Today I am delighted to be bringing you a guest post from the lovely folks over at Say Nice Things Stationery…
We humans have always kept written accounts of our everyday lives. Whether carved into tablets (the stone kind!), decorated on cave walls or painted onto parchment, we’ve always found a way to reflect and record events for the benefit of ourselves and others.
More recently however, as the digital world begins to take over almost every aspect of our lives it’s easy to view the written word as out of date and old fashioned in an age of pixels, gigabytes and hardware.
We disagree.
As lovers of paper and all things analogue we think there’s never been a better time to pick up a pen and journal and rediscover the joy of writing things down. And when it comes to family life, we think there are many health and emotional benefits to putting pen to paper as well as practical advantages for you and your family that can help the efficiency and pace of everyday tasks.
Bring back paper!
With that clarion call ringing in our ears, here are our top 5 reasons to keep a journal in your family life:
5 reasons to keep a journal in your family life
1. Clarify and prioritise.
If the volume of tasks in your home life is beginning to feel overwhelming it can often seem as though no progress is made on anything. Enter the best tool in the book; the to-do list.
Taking the mental clutter that’s in your mind and writing it down in one place will help you to see what needs to be done and in which order. Not only this, the reward and satisfaction of ticking off a completed task is hugely satisfying; motivating you further to complete the next task on the list.
2. Better recall.
If your family life is as hectic as ours you spend a lot of time walking into rooms and forgetting what you went in for.
While typing might be quicker than writing it could be a false economy. When it comes to retaining information, notes that are written by hand have been proven to stick in our memory better than those that are made on a laptop or tablet.
So whether it’s a simple grocery shopping list or your family schedule for the coming weeks, starting with your journal and pen could help save wasted hours going back to the shop and making sure you’re in the right places at the right time.
3. Reflection.
Psychiatrists often encourage patients to write how they feel as a form of therapy, supporting the idea that journaling helps psychological wellbeing. But you don’t need to see a psychiatrist to enjoy the benefits that come from recording and reflecting back on your feelings to your health.
We live in a fast paced world; we have busy family lives where we juggle more and more. Whether it’s time at the beginning, middle or end of the day, taking 20-30 minutes to reflect on whatever’s important to you can carry huge benefits.
4. Happy habits.
We’ve all got things we’d like to do more often to improve health of our family so using a journal to set up a simple habit tracker can help to make this happen.
New commitments such as taking regular exercise, reading more or eating healthily can be fostered into long term habits by setting up a tracker to remind you to complete your new tasks and motivate you by showing your progress each week.
5. Make time for fun.
Having a family journal is the perfect place to plan for and record important ‘family time’.
We suggest using sections as a scrap book for all the great things you and your family have achieved. Why not create a yearly bucket list of all the things you want to do and places you want to visit over the year.
Add a souvenir and some written notes from each activity once completed can be used to create an end-of- year ‘memory montage’ of photos, memories and other keepsakes.
We love to inspire people to stay organised and we think a family journal is the answer.
Hopefully we’ve shown how using a journal (or notebook) in your family can really help to simplify life, reduce stress and most importantly, ensure you have more time to spend together.
Happy journaling.
Thank you for this fabulous post SNT Stationery! If you’ve yet to discover them, do go say ‘hi’ to them on Twitter, they’re very friendly!
So tell me, are you now inspired to start one of these? Or perhaps you already keep one?
These are great tips Jocelyn. I’m actually planning to create one for my family. Thank you for sharing this.
Brilliant, have fun with it!