How to make journaling a ritual (video)

We love journaling. It’s a ritual for writing about, tracking and recording your life down in paper or in digital form.

It is not about teenagers keeping a secret diary, but a methodical and mindful practice that actively improves your life over time. We recommend everyone to have a journaling ritual because it has so many benefits. Just to name a few:

• Recorded memory. By writing things down, you have a record of what has happened to you, daily. This is especially great if you have a leaky brain (bad memory).
• Ability to see what you did on any given day of your life.
• See and track progress across different areas of your life.
• A unique opportunity to align day-to-day task with longer-term vision and goals.
• End every single day knowing that you did well – this creates motivational momentum.
• Helps bring other Rituals into your life through questions and reminders.
• Capture your own personal history.

As part of our Rituals course we’ve helped thousands of people with their journaling ritual. We have a whole module on how to build a journaling ritual inside the course and now we’re going to release the main video for free on the blog. You can watch it here:

Getting started with a journaling ritual

Here’s a simple checklist to help you get started:

• Pick your medium – pen and paper, or digital. Personal preference.
• Work out how your journal will be structured (examples below).
• Decide on your structure and questions (examples below).
• Start journaling.

The most common question we get from people who want to start journaling is “what do I write about?”

Well Padawan, we’re here to help. If you’ve never made journaling a successful ritual before, then we recommend you only answer 2 questions on a daily basis:

• What did I learn today?
• How can I make tomorrow better?

When you have to answer too many questions it can be hard to make it a ritual. That’s why you want to keep it as simple as possible and these two questions are extremely effective in helping you grow.

If you already have a journaling ritual and you want to take it to the next level, our examples below will help you with that. Pick the ones you like and slowly add 1 or 2 new questions to your ritual over time.

Daily Template

• What happened to you that day (events).
• Outcomes, tasks, questions.
  • Outcomes are the big things you want to achieve for the day.
  • Tasks are the smaller steps to achieving outcomes.
• Write down 3 accomplishments.
• Questions (all optional, pick as you please):
• What did I read?
• What did I learn?
• What did I do to help my future?
• How did I help someone today?
• Who do I love?
• What am I grateful for?

Weekly Template

• What happened to you that week (events).
• Outcomes, tasks, questions.
• Review of how the week went.

Monthly Template

• What happened to you that month (events)
• Outcomes, tasks, questions
• Review of how the month went

Annual Template

• What happened to you that year (events).
  • As important things happen, put them into your annual journal entry.
• Outcomes, tasks, questions.
• Review of how the year went.
• Questions:
  • Where did I travel?
  • Who did I meet?
  • What is my net worth now?
  • Where did I spend most of my time?
  • Where did I spend most of my attention?
  • How did I improve at what I do?
  • How have most of my close relationships improved?
  • How has my health improved?
  • How has to my contribution to the world improved, or my charity increased?
  • How has my purpose evolved?
  • What do I want from the upcoming year?
  • What roles have Rituals played in my life this year?
  • How can I sustainably create better Rituals for next year?

Zachary’s Sample Questions #1

• How has the resistance shown up today?
• How is my girlfriend amazing?
• What did I learn/read?
• What did I do for exercise?
• What was I focused on?
  • Morning
  • Day
  • Night

Zachary’s Sample Questions #2

• How am I feeling right now?
• What am I thankful for right now?
• How much sleep did I get?
• What did I do really well today?
• What did I improve upon?
• What did I learn/read?
• What did I do for exercise?
• How can I do things better tomorrow?
• What value did I give away today?
• What did I enjoy today?
• What was I focused on?
  • Morning
  • Day
  • Night
• What could have been delegated or automated?

Zachary’s Sample Questions #3

• What am I grateful for?
• Who do I love?
• Why am I so happy?
• What am I committed to? (health, relationships, projects)
• How committed am I?
• What is my intention?
• What is my wish?
• Why am I here? (time, place)

Did you know that we have our own productivity community and we discuss Journalling extensively?

The Productivity Academy is our exclusive members-only community that is jam-packed with trainings, courses, masterclasses, podcasts, coaching calls, action plans, and productivity-focused individuals just like you. Click here to learn about joining the Productivity Academy.