How to start journaling: 7 steps and examples for beginners

A journal is a dated record of what you lived, thought and felt, written for yourself. Unlike a memoir, it is written while events are still fresh, usually on the same day. Like a diary, it has no audience other than the person writing it.

People keep journals for different reasons: to remember a period of their life, to sort out what is on their mind, to put a name to their feelings or to see how things change over time. If you are curious what the research found, read our guide to the benefits of journaling.

Journaling has no strict rules, but a few habits define the form. They are also what teachers usually look for:

• Write the date. Each entry starts with the day, month and year; add the time and place if you like. The date is what puts an entry in context years later.
• Write in the first person. “I walked to work today.” A journal is told from your point of view.
• Be honest and plain. No one else will read it; write what you actually think instead of polished sentences.
• Write the feeling next to the event. Note not only what happened but how it made you feel. That is what separates a journal from a planner.
• Short or long are both fine. A one sentence entry and a three page entry are both journal entries.
• Ignore spelling. A journal is not an exam. Fixing mistakes slows the writing down.

1. 1Pick a tool and keep it for a month. A notebook, your phone's notes app or a journal app. Switching tools is the most polite way of avoiding writing. We compare the options in our guide to the best way to keep a journal online.
2. 2Choose a fixed moment. Before bed, with your morning coffee or when you get home from work. Make it the same moment every day.
3. 3Define a minimum version. What you can do even on your most tired day: one sentence, one word or just the mood of the day.
4. 4Write the date and start with one question. “What stayed with me most today?” A single question is the cure for a blank page.
5. 5Add the feeling to the event. Instead of “The meeting ran late”, write “The meeting ran late, I got impatient but felt relieved at the end.”
6. 6Finish without judging. Writing about a bad day is not a failure. If the entry is honest, it is good enough.
7. 7Read back once a week. Spend five minutes on the past week. Seeing patterns is the strongest reason to keep going.

Here is the same day written at three different lengths. All three are valid journal entries.

One line: “Tuesday, October 14, 2026. Tired but at peace.”

One paragraph: “Tuesday, October 14, 2026. Missed the bus this morning because of the rain and started the day tense. In the afternoon Ellie called and we laughed for half an hour. On the way home I realized that call shaped most of my day. Tired, but at peace.”

A long entry: In a longer entry you open the same day through four questions: What happened? What did I feel, and why? What would I do differently? What is one intention for tomorrow? These four questions are enough of a frame to make sense of a scattered day.

A blank page is the most common reason people quit. Asking the same three questions every day makes it easier:

• What happened today? Pick one moment; do not try to tell the whole day.
• How did I feel? Name the feeling in one word: tired, tense, grateful, calm.
• What do I want to remember? A sentence, a smell, a face.

For more ideas, browse our 60 journal prompts, sorted by category.

Most beginners quit in the first few weeks, usually not for lack of desire but because the daily task is too big. In a habit study published in 2010, it took a median of 66 days for a new daily behavior to become automatic, and missing the occasional day did not noticeably derail the process.

• Aim for an average, not a perfect streak. Writing five days a week beats three perfect weeks followed by quitting.
• Keep the journal visible. The notebook by your pillow, the app on your home screen.
• Use the minimum version on bad days. One word or one color is better than nothing.
• Read old entries. Meeting yourself from a month ago is the best reason to continue.

Pixmood is a mood journal built around step three above, the minimum version. You mark your day by tapping one of five moods, which takes about five seconds. On days you feel like writing, you can add a note of up to 1,000 characters, a one word tag of up to 20 characters, a photo or a voice note of up to two minutes, all for free.

With reminders on, Pixmood nudges you up to three times a day (9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 9 p.m.); once you check in, the rest of that day's reminders stay quiet. The times are fixed, you cannot pick your own. The app locks with Face ID, Touch ID, fingerprint or PIN. There is no account and no server; your entries live in a local database on your phone. “On this day” and the Memory Pool bring old entries back in front of you.

The limits, too: Pixmood only lets you log today, it is not designed for pages of writing and it offers no writing prompts for the daily entry. There is no web version either. If you love long entries, use a notebook and Pixmood together: one color every day, a page when you feel like it.