How to Build a Consistent Journaling Habit You'll Actually Keep

10/25/2024 | Daily Journaler

Introduction

Are you tired of starting a journaling habit only to abandon it weeks later, leaving yet another blank notebook in your wake? Join the club!

Many of us aspire to document our thoughts, feelings, and special moments, but finding the motivation to write consistently can be a challenge. But there’s good news! Building a journaling habit that sticks is totally achievable with the right approach.

In this post, we’ll explore practical tips and fun strategies to help you turn journaling into a satisfying, regular practice that you’ll actually look forward to. Let’s get started on making journaling the best part of your daily routine!

Setting Clear Intentions

Define Your Purpose

The reasons for journaling are infinite. Having a clear idea of why you’re doing it will keep you committed.

Maybe it’s to reflect on personal experiences and gain insights into your thoughts, behaviors, and motivations. Perhaps you want to stop your temper before it gets out of hand. Reducing stress, anxiety, and depression could also be great reasons for journaling.

It could be that you want to set some personal goals and track your progress, building a structured plan for measuring success and staying consistent. Or maybe you want to track life events and preserve special memories and events – it’s good for that too.

Figure out what it is you want from journaling and let it shape your growing habit.

Set Specific Goals

Once you’ve figured out your why, try to put in place a few specific goals for how to achieve it. It’ll be easier to make more targeted reflections, enabling deeper exploration of your thoughts and feelings.

And the goals that you set can be as long-term or short-term as you want. Need a few examples? Try these:

Daily reflection: Write a brief entry every day reflecting on your feelings and experiences.

Weekly review: Reflect on the week every Sunday night, noting highlights, challenges, and lessons learned.

Personal growth: Maintain a journal for a year focuses on personal development, documenting progress and insights.

Life story: Write your life story or key experiences in-depth over several months, reflecting on your journey.

Creating a Conducive Environment

Choose the Right Space

You’re not going to get very far with journaling if you don’t have a good place to sit and write. A comfortable, distraction-free writing space is an important piece to the puzzle. Do your best to pick a spot with minimal noise, if possible, away from interruptions.

If you can’t get away from the noise, use music to drown it out or to put your brain in a mood for writing. Or if music is still too much, try ambient noise.

Make the space around you as inspiration for writing as you can. Keep reminders nearby like photos, art, plants, or anything relaxing. Sometimes all you need is for the atmosphere to be just right.

This next one is going to be hard to believe, but your phone is a distraction. Put it on silent and out of arm’s reach. The world will be okay for five minutes. Make your journaling space a “no phone zone.”

Gather Your Tools

Once you’ve found a place to journal regularly, keep it there. If your journal and pen are always in the same place, they’re always handy and easily accessible. The worst thing is when you’re ready to write your heart out and your journal’s nowhere to be found.

For the actual journal itself, invest in something you’ll look forward to writing in. If you go the old-fashioned pen and paper route, popular notebooks like Moleskine, Leuchtturm 1917, or Paperage will get the job done. Really, it’s all about preference.

Of the eight bazillion pens out there, choose a good one. You’ll be surprised how much a good pen will influence your writing habit.

If you really want to get fancy-smancy, forget a physical journal and go digital. A computer or even an app on your phone could work just as fine. Quick drying gel pens are awesome because they write smoothly and save your hand from tapping out mid-way through a sentence.

No matter what you use, find what works best for you. This is one habit that can be as inexpensive as you want and in any format that suits you best.

Make a Routine

Not having a set routine could make your journaling efforts go south in a hurry. It really is a make or break moment.

But once you find your groove, finding time to journal becomes effortless. I hope you like the spot you’ve picked to journal because you’re going to be seeing a lot of it. Use it every time to build consistency. Trick your brain into thinking that every time you sit down in that same spot, it’s time to write.

A repeatable routine comes easiest when it’s attached to an already existing one. Whenever you’re sipping that first cup of coffee in the morning, do so with your journal in hand. Use a few minutes each night before bed to reflect on the day. You could even sneak in some journaling during your lunch break or in the evening after you get back from the gym.

Find the Right Techniques

Experiment With Different Styles

Regular journaling is a cinch when you’ve picked the style that works best. Try a few ways to see what comes easiest for you. Some examples:

Free writing: Set a timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes and just write without worrying about grammar or structure. Free writing encourages creative flow, helps overcome writer’s block, and allows for raw expression of thoughts and feelings.

Gratitude: Write a few things that you’re grateful for such as a good meal or spending time with friends and family. Regularly writing about gratitude fosters a positive mindset, enhances emotional well-being, and helps put the best things in life front and center.

Reflective: Write about your specific thoughts, feelings, emotions from the day. You’ll build self-awareness, which is the first major step toward self-improvement.

Bullet: This is a customizable organizational system that combines planning, tracking, and journaling using short and concise bullet points. This style works best with goal tracking, time management, and habit tracking.

Start Small

It makes sense feeling a little overwhelmed starting something new like journaling. But it doesn’t need to be some massive endeavor. In fact, start so small you absolutely can’t fail.

If pages or paragraphs feel like too much, just write a single sentence. Use a list of bullet points for quick notes and reflections. Heck, don’t even worry about complete sentences. Just write a few words to get started.

Stick to just one single thought or feeling. Don’t try to cover every emotion from your entire day. This keeps your entries concise and focused.

Another way to keep things concise is by setting a timer for only one or two minutes. Once time’s up, consider yourself done.

Overall, just make it all stupidly easy. The less intimidating, the better. Short entries and experimenting with different writing styles remove the feeling of producing “perfect” and lengthy entries, making it easier to churn out your writing.

Use Prompts and Templates

Prompts are great for when you’re either at a loss for what to write about or want to try something new. Or when your brain’s gone blank and can’t think up a topic for your entry, prompts reduce the amount of thinking you need to do by half -it tells you exactly what to write about.

Use prompts like “Today, I felt…” or “Something I learned today was…”.

Having structure can alleviate the pressure of deciding what to write about, making journaling feel more manageable, especially for beginners. Prompts encourage regular journaling by establishing a consistent framework, which helps build the habit over time.

Staying Motivated and Accountable

Track Your Progress

The easiest way to keep going is to remember where you’ve been. The more you journal, the more progress you can track.

Try logging how often you journal and the content of your entries. You can observe patterns in your writing habits and personal development over time, measuring growth. Reviewing past entries can guide future reflections, helping you focus on unresolved issues or new insights you want to explore.

Celebrate Milestones

Who doesn’t like to be rewarded? When developing a journaling habit, it’s important to always boost motivation.

A fun way is to reward yourself with something that makes journaling feel fresh and new. Buy a new journal or a nice pen when you reach certain goals. Have you been journaling everyday for the last week? Month? Year? Treat yourself to something special.

Overcoming Common Barriers

Addressing Writer’s Block

At some point, you’re going to go a few rounds with every journaler’s enemy: writer’s block. But when the words just won’t come, there are a few things you can try.

A change of scenery can inspire new thoughts. Try journaling in a different room, outside, or at your local coffee shop. Re-read previous journal entries for inspiration. Reflecting on past thoughts or feelings can trigger new ideas.

And if you’re really stuck, take a short break. Putting some distance between you and your journal by coming back to it later can help provide some clarity and reset your brain.

Combating Perfectionism

Another roadblock is perfectionism. This has stopped me in my tracks more times than I care to admit. But when journaling, there’s no one you need to be perfect for, not even yourself. It’s for your eyes only. It’s one the few places you can write freely without worrying about grammar, spelling, or structure -throw it out the window!

Waiting to write the perfect sentence or finding the perfect word will doom you before you even begin. Remember that journaling is a personal practice and it’s okay for entries to be messy or incomplete.

You could even use a timer to starve off being perfect. Allocate a specific amount of time (5-10 minutes) for each entry. This can help you focus on expressing thoughts rather than crafting the perfect sentence.

Try shifting your mindset to appreciate the act of writing itself rather than the end result. Journaling is about exploration and self-discovery. And in the end, the outcome isn’t as important as the process.

Making Time for Journaling

Treat journaling like an appointment. Block out a specific time in your calendar each day or week dedicated to journaling. Commit to just 5-10 minutes a day. Even brief entries can be meaningful and manageable within a busy schedule.

Utilize short breaks during your day like lunch breaks or waiting times, to jot down quick thoughts or reflections.

Journaling is one of the best habits you can have. Make it a priority and make the time to make it happen.

Get in the Habit

Don’t let the idea of journaling intimidate and overwhelm you. Even if you think you’re not a good writer, it doesn’t matter. I guarantee you’ll see value from doing it.

Just stay consistent. The more you journal, the more you’ll get from it. So, settle into your spot, pick out a prompt, set a timer, and get writing. You’re about to begin a life-changing habit.

Need more help? Sign up for the weekly email

Subscribe to the Daily Journaler weekly email, delivered to your inbox every Monday, packed with tips, prompts, and inspiration to help you build your journaling habit.