I’ve journaled more in 2022 than any other year in my life. As of mid-September 2022, I’ve written 47,800 words in my “journal”. I use my notes app so I can jot down quick notes from my phone and do more long-form writing from my computer.
I’ve recently started an additional journaling practice. I have a Moleskine journal that I write in every day (I love these Moleskine XL classic notebooks). I enjoy the act of physically writing things down on paper. I find that having a specific framework for journaling can help keep you more focused on certain things rather than just having an open-ended journal entry.
My Daily Journaling Prompt Template
This is the template I use to prompt my daily journal entry.
5 Headlines
I’m constantly thinking of new articles I could write for my blog. I have a running list in my notes app. But I also want to improve my headline writing skills to make my titles more interesting and enticing for my readers.
This exercise just keeps my headline writing skills sharp.
5 Things I’m Grateful For
This one really helps me hone in on the positive aspects of my life. It’s easy to look at all of the things in your life that aren’t going so well and think about how to improve them. However, just having an outlet to express things I’m happy about or people in my life that I’m grateful for just helps shift my mindset in a more positive direction.
There is actually research that shows that practicing gratitude can improve your sleep, lower your stress, and improve your interpersonal relationships.
3 Goals
I like to write down my goals. Just the act of writing them down helps me make them more of a priority. Also, having a record of what my goals are allows me to check in every so often and monitor my progress.
Every day I write down three goals. These could be big, longterm goals or simply a few things I want to accomplish today.
3 Struggles
I write down anything I’m struggling with, or and road blocks I’m encountering. I like to think about how I can solve the issues and write that down. It helps me to work through the issues and gives me a path towards fixing them.
Some days I may not have any struggles, and on others prioritizing only 3 might be a struggle.
3 Wins
I like to finish up my entry with some wins from the previous day. Ending with this helps me build some momentum to help propel me into my tasks for the day.
Notes
I like to include this section so I can add any thoughts I had come up during my writing.
Some great ideas Christian. I’ve definitely become too reliant on writing on my laptop and really don’t write enough in a journal with pen and paper much anymore . . . but I think I miss out on some of the creativity that happens writing freehand. Love your ideas. I esp. love the idea of writing five headlines. When I worked as a reporter years ago, we used to use that trick to a.) improve our headline writing, but also b.) to figure out the stories that we thought needed written. It’s enormously helpful. I’m going to splurge on a nice, over-priced notebook and see if I can’t get back into the habit. Thanks for the suggestions.