How to Turn Journaling Into a Consistent Habit

Journaling is a written record of your thoughts and feelings. Journaling can help you to track your mood, boost your health, and help you process difficult ideas and feelings. Journaling also fosters your creativity and helps you to make decisions faster and more accurately. Creating a meaningful connection with yourself is as important as creating meaningful connections with your family, friends, colleagues, and other people that matter to you. 

One of the common challenges with journaling is that there are people who find it difficult to create a consistent habit. Consistency usually transforms average into success, and it's therefore critical when it comes to journaling. Here is how to turn journaling into a consistent habit. 

1. Pick a Specific Type of Journaling 

Just like everything else in this life, you need to have a niche that properly resonates with your life and interests. One of the challenges that people encounter when beginning journaling, is the lack of focus and ideas on what to write about. So, first identify the type of journaling that works for you. To help you think about the type of journaling that fits you, look around and see what your life revolves around. Some types of journaling include daily diary, mindful journaling, idea journaling, and others.  You can check out our article on How to Determine Your Personal Journaling Style for more ideas.  

2. Get Started with Less Writing 

Journaling is a staircase process that needs to be taken one step at a time. If you overwork yourself trying to achieve massive progress and write as much as you possibly can, there is a big possibility of burn out and retrogression. This is especially true if you aren't used to it.

You should therefore aim for lightweight journaling by setting small, reasonable, and achievable goals. This will help you to gauge your ability and determine whether you can be consistent at this level. Once you have established consistency and repeatability, you can slightly increase your scope and try to maintain consistency at a new level. One step at a time, you will get to the top of journaling and be able to maintain it because you will have already developed discipline and consistency.  

3. Set aside Regular Time 

You should not randomize journaling because this will make it difficult to turn journaling into a consistent habit. Rather, set aside regular time during the day specifically meant for journaling. If you can spend as little as 5 minutes per day, this is much better than once a month. During the 5 minutes, take advantage and utilize the time as efficiently as possible. Once you find that you have been able to use the regular time consistently without falling back, consider increasing the allocated time with a few more minutes. We have some helpful tips on how you can turn journaling into a consistent habit. 

4. Utilize Lists 

Lists are a great way for tapping your creativity. Lists will help you to easily get topics in moments when you have no idea what to write about. By just going through your lists, you can come up with as many topics and ideas as possible. So, make lists of your favorite things, places you have been to, the best meals you have ever eaten, and much more. If you want to start off and build a journaling habit but don't know what to write about, just aim at making 10 lists per day. Then, use the lists to do a free-writing exercise. 

5. Utilize the Right Journaling Tools

Although how you journal is a personal preference, choosing the right journaling tools can help you turn journaling into a consistent habit faster. You may choose to use a digital platform for journaling or handwrite your thoughts. Either method has its own benefits over the other. Handwriting can help you express your thoughts and feelings more freely and naturally. You can also handwrite in your own solitary place where power requirements are not a factor to be considered. 

On the other hand, digital platforms can help you save your work easily and edit mistakes faster than handwriting. Choosing the right tools that work for you will help you develop consistency faster.  

Whether you're just getting started with journaling or already have a consistent habit, the Aspyn Planner & Wellness Workbook can help with your journaling goals. It includes an entire section on journaling complete with journal prompts and space for freestyle journaling as well.