How to Get A "Do-Over" on A Crummy Day

I stumbled across this interesting article, "Five Reasons to Keep a Work Diary". To a writer, of course, this sounds like a good idea, but it’s actually worthwhile advice for anyone.

The idea is that a few minutes of recording what worked and what didn't, before you close up shop, gives you a “do-over”—a new way to look at the day, learn from it and see that maybe it wasn’t as bad as you thought.

Have you ever had a “shower moment”? All you have to do in there is bathe, and with so little demand on your brain, a brilliant new idea can present itself without your conscious mind blocking it.

Writing about your work day—even for as little as ten minutes—pushes your brain into new ways of expressing itself. It works differently than a shower moment but the results are the same. By re-structuring your thoughts in the form of text, insights that would otherwise be lost come to the fore.

Maybe you wrestled mightily—to no avail—with a way to communicate your idea to your team or a customer. Spending ten minutes to freewrite about it opens pathways in your brain you couldn’t see when the high weeds of the day were too thick to push through.

Aggravated by a phone call that went badly? Re-living it on paper (or your monitor) will reveal clues for setting the situation on better footing—or reveal that it didn’t go as badly as you thought.

Hate writing? Make your work diary an oral one. Use a Dictaphone (or your smart phone—surely there’s an app for that). On your drive home, babble incoherently into the thing and listen back later. The act of verbally confiding to your recorder can also free your mind. You may find yourself, mid-rant, coming upon a gem of genius.

According to the author of the article, Richard Branson wrote his bestsellers by referring back to and reworking his daily diary ruminations. Who knows? By the end of 365 ten-minute work diary entries, you may find you have the foundation of a book, or an e-book.

The trick is disciplining yourself to do it, especially on a bad day, but I've tried it and this kind of daily reflection really does pay you back for the effort.