Q+A: What are we supposed to do with our journals?

Do we keep them forever? Re-read them in order? Have a plan for burning them later? Here are my half thoughts and I'd love to hear yours.

Hi Soul Minimalist! Did you know we have a private IG group for paying subscribers? Details at the bottom of this post.

Every now and then I’ll take one question I’ve been asked multiple times and attempt to answer-ish it here. Of course not everyone journals, I know. But if you do keep a journal you may be at a loss for what to do with it after the fact. Rarely is there just one answer, of course, so I like to give a few arrows that could help all of us as we hold our own particular nuances around a topic.

Question: What are we supposed to do with our journals?

As you may know, journaling is one of my daily personal practices. When I’m asked about it, I sometimes have to stop and think because it’s such a part of my daily rhythm that to reflect on the practice itself feels like talking about nothing, like a fish giving a Ted Talk on water. What’s water?!

Because I’m a Questioner by nature, I’ll start with why I journal in the first place before sharing my ideas of what to do with these journals once they’re written in.

In 2000, Austrian American management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker wrote the following in an article about leadership:

“In a few hundred years when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time, literally, substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves, and society is totally unprepared for it.”

—Peter Drucker, Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself

I journal is because it helps me to regulate my emotional experience, helps me to articulate what I think about things, and serves as a practice for personal reflection.

In short, it’s a simple tool for self-management. It’s one of the ways I seek to increase my true capacity, to expand the base so the building will hold. It’s a good practice for me and has been for many years. But what do we do with the stacks of journals it produces? And what’s the best way to interact with all of this (mostly mediocre) past writing now, if at all?