Why start now?

For a long time, I was turned off by journaling. Despite knowing its benefits, I avoided it.

For one thing, journaling seemed like an extremely daunting task, another chore. We hear about successful people who journal for an hour or two a day, and in those moments come up with their most excellent ideas - this definitely couldn’t be me, so why bother, I thought. Despite setting a New Year’s Resolution every year to start the habit, it wouldn’t last much longer than two or three weeks.

Today, I journal every single day and have got a two-month success streak to be proud of! In this short time, I have already seen improvements throughout my life - even in the least expected areas.

As an excited and fresh journaler, I want to share some tips I wish I knew before getting started and insights from those who have journaled for far longer. Maybe you’ll pick up this habit too -- there’s no time like the present!

1. Who

Let’s start with who journaling is for. It can be motivating and persuasive to discover that many of our most revered thinkers like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Ben Franklin all kept daily journals. Still, it can feel demoralizing at the same time. The feeling of not having enough innovative thoughts for the practice was one of the mental blocks I struggled with the most when getting started. I’ve realized that you don’t need a groundbreaking reason to start journaling, nor do you need to come up with the next Theory of Relativity for your journal to be powerful.

Simply, journaling doesn’t have to be revolutionary.

It’s written by you, for you.

No one will ever see your notes (my 10-year-old self would recommend taking extra precautions by buying a journal with a lock to make sure your siblings don’t take a peek). In fact, you can also choose to never look back on those pages if you don’t want to either.

2. What

What do we even journal about? I was tempted to say “anything!” (which by the way is the truth). Sometimes, though, this exact fact that we can write about anything and everything is the very reason we don’t end up doing it. Journals vary from stream of consciousness to food, events of the day, fitness, and beyond. There are two kinds of journals that are especially helpful places to start.

Gratitude journal

This is where I began. I created a simple prompt, “I am grateful for…” (I know, groundbreaking) and I would list three things I was grateful for that day. Anything from specifics like an adorable grandma cheering me on during my morning run (true story), to broader things like my health or family.

Gratitude journals are not only very simple, as there are so many things to be grateful for, but practicing gratitude is also extremely beneficial to your health. Especially during the current pandemic, when we might be feeling overwhelmed and stressed, remembering the positives in our lives is essential, however large or small they may be. After I started this habit, I even noticed that while going about my normal, boring day, I would look for moments to be grateful for and think, “I’m going to write this down in my journal!” On the days I wasn’t sure, I would look through my Mana app at my time tracking records of everything I did, and it helped me see a clear picture of many things I could be grateful for.

The weekly review

The weekly review is an excellent kind of journal to start if you’re also looking to add life goals to your journaling habit. While the weekly review was pioneered as a productivity hack, it can be applied to so much more.

At Mana, we believe in a comprehensive weekly review, which can be done easily through the app: you get a reminder at the end of each week to reflect on each activity or area of your life that’s tied to your goals and write a journal entry.

Our Seekers have expressed that going through this exercise weekly has been one of the most powerful journaling tools. One Seeker summarized this process of acknowledging his emotions in real-time as being fundamental:

“I like to reflect on my weeks and think about how they made me feel. Did putting in 70 hours make me feel burnt out or proud of having achieved something special? Was it disappointing to not hit my targets for fitness and growth for this week, or was I glad I took a break to enjoy family time with my daughter?”

3. When & Where

We’ve figured out that anyone can journal about anything, so let’s now think about the details by starting with the When and Where.

Everyone has different times of the day when they can find some quiet and when it makes the most sense to reflect -- that’s natural with such a personal activity. Here are a few true and tested times that have worked for others and might work for you!

Mornings

The morning can be a great time to get all of your thoughts out from the night before and get clarity for the rest of the day. Write down what goals you’d like to accomplish today, any mental chatter, and new ideas you might have.

Post-work evenings

Another great time to journal is right after work. This time can be great for reflecting on your time on the job – what went well and what you can improve tomorrow. Experts say that this exercise is important for the learning process and can also act as a way to create a work-life boundary, where you decide to no longer think about work for the rest of the day

Friday afternoons

Friday is one of my personal favorite times to journal, especially for conducting the weekly review. Laura Vanderkam also suggests that Friday afternoons are a great time to reflect on the week and plan the week ahead as it’s usually when our energies for work-related things die down. Since it’s a low opportunity cost time, getting the weekly reflection out of the way on Friday afternoon also clears it from your Sunday night headspace so you can fully enjoy the weekend.

Go digital

This suggestion might be a little controversial. While there is a lot of evidence pointing to the benefits of using pen and paper, I believe that journaling online, and especially using Mana, has uniquely valuable advantages:

Always accessible
We carry our phones with us 24/7. You never have to worry about forgetting your physical journal (and if you’re a person like me who refuses to write in anything else if I have a designated journal, this can eliminate an excuse to skip important entries).
Reminders for Accountability
A well-timed notification can help you stay accountable to your goals. I’ve found this to be especially helpful on the days where journaling fell on the back burner.
Digital record

I love looking back through my old journal entries, and there’s nothing worse than wanting to revisit some of your past thoughts only to find that you’ve misplaced your journal, or lost in a move. Mana also offers a clear view of your reflections over time, so you can see things like the general status of your weekly reviews over time or trends in how certain activities or kinds of activities make you feel. These visualizations are powerful tools for honest reflection and can provide surprising insights to help you with your goals.

4. Why

Still not convinced that journaling is a great habit to pick up? Let’s now tackle the Why of journaling.

There are countless benefits to journaling. These include reducing stress, enhancing creativity, bringing more clarity, increasing self-awareness, and capturing your life story that you can look back on (if you so choose). While these are great perks, I’d like to highlight the three most powerful journaling benefits I’ve found from talking to long-time journal writers and my personal experience.

Enables personal growth

I recently spoke to a colleague of mine who has been journaling for over three years. He says that writing journal entries has been the most influential technique he has ever utilized for self-improvement and happiness. This practice, he says, allows you to be honest with yourself about what makes you feel joy, pride, anger, and regret. Having this perspective often nudges you to change your behavior all by itself.

Accelerates you towards reaching your goals

Journaling can be a fantastic tool to help you keep track of your goals and measure your success. For starters, writing down your goals can make them seem more real and tangible than just having them as thoughts in your head.

But when it comes to following through and staying on track when things get tough, your journal can act as an accountability partner that pushes you just beyond your comfort zone and encourages you along the way.

The Hawthorne Effect in practices states that people perform better when others are watching. This is because fundamentally, we care about what others think, and we want to put our best foot forward. In the same way, when we write down goals in our journals and frequently record how we are faring and what progress we have made to achieve those goals, we feel accountable to both our old and future self, making succeeding more likely.

Establishes a powerful habit

Journaling every single day has been so impactful to me, not just because it felt good (which it did!), but because of the tremendous effect on the parts of my life I least expected.

By showing up every day to journal – no matter how tired I was or how uninspired I was feeling, I began to form and reinforce a new identity: “I’m the type of person who sticks with stuff.”

Self-care and my health tend to go on the back burner when things get busy. I never have a problem with getting schoolwork or work done, even in stressful times, but I have always done so at the cost of my physical and mental health. Since beginning to journal every day, I set a daily resolution to move my body and break a sweat. Spoiler alert! I have not missed a workout in over two months, and I genuinely believe it was a result of the new identity that I created and reinforced every day by journaling.

5. How

Now that you’re most likely convinced you want to start journaling let’s talk about a few practical tips. In hindsight, what made it so difficult for me to stick to a journaling habit until now was the pressure I felt and the unrealistic expectations I was setting.

Release the pressure:

I used to think that for something to count as a journal entry, I had to sit and write pages of thoughts for an hour and come out on the other side with a cleared head and happier soul. Not only is this unrealistic, but it practically sets you up for failure.

As with all new habits that we pick up, the key is to start small. When wanting to make a change, we often get too excited and start off too big. While this works for the first few days or a week, the fire quickly burns out, and our new habit starts feeling too much like a chore.

Author of Atomic Habits, James, Clear recommends the Two-Minute Rule

When I started journaling, I followed it too. For the first few days, I deliberately only allowed myself two minutes. My first journal entry was 31 words long. After two minutes, I stopped.

Although a few days later, I could no longer resist and started writing longer entries, this two-minute rule set a bare minimum daily expectation.

Anyone can find two-minutes in their day. By releasing the pressure of journaling having to be some big task, I knew that even on the tough days, all I had to put in was 2-minutes.

Set the right expectations

Speaking of expectations, knowing the difference between establishing a habit versus a routine can set you up for success without false hope. Nir Eyal explains that we tend to think of habits as behaviors that will eventually become effortless. On the other hand, routines (which are a sequence of actions regularly followed) often require conscious thought.

Journaling is a routine, not a habit. The nature of journaling requires us to be mentally present and is not something we can do on autopilot. Instead of feeling disappointed (like I did many times over) when I thought my new habit would eventually become effortless, I acknowledged that journaling would probably never come easy. I recommend thinking of it as a routine (or part of a routine), being deliberate about journal time, and not creating false hope that it will come effortlessly one day.

That’s the who, what, where, when, why, and how of journaling, a comprehensive set of tools to successfully begin your habit. Interested in trying out some of those digital journaling tools with Mana? Click here and sign up for a free personalized coaching session with one of our expert guides and help you get started on your journey.

Decoding the Benefits of Journaling