Back in early 2022, about two months before starting college, I spent a great portion of my time reading about Stoicism. For those who don’t know, Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece and Rome that focuses on helping people navigate the chaos of life through personal virtue and rational thought. Its main idea is that while we cannot control external events, we have power over our own judgments and reactions—a principle often called the “Dichotomy of Control.” As someone who considered himself a Stoic at the time, I was brought back to the concept of journaling—something Marcus Aurelius himself used to do every morning—and I started to research it more and to wonder what that looked like in the digital age. This inquiry led me to discover the Productivity Community on YouTube—their apps, manners, methods, and aesthetics—and I quickly became an adept of their cult. With all this, I also saw the different ways people in this space used notebooks and note-taking apps, which made my interest in this niche grow. Eventually, I decided to test some of these apps, like Notion, Standard Notes, and Obsidian. I wanted to create a second brain for myself and started compiling my knowledge into personal encyclopedias—something I abandoned after finding little use for them—and I decided to start my personal journal, which I have been writing in religiously every day for over three years now.

Today, I want to show you why you should have a personal journal, talk about its benefits, how to start, how to keep it, and the superpowers that come with this habit.

Why You Should Journal

When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.

—— Marcus Aurelius

Although I have been doing this for a long time now, I still remember how I felt before developing the habit of writing things down. I constantly felt like I had many things to do, even though I couldn’t exactly list all my tasks. My mind was foggy, and I was afraid of forgetting to do something important or missing a deadline. My brain wouldn’t let me relax because it was actively keeping track of all my thoughts and indexing my ideas in the background, especially when I would try to sleep.

Mental Load

One of the most compelling reasons to start a personal journal is that it is essentially a way of reducing your mental load. When you write about your tasks, you are consciously listing the things you will do, reasoning about them, and showing your brain that the thought is saved. I like to see this as a sort of external storage for the brain. Keeping processes running (unsaved thoughts) will consume memory (mental load). As we don’t have easy control over our brain’s storage ability (remembering things reliably), we use a journal to store important information and help the brain remember it in the process.

It may seem silly at first, but this effect will help you in other areas of your life. Improving your mental clarity will help you reduce stress and anxiety, improve your memory, and help you sleep better—some of the most important things in life, which I wish to talk about in a future post.

Personal Growth

Once you develop the habit of writing about your day, you will eventually mention a situation that upset you. It could be something someone did to you, something you did to someone, or a distressing event. I have found that journaling about these moments is an easy way to get a different perspective on the matter, even though you are the only one offering an opinion. It is hard to see things clearly when we are going through something emotionally intense. Registering your thoughts during these moments helps you reframe the situation later. This revisit allows you to better understand your emotions and decide what actions you should take to solve a problem.

On a similar note, writing about the challenges you face will help you spot patterns, since you will find yourself writing about the same things over and over. The good thing is that it will make you conscious of even the smallest things that bother you. This allows you to take action to solve these problems. For example, I have realized by journaling about my mental state in the morning that I tend to sleep more and wake up feeling calmer when I am on vacation, compared to when I am having classes. This realization helped me learn more about myself and look for what happens to my body when I am having classes (anxiety). Knowing this, I can act and solve the problem.

Boosted Memory

I consider this one of the superpowers that come with journaling. I can tell you with a certain level of detail what has happened on any given day of my life since late February 2022. I obviously don’t have everything available in my mind, but I can quickly search my notes if I need to. Even if I didn’t want to read my journal, I still have to consciously process my day while writing about it. This process alone helps with memory, and it is something I enjoy a lot.

Journaling also teaches you that our brains are not reliable for storage, as mentioned earlier. I am well aware by now that some of my own memories are fabricated or at least distorted (yours are as well). Everyone’s brain creates false memories; this is normal. Sometimes I will revisit old entries from my journal only to discover that what actually happened is much different from what I remember. If you want to test this, try recording a long spoken conversation with someone (with their consent) and listen to it a few days later, comparing it to what you remember.

Futurism

I decided to include this one because I like to think about what the future will look like. Having a record of all your days will perhaps be useful in the future. Think of feeding it to a local LLM (please, don’t put your journal into Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.) and being able to ask questions about your life and spot patterns you are unaware of. In a few futurist books I have read, some authors also mention your grandchildren being able to “revive” you after your death through LLMs and your journal. I haven’t thought too much about it and am skeptical about this concept, though. If you are interested in more ideas like these, I suggest you look for “life logging” or read this Stephen Wolfram’s article.

Other Benefits

Journaling also has other benefits, obviously. I will quickly list the main ones here, but not develop on them:


  • Reduced stress and anxiety
  • Improved mood
  • Builds resilience
  • Mindfulness
  • Better critical thinking
  • Increased focus
  • Increased self-awareness

Starting Your Journal

– “Okay, you have convinced me, but how do I actually start journaling?”
Well, I’m glad you asked. There are many ways to start journaling, but it is not complicated; it is just a matter of preference. You will need to make some decisions before you start just to make sure you can sustain it for as long as possible.

Defining Your Goals

The first thing you need to decide is why and when you want to journal. Then, you will decide on how you should be getting into this. I have already tested journaling with different apps and physical journals. Each has its pros and cons, so it is up to you to decide which is best for you. Deciding between analog versus digital is the most important thing here: if you regret your decision, you may feel like stopping your practice, having detached entries, or finding yourself rewriting everything from scratch—something I have done twice already.

The Why

Do you want to just keep a record of your day or to have a therapeutic moment? Typing your journal with a keyboard will do the job of logging your day, but the feeling of writing on paper is unmatched. The entries I have written by hand are much more insightful and philosophical than the ones I have typed. Writing something by hand just feels different, and I find it better for expressing emotions. Typing, on the other hand, is way faster and easier, but it may make you feel disconnected from the writing. I suggest you go with typing if you want to keep your journal going for a long time. Go with handwriting if the emotional part is your top priority and the extra work is not a problem for you.

Some people also like to handwrite on digital files using tablets or drawing pads. I have never tested that, but for some reason, I find it to be the worst option.

The When

How often and when are you going to write in your journal? If you are like me and want to write every couple of hours, no matter where you are, a digital journal will probably be the right choice, unless you want to carry a notebook with you all the time—something I have also tried in the past and got tired of. If you want to just write a few entries per day—like in the morning and before going to sleep—or a few times a week, I would suggest that having a physical notebook is the right choice. It comes with the good feeling of writing by hand and won’t be something to be carried around.

The How

After you consider these points, list your priorities and choose between going digital or analog (or both). Just make sure you won’t regret your choice in the long run. This is why I believe going digital is the right choice for most people, just for the fact that it is simple.

Going Analog

There is not much for me to say here. You pick your notebook and pen and write.

Going Digital

Although keeping a digital notebook is simpler, choosing the tools is tricky. For my journal to live in an app, this app needs to meet all these three requirements:

  • It must be local-first and encrypted.
  • If it uses the Internet, it must be end-to-end encrypted.
  • It must let me export my entries easily.

My biggest concern with a digital journal is security. Never use a note-taking app for journaling if it connects to the internet without using end-to-end encryption. Notion is NOT a secure place for you to journal, nor is Evernote, Google Docs, OneNote, or any other app that does not meet the three requirements listed above. I know a lot of people use the apps I mentioned to journal, including most influencers online, but they are just clueless.

Here are a few apps I have already used for journaling and trust:

  • Apple Notes (With iCloud’s Advanced Data Protection enabled, if you use it)
  • Standard Notes
  • Obsidian
  • Cryptee
  • Joplin

Being in the Apple Ecosystem, I rely on Apple Notes and have no complaints.

Keeping Your Journal

Now that you are all set up, I would like to give you some tips on how to keep this habit going for a long time. As I said, I have been doing this daily for over three years straight. Journaling is often one of the first things I do in the morning. If you have a notebook, you can leave it next to your bed. If you do it on your phone, I like to leave the Notes app on the dock where I can easily find it.

Most people that I know who have already tried journaling tell me they eventually stopped because they didn’t know what to write. This is crazy to me because you can just write anything. If your mind is empty, write about what you did, even if it is not interesting. Write about what you have been thinking, what is happening in the world, or what you want to do in the future. Nobody is going to read your journal if you don’t let them, so free yourself and write whatever you want. No pressure.

Once your journal grows in size—and this is better visualized with notebooks—you won’t want to stop journaling. The hardest part is just building the habit, but once it is built, you won’t even notice how natural it is.

Now, on to some more specific tips:

File Management

One important tip that I like to give for those who choose to go digital is: you do not need to create a note for each day. That will not help you organize your journal and will be a headache to manage when you decide to move to another app. I like to keep only two files: one with the note for the current day and another for everything else. This lets you move your journal to any app you want since you only need to import a single file or can just copy and paste it. Besides, it makes searching easier.

If you are on iOS and know how to use the Shortcuts app, you can use it to do repetitive work for you. I have a nightly automation that adds the entries of the current day to the full journal file. You can also automatically create new pages, proofread your text, etc.

Page Structure

A regular page of mine looks like this:

Nov 10, 2025  
  
07:17 - Je me sens très bien et suis reveillé plutôt calme. 😌 yesterday I put black tape around my mouse’s LEDs to make it less annoying during the night and slept with my head to the other side, facing the window. It is better to face the window when I am waking up.   
08:19 - Time to study computer networks.   
12:50 - J'ai terminé la liste de réseaux et étudie l'architecture. On ne sais pas si on va avoir des cours demain ou pas.   
13:20 - I was considering not going to the big data class today, but I changed my mind. I'll arrive late, though.   
  
# other entries

I like to journal in two languages: French and English. It helps me find blind spots in my vocabulary and it’s free practice. I will eventually write in other languages if I am learning them:

Aug 12, 2025  
  
08:04 - The information systems subject had been submitted by mistake to the website, so I had to change it. Now I’ll have a class with Raissa on big data. 📊   
I dreamed that I was in the USA with my parents. There were some people there who were my dad’s friend.   
08:58 - I perfected the script a little and also added a notification system to send a message to my phone whenever it breaks.   
09:46 - 现在我去大学和老师说话。  
11:44 - 我来大学和老师说话。It seemed like she does not want to open new positions, but I still put my name on the list and went to the secretary's office to talk to him about it.   
12:24 - 星期四在大学我开始一个中文课。  
13:35 - 我学习电脑网。

# other entries

Since it is all plain text, I like keeping it simple. I avoid adding lists, special characters, headers, bold, italics, etc.

If you want to add some of that, feel free to do so, but keep in mind that one day you might export your journal, and the new software will have to support all that.

Closing Thoughts

I hope this post has taught you something new and inspired you to start your personal journal.

Remember: the most important thing is to just write. Nobody will judge your writing or your thoughts. Don’t be ashamed to write what you really think about people or about anything. Journaling is an introspective exercise to make you become a better person.

There are people who have entire journals dedicated to writing negative and toxic thoughts. Some people would think it is something bad, but writing those ideas down is like taking them out of your mind and assuming control over them. Once you realize your thoughts do not define you, journaling will become an important aspect of your life.