Learn to keep a journal

Keeping a journal isn’t about writing a lot: it’s about coming back every day, even with a single word. These guides are about how to start one, and how to carry on once it stops being new, which is when most journals get left half-written.

They come from what we learned making Tagaro, a journal for iPhone: that a day can be a word, a photo or half a minute of your voice; that the days you skip don’t count against you; and that a concrete question, like “where did you eat?”, does more than a blank page. They aren’t self-help: they’re about keeping what happens, not about how you should feel.

Each guide says who wrote it and when it was last reviewed, and anything that comes from a study carries its source, in its exact words. If what you’re after is something to write tonight, start with the prompts.