Tips for Keeping a Digital Journal and Why You Should Do It

Maintain a daily Journaling isn’t easy for most people, but it takes less effort than you might imagine. It could also become a meaningful way to reflect and grow as a person.

For over 10 years, I have written a few words every morning, and what I have learned from this practice has changed my life. My only regret is not having started sooner.

If you want to add a daily journaling practice to your life, these tips and tools can help you not only get started, but also stick with it.

Why keep a journal or diary?

My journal is a tool for putting my thoughts in order, recording details of my life that are sometimes useful to know later and reflecting. However, the value of reflection only became apparent after I had been writing for several years and was able to look back on my life to see it from a different perspective.

I have always been very hard on myself. I make no excuses and look back on my failures with dismay. Every time I went back and read a series of journal entries about difficult times in my life, I was able to see them with an outsider’s perspective. I can see more clearly how difficult things were, or how many things went wrong at once, or the severity of a single event that I could have downplayed in the moment. This reflection has led me to be more compassionate towards myself and others. I learned to give myself a little breathing space.

You may discover something else, whether it’s a pattern of behavior or something you want to change. Or maybe in hindsight you realize that the things you thought you wanted to change don’t need to be changed at all. Journaling brings all of these things to light.

Memory is fickle. The self-reflection that we do entirely in our heads is vastly different from what we can do with notes. In short, this is why I have been writing daily for over 10 years.

What should you write in your journal?

Start each journal entry with the date and your location. Why bother if your computer or phone can add them automatically? Some reasons. Firstly, you will never look at a blank page and you will always know where to start. Second, metadata can be messed up over time or during file transfers. It is therefore more reliable to add them manually. Third, entering the date and location in the log entry ensures that this very important information can be searched.

What else should you write? A journal entry can be a simple brain dump. That’s what I do. Other things worth mentioning are major events, strong emotions, and hopes and dreams.

If following a method helps you, you can try gratitude journal. Some parents I know ask their children, at the end of the day, to think about their “rose, thorn, bud“ – a highlight of the day, a difficulty and something they look forward to – which is an equally good phrase for a diary.

How to make it a habit

The best tip I have for creating a new habit is to tie it to an existing habit. Find a habit you already have and combine it with a few minutes of daily writing.

I journal every morning as soon as I have coffee in front of me. My coffee-making routine is non-negotiable, unchanging, set in stone, seven days a week. Even when I’m staying in a hotel, I carry a travel coffee maker with me and write in my journal while drinking the coffee.