What Work Are You Asking the Page to Do?
“These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Journaling is not magic. However, used with intention it can change the quality of your attention, and sometimes that is where meaningful change begins.
I have been writing for many years, yet I still do not think of journaling as simply keeping a record of my days, because that is the least that my journal keeps. For me, the page is a place to slow down. It helps me separate what happened from the story I am telling myself about what happened. It gives unfinished thoughts somewhere to land and allows questions to remain open for a little longer, before I rush towards an answer. Probably that is one of the reasons why I still use pen and paper - to create the slowing down mindful.
That distinction matters because “journaling” is often spoken about as though it were one practice with one predictable result. It is not, not in my experience.
Writing about a difficult experience is different from keeping a gratitude enter. A post-session reflection is different from imagining your best possible future. A self-compassion letter asks something different of you than a factual account of the day.
The research I am doing in the past years with my clients, reading other practitioners work and white papers reflects this complexity. Reviews of expressive and positive writing suggest that the average benefits are usually modest, shaped by the person, the prompt, the timing and the context. Positive-writing practices appear to support wellbeing and positive emotion more consistently than they reduce anxiety, depression or stress. Some benefits of expressive writing may emerge later rather than immediately.
In other words, the most useful question may not be, “Does journaling work?” It may be: “What work am I asking the page to do?”
This was a question that changed for my the way I look at journaling
When I first began delivering as a coaching educator on the Business Coaching Diploma, my heart was racing. It was not because I did not know the content. I was putting pressure on myself because I wanted the coaching demonstrations I offered in front of participants to have the same impact on them as my trainers’ demonstrations had once had on me.
Before one of those early sessions, I spoke with a mentor. She invited me to look at the comparison underneath the pressure.
At that point, I had a little over 500 hours of coaching experience. My trainers had more than 5,000.
What, exactly, was I comparing?
The question did not erase my nerves. It changed the perspective from which I could understand them. I was no longer looking only at the feeling - I am not good enough yet - but at the assumption feeding it. I could respect the experience of my trainers without using their stage of development as a weapon against my own.
Today, I see that conversation as a model for useful reflective writing. A journal does not need to ask, How do I stop feeling nervous? It might ask:
What comparison is creating pressure here?
Am I comparing like with like?
What can I learn from another person without asking myself to become them?
What would be a fair standard for my current stage of practice?
This is one of the quiet strengths of journaling: it can help us step back from an experience without stepping away from it.
Expressive writing names this as self-distancing: the capacity to view an experience from a wider perspective rather than remaining caught inside the most immediate emotional reaction. This is not detachment or denial. It is enough distance to notice a pattern, see context and recover choice.
Reflection needs more than a blank page
People come to me and tell me that they feel the pressure of expectations in journaling - open the notebook and start writing. And when that doesn’t happen…here comes the disappointment. We often imagine journaling as complete freedom: open the notebook and write whatever comes. That can be valuable, but it can also lead to blank-page anxiety or to repeating the same story without discovering anything new. But, sometimes things are not as simple.
A recent study involving 12 youth-sport coaches offers a useful design principle. The coaches did not simply receive an instruction to “reflect”. Their reflection was supported through observation, focused cards, a pre-brief and a debrief. They reported greater awareness and confidence in relation to their interpersonal and intrapersonal behaviour.
The study is small and based on self-report, so it does not prove that journaling improved their coaching. What it does suggest is that reflection becomes more useful when it is scaffolded. A concrete moment, a focused question and a conversation can take us further than an unstructured instruction to think more deeply.
This is equally relevant whether you work in HR, coach clients, prepare someone for a wedding or a camera, or are finding your feet in your first professional role. All these contexts involve judgement, relationships, expectations and moments when you must work while being observed.
The page can help you examine not only what happened, but also:
what happened inside you;
what you assumed about the other person;
what the relationship or wider environment contributed;
the imposter syndrome;
what you might try, ask or contract differently next time.
That is the movement from recording an experience to learning from it.
A ten-minute practice for professional reflection
Choose a recent professional moment that still has some energy around it. It may be a conversation, a piece of feedback, a client interaction, a mistake, a success you dismissed too quickly or a decision you keep revisiting.
Set a timer for ten minutes and write through these five questions:
What happened? Describe the moment as concretely as you can.
What happened inside me? Notice thoughts, emotions, physical responses, impulses and assumptions.
What story am I telling? Name the interpretation—not as fact, but as one possible account.
What else belongs to the picture? Consider the relationship, roles, power, culture, workload, expectations and wider system.
What becomes possible now? Identify one question, conversation, boundary or experiment to take forward.
Close with one final line: What do I need now—from myself, from another person or from the environment?
You do not need to produce a polished insight. You are creating the conditions in which a more honest one might emerge.
If all this attracted your attention join my Journaling Programme - where I guide you with 30 daily prompts that can support you to explore and to take a look beyond the surface.
The page of the notebook does not need to solve everything.
Sometimes its work is simply to help you ask a better question.
So, before you open your notebook today, pause for a moment:
What work are you asking the page to do?
