How to Start Journaling: Practical Advice on How to Journal Daily | Writers.com (2024)

If you’re exploring how to start a journal, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Journaling has transformed my life, and it can do the same for you. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to journal daily, drawing on my own experiences, and point you to key choices you’ll want to make as you navigate how to start journaling.

How to Start Journaling: What Is a Journal?

“Keeping a journal” could technically be any ongoing, regular record (like recording your resting heart rate), but I personally journal about my own experiences of life: what I’m going through, what I’m struggling with, what I like, stray thoughts I have, ideas for poems or book titles, and anything else I feel like sharing with myself.

I journal about my experience of life: what I’m going through, what I’m struggling with, what I like, and anything else I feel like sharing with myself.

For me, journaling is primarily a spiritual and wellness practice. (I’ll write about these elements specifically in a separate article.) For now, I would say that journaling, as I mean it in this article, is an ongoing practice of recording and reflecting on our own lives.

Journaling, as we’ll discuss it here, is an ongoing practice of recording and reflecting on our own lives.

You can call this a “diary,” if you want—definitions vary, but people seem to see a diary as being more structured and having a stronger emphasis on once-per-day than my own approach to journaling. To me, the journal vs. diary discussion doesn’t matter too much, as it’s just writing down my own life for myself, whatever one calls it.

What is a Journal Entry?

As a last piece of terminology, each piece of writing in a journal is known as a “journal entry.” You might have one entry each day, or many—in my own journal, I’m usually entering snippets of things throughout the day, so the “entries” are really strings of thought and experience that bleed into each other, much more than they are defined, organized, once-per-day units. A more structured approach may work better for you as you begin journaling regularly.

How I Started Journaling

I wasn’t looking to start a journal—I stumbled into it. About two years ago. I was trying to write a book about my spiritual tradition, and as I started to gather the material I thought I’d share, I found myself more and more often recording my personal thoughts and reflections. At some point, I started noting the date of those thoughts and reflections. Just like that, I was journaling. So for me, how to start journaling was: accidentally.

My journal grew out of my book project the way mushrooms grow out of an old log. I can watch this process happen in the Google Doc where I started journaling. And now the mushrooms are huge, and they mean a lot more to me than the original log.

What Journaling is Like

Journaling, as I do it, is extremely personal.

Journaling, as I do it, is extremely personal! It’s much too private to show to anyone else. There are no other people (friends, family, relatives) who wouldn’t be shocked by much or even most of it. I’m not embarrassed by this. Evidently, it’s just the case that what we humans can show to others isn’t close to 100 percent of what we are.

It turns out that what we humans can show to others isn’t close to 100 percent of what we are.

To me, an enormous pleasure of journaling is to write (thousands of pages of) what is so searingly personal that I can’t share it with anybody else. I love being that naked and open with myself, with no need to look over my shoulder. I had nothing like that outlet before I started journaling, and it was a love I fell into on accident.

To me, an enormous pleasure of journaling is to be able to write what is so searingly personal that I can’t share it with anybody.

How to Start a Journal: 7 Benefits of Journaling

These have been the major benefits of journaling for me. There are many others.

1. Journaling records life.

The first, maybe obvious, benefit is that I’m not in danger of forgetting what my life has been like. This is like having a shopping list when you go to the grocery store. Rather than try to keep things in my mind, which I have to stress out about remembering (and will certainly forget), I record them. Then there’s no danger I’ll forget them.

I can often let them go at that point, which I’ve found is very helpful for personal development: many things come up and then release without needing to be something I focus on for a longer time than that. So the act of recording my life actually helps me move through it rather than get stuck on it, afraid I’ll forget something important.

The act of recording my life helps me move through it rather than get stuck on it, afraid I’ll forget something important.

I can look back on two years of journals and remember exactly where I was at different times, how I felt, what I was struggling with, what I hadn’t yet realized or encountered, and even specific details—little interactions with my daughter or my wife that I never would have remembered and that are quite wonderful to me. Journaling records life, and in that sense, it preserves life.

2. Journaling maps the arc of life.

This is related to the first benefit. Having a clear picture of my life over time helps me see the sweep of life in a way I can’t when I’m up-close, day-to-day. It’s like looking at a “100 Years of Fashion” coffee table book: you can see very clearly where today’s fashions came from. They didn’t just pop up out of thin air, but it takes added perspective to see that.

It’s the same in my own life: I can see where I am now more clearly, because I can see exactly where I was one week, one month, one year ago. I find that this benefit adds up the longer I continue journaling regularly.

3. Journaling helps us listen.

For me, journaling is a way to listen, to hear—I could say “hear myself,” but it also feels broader than that, like hear life itself. Before I started journaling, I was much less attuned to life, because I didn’t have this type of listening practice.

Before I started journaling, I was much less attuned to life.

4. Journaling is cathartic.

I find that recording words helps bring the feelings that accompany them to the surface. It helps those feelings find full expression. If I didn’t have journaling, I’d feel quite bottled up with the things I carry.

Sharing words helps bring the feelings that accompany them to the surface, and it helps those feelings find full expression.

Journaling has many, many times helped me say something I needed to say—knowing that only I could hear it, so it could be as embarrassing as it needed to be.

5. Journaling feels good.

For me, the act of journaling is pleasurable. I enjoy being in relationship with my feelings, and with the voice and voices that come through my mind. Sometimes I’m feeling good, sometimes I’m feeling bad, but I feel much less lonely and more connected. I find an intimacy in my own life that is wonderful in a way I never expected when I accidentally started journaling.

6. Journaling brings self-knowledge.

When I journal, I often make connections and understand what I need to do much better than if I’m just sitting with my experiences, even thinking about them.

I’ve often recorded impactful experiences, and seen deeper meanings in them only once they were in my journal.

I’ve often recorded vivid dreams or impactful experiences, and seen deeper meanings in them only once they were in my journal. Again, our memory can only hold so much: if I’m trying to remember something that happened while also working to understand it, it’s a bit like trying to both remember and analyze the Gettysburg Address. If I can instead see the Address on the page, I can make connections with the burden of memory relieved.

7. Journaling brings self-love.

When I look through my journal, I can see very clearly that I am good.

When I look through my journal, I can see very clearly that I am good. I am quite clearly working with challenges and with my own flaws and imperfections, but I am also obviously well-intentioned and kind, basically a good person.

Journaling is like a mirror, and I see myself better for having it.

Without a mirror, we can’t see ourselves easily, because we are too close. Journaling is like a mirror—a record of my mind that is external to my mind, not just the moment-to-moment thrum of my mind itself—and I see myself better in it than without it.

This is a bit of a spiritual statement to make, but if you give yourself genuinely to journaling, you will see yourself in the mirror, and I promise that what you will see is good. Depending on what you may be struggling with, you may notsee it as good, but I promise you that it is good, and that seeing that goodness is possible.

I hope those benefits have you motivated and oriented. Let’s start to look at the specifics of how to start journaling.

How to Start Journaling: Choose the Right Formats

I could not have started, or continued, journaling without finding formats that were right for me.

Where and how you’ll record your thoughts turns out to be extremely important in how to start a journal. I could not have started, or continued, journaling without finding journaling formats—tools and technologies—that were right for me.

Finding these right-for-me formats took me a very long way past pen and notebook (although I use that too!), and I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned about the strengths and weaknesses of the different options.

Freehand (Pen-and-Paper) Journaling: 2 Advantages and 3 Disadvantages

Freehand writing—writing by hand onto paper—is, of course, the traditional way to journal. Here are some advantages and disadvantages I’ve found to journaling freehand.

Advantage #1: More Embodied

Freehand writing is known to engage the brain better than typing or than to dictate into a transcription app. Freehand writing is a much more embodied experience, and to me it feels much more powerful. I feel much more powerfully connected to what I’m writing.

Advantage #2: More Versatile

Freehand writing opens up all kinds of artistic possibilities.

Freehand writing opens up all kinds of artistic possibilities. The freehand parts of my journal often have wildly varying fonts and font sizes. They might incorporate drawings, or if I’m really upset I might write in a jagged hand whose letters heavily overlap each other. Anything is possible.

Here’s a page from my paper journal that I’ve blurred, to show the contrasts in handwriting as I feel different things.

Changing fonts in a Google Doc or hitting italics in a phone’s notes app is not the same, and so freehand writing just packs a lot more information and feeling. It has dimensions that typing just doesn’t.

Disadvantage #1: Slow

If I’m having a vivid experience and try to journal about it freehand, the writing will sometimes slow that experience down.

Relative to talking or typing, freehand writing is by far the slowest. If I’m having a vivid experience and try to journal about it freehand, the writing will sometimes slow that experience down: the experience will start to fade as I wait to finish writing out my current thought word-by-word. Another thing that can happen is that I feel compelled to share only little snippets of the experience, maybe terse bullet points rather than everything that happened or is happening in as much detail as I can give.

I have vivid dreams, and I sometimes narrate everything I can remember about them into a transcription app on my phone. It would take me literally hours to write those several thousand words freehand, and by that time much of my dream would be forgotten. It simply wouldn’t be worth the work to try this way. When I go back months later and read the transcripts of these dreams, I find that they are extremely vivid and detailed, and I can remember much more than I could if I was just writing the highlights freehand.

Disadvantage #2: Tiring

I find writing freehand to be quite strenuous.

Perhaps because it is slow, I find writing freehand to be quite strenuous. It’s not something I could easily do for long periods on end—typing or speaking isn’t either, but I would definitely find those less draining.

Especially if you’ve been feeling like you ought to journal, but can never get around to it, it’s possible that recording your thoughts by hand with pen and paper is part of the difficulty. Maybe not, but I feel it’s worth playing with other options to see.

Disadvantage #3: No Backups

With freehand writing, if you lose your journal, you lose your journal.

With freehand writing, if you lose your journal, you lose your journal. If your journal gets wet or a roommate or spouse throws it out, you may lose everything you’ve written. A simpler scenario is that you might also simply lose interest in your journal—and then, five or ten years later, realize that you really wish to review something in it. If you had everything saved in a Google Doc or emailed to yourself, you could probably find it, but with a physical journal you might be looking through your attic, storage containers, and so on.

You can overcome this lack of backups by taking pictures of every journal page with a smartphone, which leads us into the other technology options for how to start journaling.

Other Journaling Formats

If you’re open to considering other formats and technology choices as part of how to start journaling, here’s what works for me based on trial and error. Again, I would not personally be journaling if it was only freehand, so this choice is quite important.

Very Reluctant Mac Plug

To get it out of the way, I have to say that these most of options use smartphones, and that iPhones work better than Androids or other choices. It upsets me to write that, because I used Androids for a long time, and because I dislike Apple (or, honestly, any $3 trillion company) just as much as the next person. But iPhones simply are more seamless. They work, without making you figure things out. Also, a lot of app developers are snobs, and only write cutting-edge apps for iPhone, not for Android—two of the tools I use everyday for journaling are iPhone only.

I also believe the whole experience would be even more seamless with a Mac computer. I’ve used Windows my whole life, and I’m considering switching—partly for the sake of my journal. So, if you’re considering making technology switches, I reluctantly but firmly recommend Apple products. They work best for the anytime-in-the-field-in-the-moment writing that journaling is for me.

With that (not sponsored; I wish!) plug out of the way, here is the mix of technologies I’ve found work well for journaling. If you’re looking into how to start journaling, you might want to consider these.

1. Notes app on phone

On an iPhone, this app is specifically called Notes. You can write an endless amount in a single Note, which is what my journal looks like.

The default method of text entry is by typing on your phone’s keyboard, or with “Slide to Type,” which is a bit faster. This method is slow, perhaps just a bit faster than free handwriting, but I do use it fairly often.

What I most often do is dictate what I want to say into the best transcription app I can find. For a long time, that transcription app was the ChatGPT app for iOS. The little gray microphone here connects to ChatGPT’s Whisper AI transcription service, which is the best transcription I’ve found. I will dictate a journal entry into the Whisper service and then paste it into Notes, without ever sending it to ChatGPT.

However, ChatGPT does have a habit of sometimes returning nothing at all, meaning you lose hundreds of words that you may not remember, so that’s not great. Also, the interface makes it too easy to delete the block of text that you’re trying to copy. I still use this from time to time, though.

2. Google Doc

My journal started in a Google Doc, which is now over 3,000 pages long. Most of those pages are images, screenshots from my computer, which I paste in, and I imagine there would be about 500 words worth of text as well. Google Doc is great because you can access it from any device. Access it and update it from any device, as long as that device is connected to the internet. It also lets you type, rather than write freehand, which is much faster, and which is the way that I journaled for the first year or so. Lastly, I can’t overstate how helpful adding computer screenshots and other pictures to my journal has been, because they often illustrateexactly, not approximately, what I’m thinking about or dealing with.

I skimmed the 3,000+ pages of my Google Doc journal for an example, and here is one screengrab that didn’t feel too personal to share. It’s of a drawing my daughter made when she was 3, which, to me, looks like a blue dragon soaring in front of the moon and stars (once I figured out how it might want to be oriented).

With those upsides of Google Doc journaling described, here’s a downside: it requires a robust, arguably unhealthy trust of big tech companies. I was willing to do this, but you might not be, especially if you are considering running for US President on an anti-tech platform, or anything else that could turn the whole situation cyberpunk. Actually, this warning applies for all the higher-tech options explored here.

3. Whisper Memos app

This app allows you to dictate 15-minute chunks of spoken text, which it transcribes almost perfectly.

Snobbishly available for only iPhone, this app allows you to dictate 15-minute chunks of spoken text, which it transcribes with almost perfect accuracy. It automatically emails the transcript to you for long-term storage.

This is quickly becoming my most used way of journaling, because I record my thoughts at the speed of speech itself, which for me is just about the speed of thought. So I can be fully in an experience, and be describing it at the same time. In an odd way, it’s actually more embodied than freehand writing, because I’m not stuck in one position. I often narrate multiple energies, or multiple points of view, and my tone of voice often changes from quiet to loud, or from slow to slower to fast.

Whisper sometimes records these changes with exclamation marks, or ellipses, but usually not. Still, when I watch the transcripts, when I read the transcripts, I feel extremely clear on what I was feeling moment to moment, which is very rewarding, and I think is a good goal for journaling.

Whisper Memos charges a one-time fee of $30 after you record your first 10 memos. By that time, you should have a sense whether the app is worth the investment for your personal needs.

4. Phone photo and video

I highly recommend working photography into your journaling.

I highly recommend working photography into your journaling. Obviously, the most seamless way to do this is using your phone’s camera. I’ll often see something that is only there for a few seconds, like a butterfly on a branch—and exactly how it looks, its colors against the color of the branch, is quite important, part of the memory I hope to record. My phone’s camera is really the only option here, and looking back over my phone’s picture library, a picture really is worth any number of words. I wouldn’t want many of the pictures and videos I’ve taken to be written journal entries instead, no matter how vivid or detailed.

I wouldn’t want many of the pictures and videos I’ve taken to be written journal entries instead, no matter how vivid or detailed.

As well, I can often write (or dictate) hand-in-hand with taking pictures with the knowledge that exactly what the image looked like or even how it moved if I take phone video is recorded in detail as well as my personal reflections on it.

Again, I probably would not have done this on my old Android phone—because of slightly reduced picture quality, because of slight friction saving images, working with them, knowing that they’re reliably backed up to the cloud, and that they won’t overwhelm my phone storage, no matter how many I take. So having an iPhone is really what unlocked this form of journaling for me. :/

How to Start Journaling: Final Word on Journaling Format and Technology

In practice, I use all the options above.

In practice, I use all the options above—so I don’t have a single journal, but rather a physical journal, the Google Doc, lots of photos and videos, a big (tens of thousands of words) Notes note on my phone, and lots of voice memos in my Gmail.

It’s a bit of a sprawl, but what comforts me is that it’s all digitally archived. (Again, I do photograph my physical journal pages.) It’s all in one of three places: iCloud, Apple’s storage system, for the Notes, photos, and videos, Gmail, for the voice memos, and the Google Doc.

Two things I wish were different:

• I wish it was all stored in one place rather than three, as I probably won’t know where to look for things ten years from now.
• I wish I wasn’t trusting giant tech companies with the most private thoughts I could possibly share.

Overall, though, this set of tools works great for me, and it means that I can always journal, anywhere, in whatever format will be best, and have confidence that I’ll have access to it whenever I want.

I can always journal, anywhere, in whatever format will be best, and have know that I’ll have access to it whenever I want.

The point is: Please find what works with you, and do that. And I strongly you suggest you experiment as you’re getting started with journaling, even if the Unsplash aesthetic of the neatly folded smallish journal is super-gorgeous.

Just make sure you’ve explored what will work best for you as you get into journaling regularly.

How to Start Journaling: 12 Journaling Prompts

These prompts employ the extreme honesty and vulnerability of the journal form.

If you’re not sure what to write in a journal, here are 12 prompts to get you started journaling. A common theme is that they employ and enjoy the extreme honesty and vulnerability of the journal form.

Journaling is just for you, so you don’t have to be normal or okay, and you don’t have to make sense. You can just say it.

Remember, journaling is just for you, so you don’t have to be normal, okay, or acceptable, and you don’t have to make sense. You can just say it.

Try any of these prompts that grab your attention:

1. What is the one thing you wish you could scream repeatedly at the top of your lungs? Get as close to doing that as possible, given the writing medium you’re using. You could actually scream if you’re alone and recording yourself, or you could type hard or write in a heavy hand. Repeat whatever it is over and over again until you feel like writing something else, or stopping.
2. What is the most direct, honest statement of how you’re feeling exactly right now? No one has to see it but you. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to agree with your politics. What is it? Write it down and go from there.
3. What do you feel in your body right now? What does that seem to want to say?
4. Gratitude journaling: What are you grateful for? If this is hard to access, think: What is something you would fight desperately not to lose? Imagine losing it. Now, here you are, back in reality, not having lost it. Write about the experience.
5. What is something you’ve never told anyone, because there’s just no benefit that outweighs the risks and costs? Tell it to your journal.
6. What wants to come out of you? You can just start writing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or hold down the F key on your keyboard, until something else starts coming out automatically. Then go with that.
7. What would it feel really good to say? Say it.
8. What are you very scared to say? Say that.
9. What’s most confusing to you in your life right now? You can write, “I am very, very, very, very, very, very confused about…” and then go from there.
10. What makes you smile? Find something that actually causes your face to smile, and write about it.
11. What hurts to remember? What words does remembering it bring up?
12. Is there anything you might want to apologize for? Apologize into your journal, however feels right to you.

I’d be happy to offer you more prompts if you like, and I hope you can also go from here in terms of accessing the deepest parts of yourself in your journal with no embarrassment.

Starting a Journal: How to Journal Daily

Below is my own perspective on starting a daily journal. I think many other people’s approach may be different from mine, but I want to share mine as food for thought.

I journal quite a bit more often than once per day. I don’t set time aside in my day to journal, and I don’t make it a point to journal. It’s more like something I’m doing through my day, continuously.

I’ve found over time that journaling becomes instinctive. If there’s something I want to work with or process, I turn to journaling automatically.

I’ve found over time that journaling becomes instinctive. If there’s something I want to record, process, work with, feel into, consider, share, understand, or release, I turn to journaling automatically.

Again, this wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t made technology choices that work well for me. I know “journaling technology” might sound a bit dismal, but I truly couldn’t do it if the only process was to open up my notebook and put pen to page. I need to be able to journal wherever I am, which is what phone applications are great for, and I often need to be able to do it at the speed of thought—meaning speaking rather than writing—which is what the new transcription technologies do so wonderfully.

Your own experience of these technologies may be very different, but I strongly encourage you to experiment, especially if you find your first form of journaling to be a chore or something you’re having trouble finding time for.

Journaling isn’t a chore, something I have to work to commit to. It’s more like having a friend with me whom I can always talk to, about anything.

I don’t feel that way at all. Journaling isn’t something I have to work to commit to, or make a priority. It’s more like having a friend with me, whom I can always talk to, about anything. It’s something I would feel desperately lost without—within minutes, or at the most hours.

Learn How to Journal at Writers.com

Writers.com offers a few different classes on how to start a journal, including:

• From the Source: Journaling for Self-Knowledge and Creativity
• Where the Diary Ends and the Essay Begins
• Move Your Writing Forward: The Art of the Bullet Journal
• Creating the Visual Journal

Additionally, many writers go on to use their journals to inspire poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. If you’re interested in consolidating your material into publishable works of writing, take a look at our upcoming online writing courses.

How to Start Journaling: Have Fun!

That’s an introduction to journaling. I hope you have enough to get started.

How to start journaling is just part of the story, of course, as lots of people drift away from it over time. I’m going to write a follow-up article on journaling for wellness and spiritual growth specifically, and in that article I’ll address writer’s block and trouble committing to journaling in more depth. So if you do start journaling and find it difficult, painful, or hard to stick with, please stay tuned for that article.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your questions or comments below.