Save daily Journaling is not easy​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​front. It can also be a meaningful way to reflect and grow as a person.

For more than 10 years, I have written a few words every morning, and what I have learned from this practice has changed my life. My only regret is not starting sooner.

If you’re interested in adding a daily journaling practice to your life, these tips and tools will help you not only get started, but stick with it.

Why Keep a Journal or Diary?

My diary is a tool for clearing my thoughts, recording details of my life that are sometimes useful to know later, and reflection. The value of meditation, however, only became apparent after I had been writing for several years and could look back at my life to see it from a different perspective.

I was always hard on myself. I didn’t reason, and I looked at my failures with horror. Every time I went back and read a series of diary entries from low points in my life, I was able to see them from an outside perspective. I can see more clearly how difficult things are, or how many things are damaged at once, or the severity of an event that I may have underestimated at the moment. This meditation has led me to be kinder to myself—and to others. I learned to cut myself off.

You may discover something else, whether it’s a pattern of behavior or something you want to change. Or maybe in hindsight you realize the things you thought you wanted to change didn’t need to be changed at all. Journaling sheds light on all these things.

Memory is changeable. The personal self-reflection we do entirely in our heads is very different from what we do in notes. In short, that is why I have continued my daily writing for more than 10 years.

What Should You Write in Your Journal?

Start each diary entry with the date and your location. Why worry when your computer or phone can add it automatically? A few reasons. First, you won’t be staring at a blank page, and you’ll always know how to start. Second, metadata can be bungled over time or during file transfers, so adding it manually is more reliable. Third, typing the date and location of the diary entry itself ensures that those very important pieces of information can be found.

What else would you write? A diary entry can be a simple brain dump. That’s what I did. Other things to talk about are big events, strong emotions, and hopes and dreams.

If following a method helps, you can try gratitude journaling. Some parents I know ask their children at the end of the day to reflect on their “rose, thorn, bud“—a highlight from the day, a hardship, and something they look forward to—a great diary formula.

How to Make It a Habit

The best trick I have for forming a new habit is to tie it to an existing one. Find a habit you already have and incorporate it into a few minutes of daily writing.

I journal every morning when I have time coffee in front of me. My coffee-making routine is non-negotiable, immovable, set in stone, seven days a week. Even when I stay in a hotel, I bring a travel coffee maker, and I write in my diary while drinking coffee.