One Simple Tip to Improve your Day One Journal

Want to establish a consistent journaling habit and record your most important life events? Let me give you some simple advice from a long-time journal writer: scan your previous half dozen entries before you start to write. This two-minute drill will help you fight writer’s block and improve the overall content of your journals.

Let me explain.

Keeping a journal has many benefits. Looking back on thirty years of continuous journaling, I am grateful I took the time to capture my innermost thoughts on the big decisions I faced, the gains and the losses I experienced, and the otherwise-forgotten anecdotes of everyday life. I didn’t realize how much I would come to value the record I’ve created of my life.

The vast majority of my life’s journal is analog: my unflattering scrawl in small leather-bound books. I carried one in my battered briefcase and wrote most often while sailing on a ferry boat between my office and home.

Before sitting down to write in my journal, I would flip back through the preceding ten or twenty pages to remind myself where I left off and to help get the juices flowing for that day’s journal entry. This pre-writing review became almost an unconscious act after a time, feeling the ink with my fingertips as I scanned the pages, establishing a neural link between the present moment and the most recent past through my own words.

My journals teem with thoughts about the future: decisions I needed to make, thorny issues that were nagging me, and uncertain outcomes that hung in the balance. Scanning these recent pages before I began writing helped me address the resolution of some of those questions and improve the overall context of my journal entry as I picked up the pen and began to write.

I gave up paper journals about eight years ago and turned to Day One, a fantastic digital journaling platform. While I occasionally tap an entry from my iPhone or write a more extended entry on my office iMac, I vastly prefer the iPad for journal keeping. My entries typically run from 300 to 500 words, so I need a comfortable keyboard, and I prefer to write where I am – a wing chair in my library, a coffee shop, an airplane seat, or the cab of my truck while I’m waiting for the next ferry boat.

While digital journaling has many advantages over old-style paper, I’ve encountered two pitfalls which can diminish the quality and narrative of your journal writing “story,” or worse: stop you from writing altogether, frozen by writer’s block.

As I reviewed my earliest digital journal entries, I discovered that I was writing a lot less often than I had on paper. And I frequently repeated myself, forgetting what I had written in the previous days or weeks. I also failed to address some critical open questions I had posed during the last days or weeks. How could I leave myself hanging like this? Rereading these now, I am dismayed by the journaling amnesia of my younger self.

Why did this happen?

Every Day One entry starts with a blank screen and a flashing cursor; the proverbial blank page that can strike fear in even the most hardened writer. I have spent many wasted writing sessions entranced by that hypnotic blinking line, frozen in some meditative state, and unable to type even a single sentence.

Hemingway ended each writing session in mid-sentence, knowing exactly how he planned to finish it. This technique helped him jump-start the new day’s writing and avoid writer’s block. It’s so much easier to write after that first sentence is on the page.

Also, you’re more apt to write down independent and isolated thoughts when faced with a blank screen, disconnected from the storyline of yesterday or last week. The resulting journal over time will be more disjointed and lack continuity.

I’ve discovered that the solution to these digital journal obstacles is simple: scan your previous half dozen entries before you write.

Day One provides an easy way to flip through previous entries. On an iPad, swiping to the left lets you move to the next entry in a seamless, elegant way. I’ve trained myself to carry out this review every time I sit down to write. I almost always find one or two things I can clarify or resolve in that day’s entry. I find that these pre-writing reviews keep me from repeating myself too much, or rehashing already well-trodden topics. And I take Hemingway’s advice to start each journal entry where I last left off. No more writer’s block.

I’ve been doing these journal reviews before I write for about five years and can attest to the higher quality of the writing and the completeness of the story I am capturing in my journal.

If you’re trying to establish a journaling habit with a digital tool like Day One, consider practicing these journal reviews before you write. Take it from a 30+year constant journal keeper: your future self will thank you.