A Journaling Practice That Takes 10 Seconds a Day
How a single sentence can help you reflect on your life
The daily habit that has changed my life the most has been journaling. It is a habit like meditation; many people talk about how they want to do it but don’t know where to start.
Four years ago, I started journaling using a method that took less than a minute each day and was easy to maintain. Over time I grew my approach into a more defined practice, but even the starting point was a powerful habit.
Getting your ideas out of your mind on paper is beneficial, but that is not the main reason I keep a journal. It gives me a way to reflect on my thoughts and experiences. Am I moving forward in life the way that I want? Having a journal helps me to see my journey and how much progress I have made.
Start with a small journaling habit
Starting a new habit is difficult. Our brains want to save energy, which causes resistance to changes in our routines. Because of this, we have a lot of inertia to overcome when starting something new.
We have to find the most achievable step that we can routinely do to start building that habit.
“The secret is to always stay below the point where it feels like work.” — James Clear in Atomic Habits
For a journaling practice, the first step I found to start was writing one sentence every day.
This forced constraint made it easy to accomplish the goal every day. Under one minute, and you have completed the habit for the day. The power of this approach is that it is so tiny your excuses on why you don’t want to do it don’t apply. Anyone can take a minute to jot down a sentence about their day.
This constraint also forces you to be selective about what you write. For example, what is the one thing that you want to make a note of from your day? Was it something that happened at work? Was it an activity you did with your family?
Having to choose what the topic of your daily note causes you to reflect on your day. We experience countless things every day that we could write about, but choosing one will be hard on some days. Other days it might be obvious what that single thing should be.
It would be best if you also decided where you want to keep your journal. The image in your mind may be a physical book you write in each night, but nothing is more convenient than your phone when building the habit.
You can use the default notes app to create a note for each month ahead of time. Number the lines for each day in the month. Then when you go to update the journal, you already have the single line ready to write on.
Use a cue while building the habit
There have to be a few other pieces in place to make sure you write that sentence each day and build the new habit.
When building a habit, you need to have a cue to remind you to take action. You want this journaling activity to be at the end of each day, so there are two ways you can set this cue.
If you already have a regular evening routine, look for something that can become your cue to write down that sentence about the day. For example, if you fix a cup of tea before going to bed, write your sentence while waiting on the water to boil. Or, if you put the kids to bed at the same time each night, make your journal entry after you leave their bedroom.
If you don’t have a set evening routine or even a reminder while trying to build the habit, set the alarm on your phone. It could even be a daily task in your reminders app that pops up at the same time each evening. That can be your cue to write your daily sentence.
Reviewing your journal
Each day, updating your journal will take less than a minute, but you find the benefits when you do one more thing — read your journal.
Set aside time to read what you wrote each day for that month. If you only wrote a single sentence each day, this would not take long to read.
By doing this, you can look back over the last several weeks and see what you wrote as the most noteworthy event of each day. So often in daily life, we talk about how fast time flies. Reading your notes for the past month helps that time to slow down a little bit.
Some of the notes you will remember pretty well. Others you might have already forgotten. Each one is a snapshot of what you decided to remember about that day.
How to grow your journaling practice
Over time you may want to expand your journal. For me, after several months, I started adding a few sentences to each day instead of just one. It did extend my review time, but I was able to capture more details of each day. On the other hand, maybe you decide to stick with the single sentence because the act of selecting the highlight is more valuable. There is no wrong answer here.
Another next step you might take is re-reviewing your monthly journals. What trends will you see or forgotten moments will you remember if you read your sentences for the past six months? Or read about your entire past year on New Year’s Eve to kick off the next one.
Conclusion
The single sentence approach to journaling makes it bite-size and easy to stick with the habit. Then, when it comes time to review your journal, that will also be quick and easy. You will be able to see the journey of your last month or year in only a few minutes.
Taking a moment to capture a thought about each day can give you a daily pause for yourself, provide perspective on the trends in your life, and help you remember the moments in life that you might have otherwise forgotten.
First published in Better Humans on Medium.com
https://medium.com/better-humans/a-journaling-practice-that-takes-10-seconds-a-day-8de02ecaf3c1