What I Learned from Journaling Everyday for Six Months
There are people who have been keeping a diary or journaling everyday for their whole lives. I am not one of those people, but I did try journaling everyday for six months. A lot of learning occurred along the way and I’m excited to share that with you. Self-awareness, improved memory, accountability, and reduced anxiety just to name a few. If you’re interested in these benefits and more, keep reading.
I Didn’t Plan to Try Journaling Everyday
The funny part is that I didn’t set out to actually journal. I was initially writing about running everyday with Rüffus (my dog) for a month. That got interrupted quickly when I got a nasty cut on my heel and couldn’t wear running shoes. Then I wrote about our move that we were in the middle of. Before I knew it, I was writing half page accounts of what had occurred during the day.
It happened so organically that I didn’t even notice I was doing it at first. Then came some realizations:
- This was journaling, and I liked it a lot.
- This would make a great blog post.
So, twenty days after I started writing about running, I was now journaling everyday.
The Set Up
Journaling everyday won’t work if it feels like work. Set aside some time that works for your schedule. That might be in the mornings on the bus, during your lunch break at work, or in bed before falling asleep. If you feel rushed to get something down, you won’t get the most out of journaling. It’s your choice to journal, do it when it suits you.
Sometimes I would write the whole day down just before bed. Other times I would write some in the morning, more in the afternoon, and finish off in the evening. I liked not having a set schedule. Writing ‘when the muse took me’ or just when there was something to write about felt right.
Also, don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day of journaling here-or-there. We think that if we don’t do 100% that means we’ve failed. Be kind to yourself. I ended up missing a few days of journaling when there was a lot going on in life. I went back when there was time and filled in those days the best I could, and that was just fine.
You can facilitate your journaling by having a set-up that works for you. For some people that means having a physical journal with a nice cover and smooth-gliding pens. Others work best writing in their favorite phone app because they can always have it on them. I was journaling on my laptop because I was already on it writing other things. I could also access my journal from my phone for those times when my lap was occupied by a snuggly doggo.
Benefits to Journaling Everyday
Joy
It’s a wonderful way to check-in with yourself. How many times have you gotten through a really long day and actually acknowledged what you accomplished? With journaling you have to actually sit down and think about your feelings and what got accomplished during the day. This isn’t something I’d done on a daily basis before. Before I knew it, my day didn’t feel complete until I had written about it. It made me happy.
Reduced Anxiety
Have you ever felt anxious without realizing why? Sitting down to journal and check in with yourself can help you figure it out. I’d often figure out that my anxiety was caused by having some goals I didn’t accomplish, or that I was fretting about everything I need to do tomorrow. If I hadn’t taken the time to think critically about my day by journaling, I would have just gone to bed with all that anxiety.
Self-Awareness
The ability to turn your attention inward towards the self. If you can understand yourself, it can boost your confidence and help you become more understanding of others. Read more about the research here. Journaling helps with self-awareness because writing down your thoughts, feelings, and actions gives you a window into yourself. You can look back at what you wrote and reflect on it. You might understand yourself better.
Deleting Negativity
There are times when you just need to vent or get some thoughts out of your head. And journaling everyday is a great way to get those negative feelings out. One of my favorite things to do was deleting these vents because it felt like I was deleting the negativity out of my life. It was cathartic to be able to see the words that had been floating in my head get erased. These thoughts that had taken up residence in my brain were getting evicted.
Improved Memory
Do you find yourself not remembering what you had for supper last night, or the plot to the movie you watched last week? Most details just won’t stick, at least not for long. I’m the same way. Journaling everyday helped via rote memorization. That’s the act of repeating something in order to increase your memory. This form of learning was a go-to for me in school for years. Journaling became my rote memorization tool to remember my days’ activities. Writing down what I’d done for the day helped me retain it for longer than usual.
Fact Checking
A companion to the improved memory, you can fact check yourself by seeing when events happened in your journal. You have written records of the days’ main events organized chronologically by date when you journal everyday. Even though journaling everyday helped me remember things that happened, I still mixed up when they happened. Did we go grocery shopping on Wednesday or Thursday? When was Rüffus’ last bath? But being able to just look back in my journal, I was able to find reliable answers quickly.
Accountability
If you’re someone who starts all kinds of projects but has a hard time finishing them, journaling everyday can help hold you accountable. You can track how you’re doing on your projects and goals because there’s a written record of it. For example, I started some days by writing five things I was grateful for. I don’t know if I would have stuck with it for a month if I wouldn’t have been writing it down. But now I can look back at a month’s worth of things I’m grateful for and feel good about that.
Time Management
Journaling everyday is something that takes time. It’s easy to spend a lot of time on it because you enjoy what you’re doing. Challenge yourself by putting a time limit on your writing. If you have a set amount of time to write, you’ll get your thoughts down more efficiently. I was spending over an hour when I first started because I didn’t realize how much time was passing. But once I put a time limit on, I found it easier to get my thoughts down because I only had so much time to do so.
Improving Your Writing
The old adage of ‘practice makes perfect’ may not always be true, but practice does make better. If you’re someone who struggles to write quickly or makes a lot of typos, then journaling everyday can help. While writing creatively, I take a lot of breaks to work through different plot points. But with journaling, I can write a lot at one time because I’m writing from recent experiences. My typing speed has improved and words that I commonly mistyped now occur less often.
Final Thoughts
I treated journaling everyday like catching up with a friend. I’d talk about everything, from food to family to feelings. Some days were very surface level, like the new movie I watched. Other days were about whatever project I was working on. It was cathartic to be able to share whatever was occupying my brain without judgement.
The benefits listed above, like accountability and joy, are just some of the positive changes you can gain from journaling everyday. It’s a wonderful way to express yourself. Having an outlet to create a physical representation of your feelings and thoughts is powerful.
I’d encourage everyone to try journaling if you haven’t before, even if you can’t do it every day. You might learn something new about yourself. Even if you don’t stick with it long-term, it’s fun to have a snap-shot of your life at this point in time to look back on. Why not give journaling a try, see what you think.
