How to Make Journaling a Daily Practice

I’ve always journaled. It’s a necessary practice. Even before I thought of why I record, I recorded. All my work can be traced back to the journal. I’ve blogged about art journals + inspiration since college, but realized that I’ve been journaling differently lately. For the last two years, the process of journaling hasn’t been as beneficial to me or my work as in the past. It’s become a place to write down thoughts—but then throw them on the shelf and not reflect further. Journaling is about more than the flow from the pen to paper, so it’s time to start practicing again, take these records, and use them in the process of creation.

The idea of journaling better was one of those ideas that came up before, but until then, fell short of epiphany. I had run out of paper. I needed to write. Not type. Digging through notebooks, I found a blank one and began. After awhile I flipped a few pages and saw that I had actually been writing in this journal for months, stopping in June. It’s amazing that I could completely forget writing any of the pages that had come before the current date. Further, the words were eerily similar to what I had just written, despite the fact that in June I’d had none of the experiences that I’d had between August + October. It felt like by manifesting these thoughts in June, I willed the following experiences. I’ll talk more on this later, but I knew then that I needed to not only write but to actually go back, flip through the pages, and see what I’d written days, weeks, months before. I needed to use those experiences to create positive ones, to change, to take action, accomplish, to better my work.

You don’t have to be a writer or self-titled creative to journal, and often practices like these help those who feel the most like they won’t benefit from them. But like any daily practice, it’s difficult to get in the swing of things, and sometimes it can seem like forever before it feels life-changing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started daily writing practices, only to feel like I wasn’t getting anything out of them—even as someone who already knows, both logically, and subjectively, the utter importance of such a practice. But I wasn’t doing these three things:

How to Start a Daily Journaling Practice

Commit

Pointing out the obvious, but it needs to be said. Often an established routine can help you commit. That said, it’s a lot easier to commit when you do yourself a favor and make it easy. If your schedule gets packed during the day, don’t commit to journaling in the afternoon—wait until the evening when things slow down. If you have a commitment to family or friends at night, wake up early and journal. It won’t always need to be routine or scheduled—sometimes it’s much easier to take a few minutes to journal when inspiration strikes. But in the beginning, just commit.

Take the pressure off

I have a tendency to put immense pressure on myself. No one is telling me I need to get a book deal out of my journal or even share it with a single person or even spell a single word right, but I can fill a whole afternoon up just restricting myself, stopping myself from starting. Those kind of perfectionist tendencies are no longer welcome in my journal, and they shouldn’t be in yours. This is something you do for you, because it’s necessary and freeing. Give yourself the space to make that happen, the only requirement being that you dedicate a little time and your thoughts, each day.

Be open

Be open to the unconventional. One day your entry might be a list or a story or a record of a dream. You might dig through the recycle for bits of text to inspire you. You might really need to force it some days, and you might not be able to stop others. Within the book’s binding, form, material, the colors of the ink you choose—anything goes. When journaling, you’re not a writer or designer or artist or manager or assistant or chef or accountant. You’re just you.

Next time you open your journal, try to keep these three things in mind, and let it fuel your writing. If you’re not keen on just opening the book and going, check out this post for inspiration.