How To Start Journaling
- meetthemeese
- Nov 22, 2022
- 14 min read
Updated: Aug 19, 2023
This post will look at what you can write in a journal, if you want to start maintaining one. This is a very broad topic, really, because you can use your journal for whatever you want; it's a personal (and personalised) hobby after all.
But for those who've got a stack of pretty books and stationery lying unused, or simply want to start keeping a journal but don't know where to begin, hopefully this short list helps some!
The only materials you need to start off with are a book and a writing instrument. Any book that you can write in, or want to write in, works. This post will look at a few examples of what content you could try putting into a journal, i.e., the actual written stuff. Not decorations, not formatting ideas (those may be in another post), but what you will actually write in your journal entries.
Let's get right into it!
TL;DR
- Daily Planner
- Daily Journal
- Mindfulness Practice
- Dreams & Goals Journal
- Bucket List Journal
- Travel Journals
- Info-Journal
- Picture Journal / old-school scrapbooking
- A Mish-Mash of Everything
- Literal Dream Journal
- Book of Rants / Book of BS
(Non)Table of Contents:
What Can I Journal About?
To reiterate - you can journal about anything at all. There is no one standard to be followed, no rules anyone can put in place for you. You can journal about your hobbies, your plans, write diary entries if you want to; it's all about what you want your book to mean to you. This is something that might not always be clear from the outset, but once you get started, you'll figure out what it is that you actually like about journals and why you'd want to maintain one. Soon enough, you'll have a book of your happy thoughts and/or memories that can always bring a smile to your face as you pick it up and go through a few pages.
Here are a few common topics or themes that people keep journals for:-
Daily Planner
Recommended time: A good time to write your entries is the evening or night before
Recommended format: A good format to use is bullet points or numbered lists.
One of the easiest things to start writing about - your daily schedule! You can write down your daily meal plans, workout schedules, classroom/work hours schedules, to-do lists or anything else that's routine or fairly regular in your life.
Try to stick to 1 or 2 topics (such as meals + workouts, or to-do lists + any special activities or projects), where you can list out the actions for the day in a condensed manner, in 1 page maximum. This helps avoid the tedium of writing about daily activities in each entry. Just focus on what excites you the most, or what parts of your day you would like to stay focused on and improve.
Having a daily schedule laid out for you, already planned and penned the previous night/day, makes it so much easier to stay on track with any specific routines you want to stick to (like healthy meals or regular exercising). And if it's to-do lists, then writing them down makes it much easier to reference and go through one-by-one.
Of course, your daily planner can have a bit of both - daily schedules and non-daily to-do lists. Or even special events you need to remember to cater for, or any activities you're really looking forward to. The common theme in all such entries is 'organisation'. Lists help keep things organised, and therefore make activities easier to manage.
SIDE NOTE:
For meal plans, rather than track your meals on a day-to-day basis, I'd recommend pre-planning your meals the previous day and writing them down, so that you can simply follow the menu the next day(s). You can make the menus as rigid or as flexible as you like.
I've found it much more helpful to have healthy meals that I can look forward to preparing the next day, rather than being focused on documenting intake. This way, what time I would otherwise spend being conscious of what I'm putting into my stomach, I instead use to come up with different ways to make my already-planned meals better or tastier according to what I feel like eating at that moment. Healthy meal still forms the base, and I still have some free space to spruce it up to my liking.
You don't really have to stick to schedules and lists of activities alone; you could also pen down your observations for the day, but I like to call that book a -
Daily Journal
Recommended time: At the end of the day
Recommended format: Free-form writing
Write about your day! What you saw, what you heard, what you ate, what the weather was like etc..
Inarguably a less intimidating form of journal writing for those of us who don't like routines or lists, writing down your observations for the day in a free-form manner is very good way to start a journal. Ignore those who say this is more like writing in a diary; writing is writing, and as I've said before, nobody else makes the rules for you!
You can make your entries as detailed or as vague, as long or as short as you want. It's simply a journal of observations. Your observations don't even have to be in writing - you could also take a photograph a day of something that caught your attention, and you'd end up with a daily photo-book!
This practice can actually help in many ways.
Mindfulness: Writing daily is a good mindfulness practice. More on what you can write for mindfulness in particular is below.
Increased Engagement: You can't very well make observational entries if you're not observing life around you everyday, can you? A daily journal can over time improve your level of awareness of and engagement with the things that happen around you, in your life, everyday. This helps us really see the little joys in life, and can be a pleasant way to avoid (or break out of) patterns of mindless monotony so many of us are prone to unconsciously falling into.
Reflection: Your own observations are in a way a reflection of yourself - of how you perceive and process things, of what usually catches your attention strongly enough to find its way into your journal entry, of what events from that day left an impression on you, and why. Each writing session can become a time for self-reflection, and for better understanding your thoughts and emotions.
Mindfulness Practice
If you want to start writing for mindfulness specifically, some easy ways to get into the practice include writing daily positive affirmations, things you're grateful for, achievements (however big or small) of the day and reaffirming your goals or dreams. Just remember not to get fixated on the 'practice' part over the mindfulness.
A simple format for mindfulness practice is listing, every day, 3 things you're grateful for or 3 good things that happened during the day. I prefer a slightly tweaked format, the daily 3-1 entry: 3 things that you made you smile today that you're grateful for, and (because let's be realistic here) optionally 1 thing that irritated you or made you sad or angry. If I can recall a negative event for the day easily, that's when it strikes me how I'm about to take that to bed with me, potentially ruining my sleep.
Writing it down lets me get it off my chest and get over it. It's also helped me realise how 99% of the time, it's usually something silly that annoyed me, especially when contrasted with all the nice things I'd listed above. So this format helps with 3 things really:
Remembering the good stuff that happened, that you can genuinely feel grateful for. You realise soon enough that you don't really have to force gratitude, it comes naturally for the things that matter to you, if you let it.
Letting go of any residual negative feelings or thoughts before turning in for the night
Learning a bit more about yourself, especially from your reactions to what you consider 'irritants'
You might not always have 3 happy things to write about, and that's okay. You might find that you rarely have anything that disappointed you, and that's great! Sometimes you'll have more than 1 aggravating instance you can write about - I'd suggest picking just the 1 that sticks out most to you. It's simply important to start setting up the routine.
Keep your 3-1 entries short and sweet and easy to read (such as using single sentences for each), so that you don't start looking at this as some kind of chore because of how long it takes.
However, if the idea of daily journaling just isn't for you, then there are plenty of other things you can write about.
Dreams & Goals
Recommended time: Whenever you feel like it
Recommended format: Lists, tables and/or free-form writing
Jot down your dreams, your goals. Your ambitions. *googles synonyms* Your passion. Your aspirations. Your intent.
You can write about whatever goals you may have, short-term or long-term - weight goals, professional or financial goals, personal development goals, personal ambitions and desires, a mix of it all. The key here is to first focus on your intent towards these goals and then transcribe them into your journal.
So, instead of simply writing what your ideal weight is, or what your dream bank account statement looks like, focus on the 'why' of your dreams. Why do you want to achieve this? Think about that, reaaally think about it, and jot down all your reasons.
It's very important to visualise yourself in your goal scenarios as you write them down. Want to lose weight so your knees don't hurt? Imagine what it used to be like when they didn't! Imagine yourself easily doing the things you find you no longer comfortably can because of weight-induced pains.
As the visualisation helps you get really involved in the whole process, you might find that some of those reasons you listed take priority over others, or some reasons don't actually mean much to you at all. But now that they're all on paper, you can visibly see, strike out, re-organise the motivations for your ambitions; and this basically gives you a bulleted/numbered list of some of the things you really want to do in life.
Thus, instead of focusing on, say, a number, you can start looking forward to being able to do what you actually want to.
So the next time you want to eat a bit into your savings just for that one little discount purchase, or skip
your workouts just this one week, you can pull out your journal, look at all those priorities of yours and
remember how you felt when you were writing all of this down, remember why you're doing this in the first place. That's why visualisation is key - it helps with the recall.
Once the 'why' is in place, you'll find it easier to fill in the 'how'. Subsequent entries can include steps to achieve your goal, which order you want to tackle your goal scenarios, what progress you've made so far etc.. Keep the actual goals and reasons in the first or first few entries, so that you can quickly look them up for inspiration when you need it.
SIDE NOTE:
When decorating your entries, use the same intent that you put into the visualisation. Try to make your entry look any way that to you, personally, evokes feelings of joy, hope, purposefulness or just pleasantness. Take the time to turn your journal ornamentation into mental associations.
Bucket List Journal
Recommended time: Whenever you feel like it
Recommended format: Lists and/or free-form writing and/or pictures
Bucket lists. We all have those (probably). What's in yours? List them out! You can have one master-list entry, with how-to-accomplish-these and look-at-the-ones-I've-crossed-out! entries later on; or one journal entry for each item in your list (like a travel journal, for example, which can double up as a scrapbook for the places you want to visit). I haven't really got a bucket list because I'm fairly certain I'm immortal, so that's all I can write on this.
Travel Journal
Recommended time: Whenever you feel like it, during or right after your travels
Recommended format: Lists and/or free-form writing and/or pictures
A journal where you can record your observations during travels. And these don't have to always be travels to far-away destinations or vacation spots. They can be about any time you're actually travelling. I'd encourage you to write about your regular rides on the bus or train, and trips or outings from during the day - did you notice how the lady who's usually selling lemons near the entrance of the vegetable market isn't there today? Or how about those two women who clearly didn't know each other but entered the same carriage wearing the same fancy-as-heck dress, looked each other in the eye briefly and then proceeded to awkwardly ignore the other for the rest of their respective journeys?
This can help you get more involved even in your daily mundane activities (like traveling to work or school/college) making them that much more interesting. Observing your environment or people around you going about their daily lives when you've got some free time on your hands is also a very good way to train your story-writing skills, if that's something you're keen on. And what does one have on hand in public transport but free time (and the occasional unwieldy piece of luggage)?
Just because you may be travelling everyday doesn't mean you have to write about every trip though. Not unless you want to.
Of course, you can totally have a travel journal only for your worldly expeditions.
Infojournal
Recommended time: Whenever you've learnt or found something new, or whenever you feel appropriate.
Recommended format: Lists and/or free-form writing and/or pictures or doodles
You're right, I'm making up names for obvious things, but only because no one can stop me.
An informational journal is an observation and documentation journal for the academic in some of us. This is just a collection of pieces of information or related ephemera for one (or several) of your hobbies or interests.
Think, recipe journal (with recipes as well as entries about how your attempts at them went), or a book of botanical sketches with small blocks of descriptive text included because you love the plants in your garden and want to document them all, or simply learn something new about them (this could even include dried/pressed plant specimens from your own garden, or plain old photographs if not sketches). A book of prompts where you can practice your writing skills and/or pen down any useful writing tips or lessons you've come across recently. Maybe a book on fabric or sewing, replete with fabric scraps and hand-drawn patterns and ideas for your next project. A fancy form of note-taking, if you will, but no reason your reference notes shouldn't be fancy!
It's as if you were documenting your own learning process as you went about digging deeper into a hobby of yours. What's that? You say this sounds like a lot when you used to take class notes in a bunch of different coloured inks and with half a dozen highlighter pens? Well, I wouldn't know much about that experience first hand, I didn't attend half my classes, let alone be acquainted with the art of studying (psych!). But anyways, there's no age limit to learning something new.
*If you're attending any classes at any age, please don't skip them. There's too much you'll miss out on!
Picture Journal
Recommended time: Whenever you feel like it
Recommended format: Pictures, doodles and paraphernalia
Also known as a scrapbook, but in the actual form, not those fancy expensive hard bound books with spaces for you to stick photos and write 2 words underneath (are those even things outside of where I live? Dunno).
Stick pictures of whatever you like! Magazine cutouts, paper or cloth scraps that you like, an article from today's newspaper even (though that's not really a picture), stickers that make you happy, photographs, anything that you find that you really like, just tack it on! You don't have have to write anything. You can, if you want to. But you don't have to, and for someone visual (and lazy (like me)), that's just perfect.
You can use such a journal to start collecting images of things that you like (or just pretty pictures in general). Or you can turn it into an aesthetic thing - make your own pinterest board the old school way. It's a ton of fun to physically arrange and stick images you like onto a page in a book already chock-full of interesting pictures!
I'd like to throw junk journals into this category too, because junk journals are usually constructed with bits and pieces that look aesthetically pleasing to us, thus establishing a unique theme for every individual (in addition to whatever theme the creator was going for).
A picture journal can be a low-intensity form of journalling, especially when you don't go *actively looking* for things to add to your journal (unless that's the only way you can get the pictures you're aiming for), and instead just be more observant of the things around you, and snap up anything you like. Images from an old, tattered cooking magazine that you don't need or use anymore, or the cutesy mascot in the pamphlet for the nearby store that you were handed today, or inserts in old cassette/cd covers. Or a book of memories, where you can stick little bits from your memorable trips, like entry tickets, coupons or photos.
A Mish Mash Of Everything
Recommended time: Whenever you feel like it
Recommended format: Lists, free-form writing, pictures/doodles
Better (definitely better) suited for the irregular type of journal-keeping. Write whatever you want whenever you feel like it! Not everyone is naturally organised anyways. So you can write about your dream travel destination(s) in one entry, dedicate the next entry to your favourite band or a bunch of meaningful song lyrics, write a third entry about your goals, and how far along the path to them you are. You can collect observations from a trip in one entry, a list of quotable quotes (or roasts) in another, your thoughts on an issue or topic of interest to you in yet another entry; the possibilities are endless. Just mix it all up!
A Few Uncommon Suggestions
Dream Journal
Might seem a little...off-beat to some, but journaling about what you dream at night when you're asleep is a fascinating undertaking. It takes some time and practice to train your brain to remember what you'd dreamt of the previous night, but if you're able to do so, then it'd be an interesting experiment indeed.
I tried maintaining a dream journal for a while when I was in school, and it was so much fun! A lot of my dreams were boring or just plain weird (and mostly featured Martin Mystery), but then there were some very memorable ones that played out like some kind of illustrated story; such as this short and sweet one involving a 'governess' with no eyes terrifying her wards before devouring them in the dark, to the backdrop of a raging storm outside. So memorable I still remember it 2 decades later, heh. But only because I could recall it as soon as I awoke!
If you read some of your dreams later in your journal, you'll realise pretty soon that you've got great material for a short story or two.
Anyways, for those interested, what worked for me was being relaxed before falling asleep (easy when you're a kid with no responsibilities) and repeating to myself in my head that I would wake up and remember my dreams. You can search for sites that explain dream recall techniques (if any truly informative sites on this even exist on page 1 of Google) if you're into that stuff. Just remember to write down your dreams as soon as you wake up!
Book of Rants / Book of BS
Also known as Bob.
Not everything is cheerful and pleasant all the time. Sometimes things don't go according to plan, or we miss or forget something important to us, sometimes someone just rubs us the wrong way with something they did or said - for all of these and more, writing actually helps. I always have a book of rants, or a book of BS, where I write when things don't go so well.
If something's bothering you, write it down. And importantly, forget about it afterwards. You'll notice your temperature cooling already as you're in the midst of explaining in written form what went wrong, how you felt, what you think happened etc.- writing can be very calming. At the end of it, you'll find it easy to let go and forget about it.
If this doesn't work for you though - let's say it has the opposite effect and you keep seething about things and can't stop re-reading your entries and getting riled up again - avoid this type of journaling like Gintoki avoids paying the rent. Or consider ranting on a piece of paper and then tearing it or destroying it. Cathartic.
I hope this short list gives you some ideas on what you can start journaling about!
Happy writing!
- Meeselette
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