I Journaled Daily for a Year. What did I Learn?

So, for Christmas 2018 my lovely Wife bought me a 5 year, ‘line a day’ journal. Now, after having used it, and recorded my daily thoughts for almost twelve months, I thought it would be nice to look back at how I approached this new habit in my life.

Steve R
Steve R
Nov 7 · 3 min read

Journaling every day is a difficult habit to start. Especially if you have not done anything like this before. It requires commitment and consistency to install this new found habit into your already busy day.

That is where the ‘one line a day’ style journals can actually be a huge benefit. It requires a slightly lower level of commitment, so long as you are consistent and show up every day.

I’m sure like many people, I’ve tried journaling before. I would write for a few days. Maybe a couple of weeks. But then something gets in the way, and a day or two are missed.

So why bother continuing?

The self induced pressure of having to write a wordy journal entry about a non-descript day is really bloody hard!.

You’ve literally crawled out of bed, gone to work, arrived home and then gone to bed. How do you produce a meaningful journal entry about that? Sure, you could skip that particular day, but then you subliminally produce a bar, by which other days should be compared against. Is my day today, worthy of a journal entry? Maybe not.

That has been the destructive destiny of all my previous journaling attempts.

Writing a line a day gets over that hurdle. Believe me, many an evening I have sat there trying to think of something to write about my boring day in the office, but there are some golden nuggets in there. You just need to tease them out.

As this year has gone on, I have noticed myself being more present in the moment. Yes, a day in the office may not be so exciting, but start looking for those defining moments.

Maybe someone you haven’t heard from in a while sends you a message? Perhaps you should scroll through your address book and find someone distant to let them know you are thinking of them.

Maybe something happened in the news made you feel sad. Log that feeling for later when it is time to catch up with your journal. You can then unpack that feeling, and decide if you could follow up on with something.

So, now we are coming up to 2020, and this is where the five year line a day journal should start coming into its own.

From that first crisp day in the new year, when I turn back to the first page, I will start getting a brief reflection on that day in 2019.

Where I was.

What we were doing as a family.

Had something has affected my mental health?

And many more snippets from the past.

This will make the commitment and the consistency all worth while.

Where have I come from? Where am I going? I can’t wait to find out.

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