Writing brings clarity: why and how to practise self-journaling

Writing is no longer in fashion – let alone writing by hand, with a pen on a sheet of paper. What a shame: writing – and, better still, writing for and about ourselves – helps us see things more clearly.

This is particularly true when we’re faced with a mountain of pressures, demands and issues to deal with all at once. This is the lot of many managers today.

What if just a few lines were enough to shed some light on the matter? What really goes on in our minds when we put our thoughts down on paper, and why does this change the way we act? At EDHEC, within the Leadership Development Chair, Self-journaling – a very simple practice inspired by various research studies – enables us to test and implement this approach: let’s explore it together.

Writing forces us, first and foremost, to slow down. This is essential for putting the elements of the chaos around us down on paper and attempting to bring some order to them.

Making time for oneself to put one’s reality into words is the first step towards regaining control over what is putting us under pressure. Putting things into words makes us aware of everything that makes up our context: its variety, as well as the relative weight of each element.

This process of regularly examining our own perceptions – and re-evaluating them where necessary – is known as reflexivity. Writing brings to the surface what we really think about the situations we encounter, enabling us to make decisions with greater clarity and less reliance on automatic responses.

According to researcher Jennifer Moon (1), writing becomes reflective when the author pauses to consider the meaning of their lived experience, questioning their interpretations, emotions, choices and the underlying assumptions. At its most sophisticated, the author takes a step back, considers multiple perspectives, and recognises that their own interpretative framework may evolve – they examine their way of thinking as much as their way of feeling. Through writing, one makes one’s reasoning observable and one’s implicit knowledge explicit.

This self-journaling is based on a rigorous definition of learning, known as ‘double-loop learning’ (2): it calls on students & learners to question their own perceptions, rather than merely acquiring content. They find themselves confronting their own learning process: which beliefs are being challenged right now? How can I put them into words? What do I want to do with this newly acquired knowledge?

The journal is therefore not a one-off deliverable, but a space where we gradually link action, knowledge and professional development. It is a true repository for continuous learning, which, over time, collects experiences, hesitations, feedback, theoretical insights and decisions.

Just like the diary we kept as children, we connect our vulnerability to it – the starting point for our personal development. This engaging form of writing is demanding, yet powerful: it provides access to lasting learning, distilled into a few sentences. Learning to learn: is this not precisely what we expect from a training session today?

It is a reflex that requires no effort; our five senses take care of it naturally. It is certainly not a matter of simply copying down what a trainer or a professor says or presents, but of noting down information that surprises us, or that challenges the explicit knowledge we already possess. Based on the premise that learning is, first and foremost, allowing oneself to be surprised.

This is where the real work begins. For Keith Oatley and Maja Djikic (3), writing externalises thought onto a medium, so that it can then be manipulated: an internal thought becomes an external object, visible, which can be re-examined, reorganised and modified. For them, this stage is cognitively essential because externalising one’s knowledge leads to deeper processing and a clarification of one’s own understanding. Between the spontaneous gathering of data and putting it into words, a whole process of sorting takes place: a definite effort, but one that yields an initial batch of valuable information, as the implicit becomes explicit. This externalisation often allows us to realise that we know more about a situation than we thought, and this realisation gives us confidence.

‘Enhancing’ them through reflection. According to Bereiter and Scardamalia (4), writing has the power to transform knowledge itself (knowledge building). It is not merely a means of communication: it is an essential cognitive stage, because it externalises and stabilises thought, thereby enabling it to be revisited and refined.

The definitive consolidation of learning stems from the final stage: sharing with others, which provides a further opportunity to ‘put things into words’. Ulrike Cress and Joachim Kimmerle (5), who study collaborative knowledge construction (particularly in relation to wikis), show that this collective work is not limited to simply adding up individual viewpoints: by comparing one’s own formulation with that of others, each person is led to re-examine their own understanding. Voluntarily sharing elements of one’s Learning Journal is therefore not merely a matter of restating what one has learnt; it is a new learning opportunity, both for the person sharing and for the person receiving the information.

Self-journaling is therefore both a source of learning and a tool for personal clarity. Someone who is unable to put into writing what they wish to undertake is, in reality, not yet clear about their own intention. They will need to write and rewrite until they are satisfied with their final formulation.

Writing is therefore a powerful lever for taking action, and this is particularly true in leadership, where the very aim is to influence others. If I cannot articulate to myself what I would like them to do, I am unlikely to achieve the desired results. This may seem like a trivial truism – but how many managerial instructions or messages are sorely lacking in clarity?

Revisiting this practice today proves particularly powerful for navigating the complexity of the world and the responsibilities that fall to each of us. More than ever, writing brings clarity.