What is journaling? A plain definition, the main types and a small way to start

Journaling is writing regularly about your days, to understand them or to remember them.

Both halves of that definition matter. “Regularly”, because a single note isn’t a journal: what makes it one is the habit of coming back. And “to understand them or to remember them”, because those are two different uses that often get mixed up. Some people write to think, to sort out how they feel or to let something out. Others write to keep what happens, the way you’d take photos. Both are journaling.

“Journal” comes from French, from jour, “day”: something written every day. A ship’s journal, a newspaper, a personal journal: all of them are records of what happens, day by day.

“Journaling” as a word for the habit spread with the methods and notebooks that became popular online, and today it mostly means keeping a journal as a regular practice rather than owning one.

Almost. Some people draw a line: a diary records what you did, a journal what you thought. In real use the two blur, and nobody checks. If you write down your days regularly, in a notebook or an app, you’re journaling, whatever you call it. We go into the distinction in diary vs journal.

There’s no canon. These are the most common forms, with what they ask of you and who they tend to suit:

Hardly anyone keeps just one. The usual mix is a journal of what happened, with photos, on ordinary days; longer entries on days that need it; and a prompt on blank nights. There are guides to voice journaling and photo journals in Learn.

Most studies about writing and wellbeing come from what’s called expressive writing, the method the psychologist James Pennebaker began studying in the 1980s: writing for a few minutes, over several days, about something that weighs on you.

What they say, in their own words:

• A 1998 review found that this kind of writing was linked to better health outcomes in healthy people¹, and also that it raised distress at the time of writing, unrelated to those outcomes².
• A 2006 meta-analysis gathered 146 randomized studies³ and concluded that the effect is real and positive, with an average size of r = .075⁴.

Those numbers need reading carefully. An effect of .075 is real, but small. And these are studies of one specific task (writing about something hard, a few days in a row), not of keeping a journal for years. So we won’t promise you that journaling will cure, calm or cheer you. What we can say without a study is the obvious part: what gets written down doesn’t get entirely forgotten.

If you’re going through something serious, a journal can keep you company, but it doesn’t replace talking to someone, or a professional’s help.

A lot of what’s written about journaling assumes it’s about emotions: how you feel, what worries you, what you’re grateful for. If that helps you, great. But it’s not the only way, and for many people it’s the reason they quit.

The other way is the oldest one: write down what happened. “Lunch at Elena’s. Figs with cheese.” There’s nothing to analyze and no mood required, and in ten years it’s exactly what you’ll want to read. The feelings show up on their own, between the lines, when you reread.

It’s the way we make Tagaro: a journal of what happened, not an emotional journal. You can write about how you feel, but nobody asks you to.

1. Choose where: a notebook on the nightstand or a note on your phone.
2. Choose when: a moment that already exists, like getting into bed.
3. Tonight, write one line about something that happened today. Just one.
4. Tomorrow, another. If you miss a day, carry on the next without making up for it.

That’s all it takes to start. The full method, with what to do when it gets hard and how to look back, is in how to start a journal. And if you don’t know what to write, there are journal prompts you can answer in a word.

Three ways to write the same Saturday (made up):

• One line: “Flea market with Ana. Came home with a green lamp.”
• With a prompt: “What did you buy? A green lamp I have no place for. Ana says the hallway.”
• Reflective: “Bought something I didn’t need, again. I think I like looking more than having. Ana laughed when I told her.”

All three count. The first is the one you’ll still be writing in March.