily progress towards those goals to help keep you on track. Your journal provides a simple, visual way of seeing how committed you have been to your own progress.
Track progress: Speaking of progress, your journal can be used to track progress in almost any aspect of life. You can log your habits, track and monitor your fitness, regularly check-in on your emotional states or track and organise creative ideas. The old personal trainer adage is, if you can’t track it, you can’t change it. Well, journaling makes real, practical change achievable through simple yet powerful tracking tools.
Explore philosophy: I am a huge advocate of using your journal to develop your own personal philosophy and then implement it on a daily basis. Use your journal space to write about and explore your beliefs and challenge your way of thinking. How many of your beliefs have you ever sat down and contemplated? How many are deeply held but forged by external influence? Question that, and develop your own way of thinking.
Set your values in your journal. It’s not often we sit down and actively think about the things that are important to us, but this is a powerful tool that can boost your confidence and decision making by asking one simple question, ‘does this decision or action align with my personal values?’ Or, ‘If I do this, do I move closer to or further away from the man I want to become?’
Finally, use your journal to write about your life lessons. What obstacles and challenges have you faced? How did you face them? What would you do differently if you faced the same challenge again? How does your personal philosophy align with your actions in any given situation? Think of Marcus Aurelius and remember that journaling and philosophy should be practical, applicable tools and not meaningless thought exercises.
Be honest: This may sound strange, but for many, it’s hard to get out of the mindset that what you write in your journal is somehow being ‘judged’. Is it well written? Does it say something meaningful? Are the problems you face worth writing about in the grand scheme of problems in the world? You must be able to silence this inner critic’s voice and understand that your journal is a private place for raw and honest reflection. It is only by being honest with yourself about the challenges and difficulties that you uniquely face and your own personal philosophy, that you will truly start to feel the benefits of a journaling habit.
Your legacy starts on the page
The list of men who have used journaling as a tool for their success is an intimidating one, full of leaders and polymaths and men of deeply held and well-rounded personal belief systems that guided their actions and decisions. Remember though, that all these men started somewhere and they all faced challenges. What sets them apart is how they rose to those challenges. Journaling is not just for artists, scientists, business men and leaders – it is a tool for any man who wants to live intentionally.
By starting today, you move one step closer to defining your own personal philosophy and developing your guidebook to success. Remember, your journal is a practical tool that should help keep you focused and intentional, whatever comes your way.
Dave Bawden is the founder of This Journaling Journey, where he helps people (especially men) use journaling to rewrite their personal myths, reconnect with meaning, and define success on their own terms. He writes at the intersection of self-authorship, narrative identity, and everyday philosophy.
