Although most people do not have the time or interest in keeping so many journals, starting and maintaining journals can be a helpful and insightful activity. However, most of us are happy with one or just a few. If you have so many types of notebooks, or journals, that you don’t know what to record where and you have to keep them all available, the likelihood of using them decreases dramatically. In fact, each type of journal listed above focuses on recording key ideas, dates or reflections so that one can refer to them at a future time. They are memory aids and stimulators for making plans, deciding among options and determining activities.

Reasons for Keeping a Professional Journal
The power of journals derives from the task of keeping them and then referring to them.

There are three important reasons to maintain a professional journal—one in which you record ideas, activities, suggestions, food-preparation ideas, recipes and sources of information that you might use as a professional culinarian or chef-instructor. A journal can also serve the same purpose if you are a faculty member in another aspect of hospitality or if you are an administrator.

The first reason involves the power of writing. When you take a moment to write things down, you tend to remember them more clearly and more accurately, even if you do not have the notes in front of you. If you doubt the truth of this statement, just compare trips to do errands or buy groceries and see how much you accomplish on your list if you write a list as opposed to just saying to yourself that you will remember. Writing things down puts the errands into our minds, and we remember them better. It is true of to-do lists in teaching and managing, as well.

The second reason comes from the value of pausing to write. The process tends to make you focus on what you want to record and prompts some reflection on the situation, the action or the ideas. It tends to take us out of the demands of multitasking and helps us consider what we are noticing and want to remember. That pause tends to lead to more thoughtful notes and often triggers other ideas that we tend to write down if we are already writing in a journal.

The third value is the opportunity you have to review what you write and go back to something that you wanted to remember, but cannot access at the current time. Reading or rereading what you wrote will often prompt other thinking and also remind you of aspects of the situation or idea that you might have forgotten for the moment. It becomes a reference guide to you and a source of good ideas for cooking, teaching and other professional activities.

Therefore, building the practice of keeping a journal and recording key ideas and activities can very useful.

Summary
Thank you for reading this column about keeping a professional journal. Next month, we will take about the process and provide some suggestions to keep at the task for students and faculty members. If you have suggestions for other topics or teaching practices you want to share, send them to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I will include them in future Mayo’s Clinics.

Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT, was most recently a clinical professor at New York University. Principal of Mayo Consulting Services, he continues to teach around the globe, and is a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide. His latest book, Planning an Applied Research Project in Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports (Wiley, 2013), debuted last autumn.