What I Learned from 31 Days of Journaling

— reading time: 5 minutes —

As of January 1st, 2020, I decided to start a daily journaling practice. I’ve tried similar things in the past and met failure, so this time I came up with a plan to make it stick. I wasted so much time trying to find a journal that worked for me. Then I spent more time experimenting with inventing my own practice. It was a struggle: I could do it for a while, but then it would fall apart yet again. At the end of last year, I finally made a promise to myself to start 2020 with a journaling practice. In December of 2019, I came up with a plan to make that happen.

The results of this have been incredible. The best of those aspects are: the ability to quickly see what I did each week of the year; to identify patterns in my own faulty logic; to see the first signs of injury during athletic training; and to have the chance to reflect on how I could have reacted better during everyday situations.

Four Rules for Charting Your Own Course

With that in mind, I’ve outlined four guidelines that you can use to start your own successful journaling practice.

Rule One: A journal is a tool, use it that way

We all have our own ideas of what a journal is supposed to be and what it’s supposed to look like. Forget what everyone else tells you, the stereotypes are not true. A journal is a tool. It’s your tool, so own it and make it work for you. If you don’t want to write about your feelings, then don’t. Think about what you want to write about, and do that instead.

Decide if you’ll buy a pre-made journal, or devise your own
Making your own is not as hard as you’d think. It can be as flexible as you need. Designing your own format gives you ownership over your journal and you’ll be more likely to use it and love it. Moreover, you can adapt your favourite notebook into a journal. You get the point: I advocate you take some steps to personalize your own.

Rule Two: Reduce the friction of getting started

1. Organize how often you’ll write
   My aim for this month was to write each day, plus a short summary at the end of the week of what I thought my “highlights” were.

2. Plan how much you’ll write
   Aim low and it’s easy to do. I planned to write a single sentence a day, but I often found myself writing 2–5 sentences.

3. Reflect on what you’d like to read in the future
   It’s not very interesting to read the boring details of past events. The most interesting stories speak to our emotions: they include challenges the characters faced, failures, problems they overcame, interesting reflection, and so on. Treat your journal the same. Be sure to include how you felt about something that happened, or how you’d do it better next time.

Rule Three: Make chapters and milestones

It feels good to look at a whole week of notes about how your week went. It feels even better to review an entire month of notes! But don’t let it get overwhelming. Reviewing a whole month’s worth of notes is also time-consuming. 

Milestones

At the end of each week, I decided to make a separate section in my notebook where I pull out the most interesting stuff that happened. I’m really stoked about the results. I now have this amazing resource where I can quickly review what I did for every single week of the year! Then, if I need more detail, I can dig back into the weekly log.

Chapters

I’m treating this year’s journal as a prototype that needs experimentation. I decided on sectioning my favourite black notebook in four chapters.

1. Section One: Daily Summaries
   Typical journal-style entries. See rule two above.

2. Section Two: Weekly Summaries
   A separate area where I would review my daily notes on Sunday of each week and write a highlight reel style entry. This makes it easy to see what you did each week for the entire year, and yearly review a breeze. I devised a visual representation of my week (pictured below) where I could score four areas of my life that I personally find important:

   • Passion and Projects — if I spent time outside my day job doing something I’m passionate about (drawing, reading, etc) or on a project I’m excited about (solo, or with a community).

   • Activity and Fitness — if I spent quality time devoted to staying active (cycling, running, skating, workouts, etc)

   • Care and Meditation — if I took some time for myself (to relax, practice a seated meditation, etc)

   • Family and Relationships — how I think I did: being present in the moment, listening to others, and how I reacted to challenges or issues.

3. Section Three: Book of Experiments
   This is a free-flowing section where I make notes about anything new I’d like to try, things that seem interesting, and start to formalize a new habit I’d like to try out. For example, I decided to devote a month to journaling in January. But say you want to try meditating for 5 minutes a day for two weeks in a row—you’d plan that out in this section. 

4. Section Four: Thoughts, Notes, and Reflections
   The overarching goal of this section is to make note of what isn’t working in this new journal format, things I’d like to add in the future, etc. It’s also sometimes a place for me to store things that come to mind while journaling that I need to make note of (without a date, outside of the typical daily/weekly events).

My visual representation of the week, where I can easily score four areas of my life (that I’ve deemed personally important).

Rule Four: Make it enjoyable

This is supposed to be fun. I decided this would be a nice opportunity to treat myself to a nice fountain pen and get a brand new notebook. This shouldn’t add any extra pressure—so don’t go out and buy a notebook with the fancy paper you’ll be afraid to waste. I use a Leuchtturm1917 medium A5 dotted hardcover with 250 numbered pages (the numbers are key for indexing).

The pen I chose to buy is a beautiful black aluminum Namisu with a German Bock nib. It writes wonderfully and it will last a long time, but I didn’t have to break the bank there either. Namisu had discounted some of their prototype pens over the holidays, so I got a unique pen for half the price. Best of all, I love that the satisfying sound the threaded pen cap now punctuating the end of my day.

Start crafting your own path

I hope that’s helpful and it inspires you to start your own journaling practice. If you can reduce the friction to get started and make it your own—you’ll see the benefits in no time.