by Lewis Robinson

Writing is a secret weapon which is often ignored. Making out time to write about your ideas, goals, experiences, and strategies can help organize your time and bring realism into perspective. Researchers across the world claim that taking notes, whether on paper or a mobile device, can be a good way to fall back on. Some of us are comfortable jotting down on paper; others find it easier to note things using tech.

Writing to reflect on your progress is a good way to measure your accomplishments and highlight areas where you could not give your 100 percent. Whether you are a student or a business professional, keeping track of your performance and setting targets by documenting them can lead to higher goal clarity. It gives you a sense of achievement. With this comes an added advantage of thought clarity, quintessential for personal development.

Writing to think of new ideas and solving problems can lead to quick and more structured resolutions. It is easier to brainstorm on an idea which is written down somewhere rather than having it float in your thoughts. Writing down your problems can help you meditate on a multitude of possible solutions.

Writing down your goals is a more realistic approach to the goal setting process. It helps you associate the resources you will need, the efforts that you need to aggregate and makes it easier to fathom the outcome. You could draw a mind map to specify your goals, organize them in bullet points or use software applications like Trello or Taskworld to get from bigger picture to minute details. A Harvard Business School study claims that students who had their goals written earned ten times more than their peers.

Writing helps you think big because it makes you explore a plethora of possibilities. From businesses to classrooms, encouraging people to write can help them innovate and utilize resources optimally. For example, documenting accounts of your business is vital. It gives you an idea of where the money is going. Depending on your preference, you can maintain a spreadsheet or a ledger sheet for your accounts or manually post them to ledgers and journals. While most big businesses hire accountants and bookkeepers to do this job, mid-sized and small businesses are at a significant disadvantage. They can either keep a record of their revenue and expenditure on their own or outsource this task to virtual bookkeeping services. With the advent of Web 2.0, ease of access to online resources, increased connectivity with others and availability of easier ways of noting things down, has made services like bookkeeping widely available to small businesses across the world. Several online and remote bookkeeping services like QuickBooks provide users with cost effective solutions.

Writing to process your emotions can be immensely useful for regulating feelings. Psychologist Matthew Lieberman at the University of California at Los Angeles, says that keeping a diary, writing poetry or penning down lyrics of a song can help you come to terms with your emotions. Writing helps you sort inner conflicts thus accentuating belief in self and enhancing your self-knowledge.

Researchers have always stated that writing down things improves communication with others and more importantly with the self. Often people have difficulty in articulating their thoughts properly or are too shy to express themselves freely. Penning down your thoughts raises your emotional intelligence quotient and instills self-confidence. Irrespective of your occupation or the business you own, writing can be a fruitful exercise. It is imperative to retreat before you can charge ahead. Organize what you've learned by writing it down in a diary or a journal which can provide you with full retrospect. You can see how you have grown, emotionally and intellectually over time. It is a utilitarian tool which helps you grow in personal as well as professional space. Make sure you get the best of it.

Lewis Robinson is a business consultant specializing in CRM and sales. He's begun multiple corporations and currently freelances as a writer and personal consultant.