Blaise Pascal pointed out that “All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He didn’t mean sitting quietly in front of a laptop responding to emails. The best thinking comes from structured reflection — and the best way to do that is keeping a personal journal.

Excerpted from “The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal” by Dan Ciampa, hbr.org, July 7, 2017.