I have tried Journaling in multiple ways, hoping to make it a regular habit. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to maintain one for more than a year. Here is a short overview of what I have tried and why it didn’t work for me.
Bullet Journal
A fancy way of writing on pen and paper. YouTube has plenty of tutorials on this ig you are interested.
Here are the pros and cons I felt when using this method:
- Pros
- Calming: I write whenever I feel stressed. It helps me focus on one problem at a time.
- Cons (most of these are my fault rather than being a problem with BuJo itself)
- Overwhelming: You can do a lot of things with BuJo: To-do tracking, short-term planning, and long-term planning. I burnt out trying to do too much.
- Availability: I often didn’t find my BuJo near me when I needed it. Even when I had it, I couldn’t write if there were no tables around me.
- Verbose: I just wrote too much which made it harder to review later.
I used BuJo for around 2 years, on and off. At some point, I realized I never read my old journals. So what was the point of writing them? Perhaps if I summarized my journal entries, I would be more likely to review them? With that in mind, I moved on to A6 journals.
A6 Journal
I simplified my method more by switching to an A6 diary. Since it’s just a quarter of A4 sized diary, I had to write less to fit my day in it.
- Pros
- Easy to Carry: A6 diary fits in your pocket.
- Short Format: Instead of writing the whole detail, I started writing only short summaries of events or thoughts. This made it easier to review later.
- Cons
- Inconvenient: Carrying an additional object all the time is a burden.
- Table: Still needed a table to write.
Somehow, I still didn’t read my old entries and I kept missing writing on it regularly. It wasn’t convenient enough.
Shift to Digital – Daylio App
Since I switched to short-form journaling, it became easier to type on my phone. So I started journaling on my phone in an app called Daylio.
- Pros
- Availability: I always have my phone around. It’s easier to carry.
- No Table Required: I can write while standing if needed.
- Cons
- Phone only: I couldn’t write more on it even if I wanted to. It’s hard to type too much on the phone after all.
Final Thoughts: Something is still missing
Shifting to digital has helped but I am still not reflecting on my notes enough.
What’s the point of journaling if I don’t reflect on what I have written?
I know that the act of writing itself has many benefits, but if that’s all I want, it would be simpler to just write on a page and then throw it away.
I have a new approach, which seems to be working for me at the moment, hence it’s not on the list above. I will write up a separate post for it. I just wanted to recap my old methods first otherwise the new method wouldn’t make sense.