Some Thoughts on Journaling
A few new bullets on a time-honored art
I not infrequently hear friends say they “should” try journaling, or have struggled to stick with keeping a diary. I’ve journaled pretty consistently for over a decade now in a variety of formats, and thought it would be useful to compile my thoughts on the subject in one place:
Not everyone should journal, and if you you’re interested in doing it, you ought to get clear on why. The truth is, there are a cloud of overlapping purposes that journaling can serve: organizing thoughts and feelings; making you a better observer of your own life; recording experiences for posterity. One, some, or all of these may be relevant to you.
As with therapy, meditation, or exercise, there is a vague cultural compulsion to journal—claims that “studies show” it’s good for you. I don’t doubt the veracity of the studies, but there are lots of interventions that could be good for you, and there is an opportunity cost to all of them.
The format of your journaling should flow naturally from what you’re hoping to get out of it—and don’t be afraid to experiment. You’re much more likely to stick with the practice if you treat the journaling itself as an interesting artifact or project. Write in bullets if you want. Write stream of consciousness. Include recurring segments. If it feels like homework, you’re doing it wrong.
Personally, I used journal in physical notebooks, but in the past few years have switched over to Google Docs for my main longform diary (more on why below). I also record “Moments” (previously in an iPhone note, as described in this post, now in the Apple Journal app), and since 2017 have kept a “Life Log”: a spreadsheet where I give each day a 1-5 rating and jot down what I did. (I plan to do a longer post on this at some point in the coming years.) Each of these journaling formats serves a slightly different purpose and offers different kinds of data on my life.
Although doing what works for you should trump other factors, I believe more people should consider digital journaling practices, as there are a number of benefits: You accumulate less clutter. You mitigate risks around privacy, loss, and damage/destruction. You can include photographs, links, and other mixed media. As time goes on, I also find it more valuable to be able to do keyword searches in my old entries. One day, I plan to load the text into an LLM to see if I uncover anything interesting.
Life is naturally variable, and you should expect a significant amount of spikiness in the length and frequency of your journal entries. (I suspect one reason journaling becomes a chore for people is because they feel like they need to hit a certain quota of entries per month.) Personally, I aim for one longform diary entry per week on average—average being the key operating word—and am not religious about it.
The value of journaling compounds over time. I don’t often look back on old entries, but when I do it can be quite useful for identifying themes, and mapping current experiences onto past ones. (From my Life Log, I can now give you a rough readout from my day every day for the past 8+ years.) The biggest lesson here is probably that while there are certain patterns across time, all problems are basically temporary.
That said there are immediate therapeutic benefits to journaling too, and it doesn’t take very long for value to accrue. I’m sometimes amazed at how different my preoccupations are in the course of just a mere few months!
When you look back on old entries, you also learn quickly that the most interesting ones to write are not necessarily the most interesting to read. I journal pretty compulsively when I’m mulling a big decision or feeling stressed about structuring my time, and almost always emerge from writing with greater clarity. But these entries are usually mind-numbingly tedious and self-indulgent upon revisiting.
By contrast, there are some entries which are almost always interesting to look back on, and I therefore go out of my way to mention even if I don’t feel like I have anything very insightful to say at the time. These are: reactions to world historical events, screenshots or “primary sources” of events in my life (e.g., videos, texts), reactions to media I’m reading or watching, and first impressions of people I meet.
Journaling itself creates a demand for certain kinds of attention. For example, it’s useful to include a gratitude portion of your journal to counteract the negativity bias most of us have and force you to attend to positive features of your life. (I do this, and find that when I show up to the page, a part of my brain knows it will have to come up with something I’m looking forward to or enjoyed recently.)
I actually find that each of my “journals” creates a different sort of awareness. My Moments are about trying to capture present experience, whereas my longform diary is much more about organizing and reflecting on experience. My Life Log includes very little interiority at all, but does naturally force me to reflect back on my day.
I said at the top of this list that I don’t think everyone should journal. That said, I personally derive immense value from it and think more people could as well if they started small and were willing to experiment; journaling is probably the single most reliable tool I’ve found for examining and constructing a meaningful life. The more I do it, the more acutely aware I become of the fallibility of memory, all the ways I’ve changed through the years, and all the unique individuals who have passed into and out of my story. I believe these things are worth preserving.