Journaling for Beginners: What Actually Matters

How To Start, What Matters, And What Doesn't

Journaling is one of the oldest human traditions we have. Ancient Egyptians kept records on papyrus. Roman emperors like Marcus Aurelius used journals to wrestle with philosophy. Samurai warriors carried war diaries. Medieval monks copied down their prayers and doubts in the margins of manuscripts. For thousands of years, people have turned to the page to remember, to reflect, to process what it means to be alive. So Im here to answer one question, how do you journal?

Everyone tells you, you should journal this, you should journal that. Just journal about what you feel. You should just journal but no one actually tells you how to do it.

So how do you actually begin? And more importantly, how do you continue without giving up after three entries. Im going to try to walk you through journaling from the ground up: not just the “write your feelings” advice you’ve heard a hundred times, but deeper ways of thinking about it. Ways most people don’t consider when they crack open that first notebook.

The Myth Of Needing A “Good” Notebook

One of the biggest traps for beginners is believing that journaling can’t start until they have the perfect notebook. It’s a subtle form of procrastination dressed up as preparation. People spend hours scrolling through Instagram accounts full of leather bound tomes, gold edged paper, or handmade Japanese notebooks, telling themselves: Once I buy one of those, then I’ll start journaling. But the most valuable journals in history were often written in whatever was available. Soldiers in the trenches wrote on scraps of paper. Explorers kept travel logs in water stained field books. Some of Frida Kahlo’s journals are filled with doodles and uneven handwriting in inexpensive sketchbooks. The value of a journal comes from the act of writing, not the container.

Still, I wont sit here and pretend that the physical notebook doesn’t play a role. It very much does but not in the way most people think. The best journal for you is not the fanciest one, but the one you actually feel comfortable using. A $1 spiral notebook can be liberating because you can mess it up. A $40 handcrafted journal might paralyze you because you’re afraid to “ruin” it with messy handwriting or imperfect thoughts.

So here’s the paradox:

• If your journal feels too cheap, you might not feel motivated to pick it up.

• If your journal feels too precious, you might be too scared to write in it.

The sweet spot lies somewhere in between. Something humble enough to invite mistakes, but nice enough to feel like a space worth returning to. For one person, that might be a lined composition book. For another, it might be a Moleskine or Leuchtturm1917. The important shift is realizing that the notebook doesn’t make you a “real” journaler. Your writing does.

You’re Starting By Asking The Wrong Question

Most beginners ask: What should I write about?

I think this question misses the point. The first real question you should be asking yourseld is: What do I want my journal to do for me?

I want you to stop picturing a journal as simply a container for your words. Instead, visualize it as a tool. And tools are only meaningful when you understand their purpose. You wouldn’t pick up a chainsaw in order to hang up a picture would you? Journaling without an intention is like using that chainsaw to hammer nails into the wall hoping your picture stays up some how.

So, before writing anything, pause. Ask yourself:

• Do I want to remember more of my life?

• Do I want to process emotions I don’t say out loud?

• Do I want to improve my focus and productivity?

• Do I want to spark creativity or explore ideas?

• Do I simply want a quiet moment with myself every day?

Notice how different the practice looks depending on the answer.

• If you want memory, your journal might become a log of events and details.

• If you want clarity, it might fill with half finished sentences and brain dumps.

• If you want honesty, it might turn into raw, unfiltered confessionals.

• If you want ritual, it might be just a single sentence, repeated daily like a mantra.

None of these are “better” or “worse.” They’re just different ways of using the same tool.

Think In Snapshots, Not Stories

People who start journaling think a journal entry has to be this long, perfect story of their day. The reality is that our memory doesn’t work like that and your journal shouldn’t either. Your brain doesn’t actually remember your life chronologically. It remembers moments, emotions, and sensory details.

So instead of writing a whole essay about your day, capture snapshots:

• A conversation you overheard that made you laugh

• The smell of rain on your walk home

• The exact way someone looked at you during coffee

• A random thought that felt important for no reason

Think of your life as a lens, and the journal as a way of focusing that lens. You can write about:

• Fragments: a single sentence about something you noticed.

• Images: a doodle of your coffee mug.

• Lists: books you want to read, moments that made you laugh, a list of songs you had on repeat

• Questions: “Why do I feel uneasy today?”

• Scenes: write one conversation from memory as if it were dialogue in a play.

Your journal becomes a time machine. When you read it back later, that one line you wrote, “I had an iced coffee on a rainy day at my favorite cafe and it reminded me of my childhood", will unlock more memory than a full page page ever could. Journaling doesn’t have to be long, and it doesn’t have to be linear. Which brings me to my next point: Journaling the “unimportant” is what makes it important.

Memory Doesn’t Store The Mundane

There’s a myth that a journal needs to be dramatic to matter. That it should be full of breakthroughs and poetic sentences that you could publish in your memoir one day but if you actually look at the journals people tend to keep for years, you’ll notice something surprising: most of the entries are, on the surface, incredibly boring.

“Woke up late. Made eggs. Rained all day. Watched TV before bed.”

At the time of writing, that doesn’t feel profound. It feels almost pointless, like why bother recording it at all? But here’s the secret: the “boring” is where the magic hides.

Our brains are designed to filter. They’re excellent at storing dramatic events. Weddings, losses, moves, first kisses, breakups, promotions. But they’re terrible at remembering the small stuff. What your breakfast looked like three years ago. How you felt walking home on an ordinary Tuesday. The smell of your apartment when you first moved in. A journal saves what memory discards. That one sentence about eggs on a rainy morning becomes, years later, a vivid portal. Suddenly you remember the pan you cooked them in, the playlist you had on in the background, the particular shade of gray in the sky. Without that “boring” entry, the day would be gone forever.

Think about reading a novel: if every chapter was full of explosions and plot twists, it would be exhausting. What makes a story powerful are the chapters that set the stage, build rhythm, and make the dramatic moments meaningful. Your life works the same way. A note about folding laundry might not stand out, but it creates contrast. Later, when you read about the day you got engaged, or the week you lost your job, those moments sit against the backdrop of dozens of “boring” days. And that’s what makes them shine.

Life isn’t constant revelation. Most of it is dishes, commutes, and the repetition of small routines. Pretending otherwise turns journaling into performance. When you allow yourself to record the uneventful and seemingly insignificant moments, you’re honoring the shape of your life. Your future self will thank you for recording what feels disposable now, because one day it won’t be disposable. It will be irreplaceable.

There’s also a philosophical angle as well. Writing about the “boring” teaches you to see the ordinary as worthy of attention. The more you record, the more you notice. And noticing is a form of living more fully.

Read Your Journal

Most people think of journaling as a forward moving practice: write today, close the notebook, move on. But some of the deepest value doesn’t come from the writing at all. It comes from rereading. Re-read old entries. You’d be surprised how many people don’t go back into their journals after writing in them.

When you revisit old entries, you gain something you can’t get in the moment: perspective. You see how far you’ve come, how your worries shifted, how your joys resurfaced in different forms. You realize that problems you thought were permanent often passed, and that little details you barely noticed.

Here are a few ways that you can do this:

The Monthly Review -

At the end of each month, flip back through your entries. Highlight or underline recurring words or feelings. Jot down a short summary on the last page of the month: “This month was about stress at work, but I also noticed how much joy came from cooking.” Over time, these summaries become like chapter titles for your life.

The Yearly Reflection -

Choose a day at the end of the year (New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day works beautifully) to reread the journal cover to cover. Write a letter to yourself about the year: what surprised you, what repeated, what grew. Some people even create a “Top 10” list. Ten moments, big or small, that defined the year.

Annotate Your Past Self -

Don’t just read silently. Talk back. Write margin notes to your younger self. Circle an anxious entry and write: “You didn’t know it then, but it worked out.” Or, “Still working on this. Funny how some things stay with us.” This is a really good way to be present with your writing.

Pick A System That Works For You

Most people believe they must follow a pre-made structure: morning pages, bullet journaling, gratitude logs, etc. These methods can be helpful but they are scaffolding, not rules.

Instead of forcing yourself into someone else’s idea of journaling, design your journal around you:

• If you hate long writing → try bullet journaling or one sentence entries.

• If you’re visual → paste photos, doodles, or make collage style spreads.

• If you overthink → use prompts to give your entries structure.

• If you want structure + freedom → mix daily logs with freewriting sections.

Test different layouts until one feels natural. A journal is like a pair of shoes. If it doesn’t fit, you’ll stop wearing it. The beauty of journaling is that you can invent your own form. Maybe you only write in haiku. Maybe you paste receipts and annotate them. Maybe you only write at night by candlelight. The weirder your method, the more likely it will feel personal and stick.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Daily

One of the fastest ways people burn out on journaling is by turning it into homework. They read that “real” journalers write every morning, or that you need to fill three pages a day. So they push themselves into a rigid daily routine. And when life inevitably interrupts with something like a busy workday, a late night out, a bout of exhaustion, they miss a day. Then guilt creeps in. I already failed. What’s the point? The notebook gets shoved in a drawer, never to be opened again.

Journaling doesn’t need to be daily to matter.

Think of your journal like a conversation with a friend. You don’t measure the strength of a friendship by whether you talk every single day without fail. Journaling works the same way. The pages don’t punish you for absence.

This perspective changes everything. Instead of pressuring yourself into a streak, you give yourself permission to ebb and flow. Some weeks, you might write every night. Other times, you might not touch your journal for a month then suddenly feel the urge to pour out ten pages in one sitting. Both patterns are valid. In fact, spacing out your journaling can add texture to your practice. When you return after a break, you often see your life differently. A week’s gap creates perspective that a daily entry cannot.

Daily practice can be wonderful if it fits your life. But it isn’t the gold standard. The real standard is: does it help you?

Playing The Long Game

If there’s one perspective that separates people who journal for a season from those who carry the practice through a lifetime, it’s this: journaling is not about the entry in front of you. It’s about the accumulation.

One page doesn’t mean much on its own. A scribbled paragraph, a list of groceries, a quick rant about work. It feels small, even disposable. But when you stack those small pieces over months and years, you start to see something larger take shape. Each entry is a tile in a mosaic. Individually, they’re plain. Together, they form the image of your life. That mosaic is only possible if you stay in the long game. And the long game is only possible if you accept one truth: you will fall away from journaling sometimes. Everyone does. You’ll get busy, distracted, or just forget. The practice will slip. The real test is whether you return.

This is where many people give up. They miss a week, feel guilty, and decide they’ve already “failed.” The act of returning is what matters. Every time you come back, you prove that the practice is still alive. The reward for staying in the long game is perspective. After five, ten, twenty years, you can flip through old notebooks and watch yourself grow, falter, and change. You see patterns you couldn’t have recognized in the moment. After all the techniques, prompts, and advice, journaling really comes down to one simple truth: keep going. The journals that change people’s lives aren’t the ones with the prettiest handwriting or the most structured entries. They’re the ones that are used. A journal full of thoughts, random to do lists, and scribbles is infinitely more valuable than a flawless notebook abandoned after a week.

If this post helped you and you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Little gestures like this keep this project going, and I’m deeply grateful for it. Thank you so much for reading.