How to Not Quit Your Journal

Advice from a Forge reader on how to keep going

Photo: Hill Street Studios / Getty Images

I wrote recently for Forge about keeping a journal and why, even if you don’t know it, you actually really want to. And, as often happens here in the Mediumverse, a reader’s response to the piece offered some really great advice for how to get started.

Roy Cook writes about the way he’s made journaling a habit he can stick with:

I quit many times. Until I developed a system through much trial-and-error.

That has all changed now. I paid a lot of attention to excellent advice from Benjamin Hardy and Ryan Holiday.

To make it easier, I created a template in Evernote that would pop up every morning and give me an outline and some prompts in the form of questions, making my journaling easier and more beneficial.

Cook’s list of prompts, which he shared in the comment, includes quick questions about his “status updates” (How did I sleep? What’s a one-word summary of my goal for the day?) as well as more probing questions to inspire longer answers (What scared me today? What did I learn? Who did I help?). It’s smart, useful, and practical, just like your 2021 journal is going to be.

Thank you for your article on journaling.