How to Stick to Your Journaling Habit (For Real This Time)

Even though there are no rules to journaling, something about the task seems daunting when thinking about doing it everyyyy dayyyyy.

Which pen do I use? Which notebook? Or should it be digital? How much do I write? Am I supposed to follow a prompt? What if I don’t have much to say? What if I miss a day?

All of these steps and questions are enough of a hurdle that I simply do not do it most days. I typically only pick up my journal every couple months when it feels like an emergency — otherwise, nothing.

So, I took inspiration from Bare Minimum Monday and wondered… How can I bare minimum-ize the practice of journaling?

What is the smallest amount of effort I could give that would still satisfy my desire to write something down about my day?

In Matthew Hicks’s book Storyworthy, he describes a practice that he calls Homework for Life: At the end of every day, ask yourself “What was the most storyworthy moment of my day?” and write a few sentences about it.

I wondered, how could I make this even easier? What if I only wrote down a headline? What would the title be if my day were reported as a story in a newspaper?

I started calling this microjournaling, and it feels way more approachable than giving myself a goal of 3 pages per day — all I’m responsible for is a single line.

The bonus is how fun they are to look back on:

It doesn’t have to be funny, descriptive, or anything in particular — it can be whatever you want. I find that it forces me to find a noteworthy moment when I would’ve otherwise let the day pass by completely unappreciated. Sometimes it’s an inconsequential event that happened that I may want to remember. Sometimes it’s just anything that feels like an overarching vibe of the day.

It forces me to find a story amongst the mundane.

Here’s the Notion template I use to do this everyday — it’s free! It’s beginner-friendly, and also nimble enough to fit into a Notion expert’s existing dashboard.

If you end up having more to write beyond the headline, just click directly into the entry and keep writing. But if one line is all you can muster, you’ve done the bare minimum and you’re good to call it there.

That’s the cool part about lowering the bar — you get to see yourself win.

Click here to grab your very own microjournaling template ⭐️