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Apart from being a tool that helps us store and communicate important information, writing is also an easily accessible and flexible type of therapy. That’s reason enough to celebrate and start looking at writing as a catalyst to improved mental health, academic and career success.

As a student, you process copious amounts of knowledge that is produced from your studies. On top of the coursework, it’s also important to develop and maintain healthy relationships with other students and your lecturers. Most of that ‘relationship work’ will involve writing to those people. In many instances, the life of a student is centered on writing and organizing notes, irrespective of the type of qualification they are studying for. 

A regular writing habit (especially outside of academic work) helps with finding meaning in daily experiences. It also helps to observe those experiences from a renewed perspective. As a result, you will tend to see the silver lining even during your most negative and stressful moments.

Writing out your thoughts and feelings helps you have a strong handle on the following mental health challenges:

• Grief and loss

When a loved one passes away, we can find solace, reflection and acceptance by writing about their life and the lessons they taught you.

• Anxiety

Many people can attest to having a childhood filled with anxiety. Keeping a journal and publishing blogs about life and your learning can help you become better at communicating your thoughts. Consequently, you can also become more confident and sociable.

• Depression

2020 was a mentally challenging year for the world and it’s fair to say many were in a dark mental space. Having a creative outlet like writing proved to be therapeutic and a good distraction given all the was happening in the world because of the Carona Virus.

• Communication skills

Taking the plunge to publish your thoughts and knowledge can allow you to gather feedback and improve. The feedback loop can boost your confidence. It also invites people with the same perspective to reach out.

The benefits of writing your thoughts and feelings:

• Build a second brain that spans years

Imagine if you were to read through ten years’ worth of notes that you wrote, on different topics, moods and attitudes.

That collection of notes is a powerful repository of knowledge that shows different mindsets of the same person. It is the act of creating a second brain.

When you are armed with a collection of notes that span back years, you can look at your mind outside of yourself, so to speak. This gives you the ability to identify behavioural patterns that lead to how you interact with the world.

• Write for mental and emotional clarity

Every time you decide to face a blank page or screen to express yourself or make a To-Do list, you choose to sharpen your mind.

Writing helps with the thinking process. Over time, it makes it easier to remember details from lectures, meetings, articles, videos and other media.

As you develop a strong writing habit, you’ll begin to pay more attention to your behaviour and the world around you.

• Improve your creativity

When you organize information using notes, you invariably elevate your creativity in the process. The notes carry different pieces of information and that presents an opportunity to combine the ideas written in your notebook to create fresh ideas.

A systematic way to store notes encourages open-mindedness. And it puts you in a position to make connections between contrasting ideas.

A writing habit is also an opportunity to develop a consistent idea generation system.

• Learn to store (and perhaps, publish) the ideas that you learn

The reality is that in every interaction you have there is something interesting to learn. From throwaway conversations, television series episodes, movies, YouTube video right through to music.

When you have a system to save and sort that information, learning becomes easier and happens anywhere. When you are an avid note taker, you listen to people with a strong intent to understand them and learn something new.

Collecting notes is a great way to inspire curiosity.

• Maintain relationships in your life like a champ with clear communication

Another interesting reality is that when you improve your writing skills, your relationships benefit. Writing necessitates that the writer resolves any emotional chaos they may have happened inside of them in order to create words that connect with other people.

Along with a daily writing habit grows the ability to communicate thoughts in a clear manner. When you can write clearly the quality of your conversations also improves.

Over the next few weeks, we will be doing a series on accountability, especially as it relates to achieving goals, reaching milestones, and meeting responsibilities. In this post, we take a fresh look at how setting goals and having accountability measures work together using Locke and Latham’s 5 principles strategy.

In our post about SMART Goals, we discussed how expressing specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound goals is one method that supports being active, engaged, and deadline-driven about your plans.

Dr Edwin Locke and Dr Larry Latham, specialists in psychology and organizational behavior, identified 5 key principles that underpin the successful achievement of goals: clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback, and task complexity. Over the course of their research, they have observed that consistent motivation and public accountability are 2 important factors for sustaining people to achieve their plans. Locke and Latham’s approach applies a strategic planning concept to goal setting.

CLARITY

This is closely linked to specific in the SMART method. Your goal should be something that you can clearly identify, define, plan for, and then measure your progress as you work to complete your plan. Goals that are vague or lack clear deliverables are difficult to achieve. This is not to be confused with having a dream or idea, which can initially be aspirational and not very specific. When you set a goal, you are taking the steps to formulate and actualize your dreams and aspirations into something that is attainable. Attainable does not mean that a goal is easy, it means that you have mapped a path, or an obstacle course, to move from the dream phase to the planning, action, and completion stages.

CHALLENGE

Locke and Latham recommend that while goals should be attainable, achieving them should provide one with a challenge. They should ideally have a level of complexity that pushes you to bring you’re a-game. If the goal is too simple, it may not motivate you sufficiently and you could lose interest along the way. You may not feel a great sense of achievement if your goal is too simple and too easy to achieve. The idea is that when you succeed at something that you have to work hard for and overcome challenges, you perceive your success as a greater reward than if you didn’t push yourself beyond your comfort zone. However, as one of our featured entrepreneurs shared, having incremental goals – goals that go from simple to more challenging – can initially help you to build confidence in your ability to achieve what you set out to do and motivate you to aim for the more ambitious dreams. Starting with an incremental approach helps you to build discipline especially if you are new at goal setting.

COMMITMENT

Accountability is a very strong determinant of successful goal achievement. When you believe in something and outcome is significant to you, you are more likely to feel committed towards achieving what you set out to. For example, if you want to pursue a career in the coding-related field, you need to have a strong foundation in mathematics and science. If you love coding because you are passionate about let’s say finding digital solutions to tracking information in a certain sector, for example, data systems for epidemiology, and you see yourself being in that specific area of work the idea is you will feel a greater sense of commitment to each level in your goal setting plan. This would be from having a study plan for your mathematics and science subjects to identifying fields of tertiary study, building networks with people in your professional field, and working on programs that build your skills. The personal significance of the goal, to work in data management in the field of epidemiology, will inform your commitment to each level you need to complete to be able to access the field starting with your school study plan.

FEEDBACK

Along the way, you need to check in on your progress and the status of your goal. If you have an accountability partner or mentor who is helping you, then the feedback can be done with them. You can do the feedback as a self-reflective exercise where you are checking on milestones reached, whether you are sticking to your proposed timelines and whether you had to or still have to adjust your plans to account for any changes in circumstances or new information. It is best to have regular feedback sessions so that you know where you are in the journey. You need to assess whether the steps in your plan are working or whether they need review and that your time investment is sufficient. The feedback principle is effective because it increases the level of accountability.

TASK COMPLEXITY

Locke and Latham maintain that setting ambitious and complex goals actually makes you more likely to pursue them and work sustainably to achieve them. In order to remain committed to the more complex, time-consuming, and long-term goals it helps to set sub-goals. To do this, you break down the timeline and milestones into less complex steps that lead to the completion of the big goal. Here you can utilize the incremental approach so that each step is leading into another and building towards more complex progression.

Locke and Latham’s view is that the more challenging and high-level your goals are, the more committed, motivated, and accountable you will feel. Accountability is widely recognized as one of the most important factors for motivating individuals, teams, and workgroups (governments and corporations even) to achieve their stated goals. Accountability affects levels of commitment and motivation. As you set and review your goals, make sure to factor in accountability steps so that you increase the likelihood of fully achieving them.