Keep a Journal, Keep Up With Your Self

Keeping a regular journal is a great practice no matter the purpose — for mulling over memories, reflection, creativity, brain dumping, evil scheming and plotting, whatever floats your personal logging boat. And sometimes, it just feels good to go back to emo teen mode and scrawl out, “Dear Diary: Everything sucks!”

One of the most powerful reasons to keep a regular journal is motivation. Whenever you can see a history of a process (i.e. your life!), that’s a record you can point to and learn from. You become your own lifecoach — yes, embrace that inner Oprah — to egg yourself on to continue the awesome things you’re doing but maybe in a better or different way, or learn from your mistakes or low points.

There are 3 different methods of journaling for getting stuff done whose mileage may vary depending on your situation and who you are. 

Self-Tracking

If you want to keep on track with something such as an experiment, a creative process, fitness routine, eating habits, or being mindful, you can keep a goal-based journal. 

Keeping yourself on track towards goals is great if you have a clearly-defined problem that you’re solving for which you can define a set of goals. Unfortunately, life is sometimes a bit messier than that!

Stream of Conciousness

Maybe you’re in need of unloading that stuff whirling away in your head and passing some fancies. Try some free-writing using simple stream of consciousness or a Morning pages routine.

This takes the pressure off of a strict regiment of daily productivity.  Just unload!  On the downside, stream of consciousness writing can result in a mess of unstructured, unintelligible writing that doesn’t mean much when you look back on it.

One-Sentence Journal

If the whole Dear Diary practice is just not your thing, you could try keeping a one-sentence journal like Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, who found the whole “proper” journaling thing “far too daunting.”

It’s a neat idea, like daily private tweets to your future self. Keeping it short lessens the pressure and helps keep journaling from being a tedious task. For example, you could limit your one (or two or three!) sentences to the best and worst thing about your day. Don’t forget that it’s worth recording your happy memories, accomplishments and appreciations too! We don’t want to be Emo Teen all the time.

Getting Started

The hardest thing about journaling, if you’re just getting started, is making it a habit and incorporating the practice into your day. That’s where e-mail based journaling programs and reminders provide a helpful nudge.

You can’t get more reliable than pen and paper but if things that require battery or wifi power are more your speed, check out EasyJournaling to help find the best electronic and online journaling programs for you.

Walter Chen is the founder of iDoneThis, a free email-based short-form journal.  We email you every day and ask, “What’d you get done today?”  Just reply.  Your entries go into a calendar for you to keep and reflect on.  He built his personal tool out as a website when he saw how it positively affected his life.