Journaling
What Is a Journal? Meaning, History and How to Start
What a journal is, how it differs from a diary and what journaling is good for. Plus the history of journaling in five moments, from Sei Shōnagon to Pennebaker, and a checklist for your first entry.
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A journal is a notebook, a notes app or a journaling app where you write down what you experience, think and feel, usually with a date at the top. You write it for yourself.
This guide covers what journaling means, journal vs. diary, what journaling is good for and the history of journaling in five moments. A checklist at the end gets your first entry done tonight.
What is a journal?
A journal is a set of dated, personal entries you keep over time. You write in the first person, and usually nobody reads it but you.
Merriam-Webster defines it as a record of experiences, ideas or reflections kept regularly for private use, and lists "diary" as a synonym. The same word also means a newspaper, a scholarly publication and, in accounting, the book where transactions are first recorded. But when someone says "I keep a journal," they mean the private kind.
What makes it a journal:
- A date on each entry. That's what turns loose notes into a record you can look back on.
- First person. It's your view, as honest and one-sided as you like.
- Coming back to it. Daily or not, you return to it again and again.
- Private. You're allowed to be unfair, angry or silly in it.
The format matters less than you'd think. A spiral notebook, your phone's notes app or a journaling app all count. If you want to see how many forms there are, from dream journals to travel logs, read 13 types of journals.
Journal vs. diary: what's the difference?
There's no hard line. Both words go back to the Latin for "day," and the dictionary treats them as synonyms. Plenty of people use them interchangeably.
In practice, though, most of us hear a difference. "Diary" still brings to mind a teenager's book with a tiny lock and "Dear Diary." "Journal" sounds like something you keep on purpose:
| Diary | Journal | |
|---|---|---|
| What it's about | What happened today and how you felt about it | A purpose: sorting your thoughts, gratitude, spotting patterns |
| How often | Often daily, in order | Whenever it fits; weekly is fine |
| How you start | Blank page, "Today I…" | Often a question or a prompt |
| Form | Paragraphs | Lists, bullet points, trackers too |
| Typical examples | Childhood diary, travel diary | Gratitude journal, bullet journal, morning pages |
Call yours whatever you like. What you're writing it for matters more than the label.
What is journaling good for?
Mostly five things: remembering, clearing your head, seeing patterns, figuring out what you want and noticing the good. Pick one to start.
| If you want to… | write down… | Prompt to start |
|---|---|---|
| remember this time later | what happened, with details: where, who, something someone said | "Today was…" |
| clear your head | whatever's on your mind, unsorted | "What's on my mind right now is…" |
| spot patterns | the same two or three things each day, like mood, sleep, energy | "Mood today: … because…" |
| figure out what you want | wishes, and what's holding you back | "A year from now, I'd be glad if…" |
| notice the good | three things that went well today | "Something good today was…" |
A few notes on these:
- Clearing your head is the use with the most research behind it. What that research shows, and what it doesn't, is in the Pennebaker section below.
- Patterns only show up after a few weeks. Read back through your entries once a month.
- Wishes from your journal make a great starting point for a vision board. Here's how to turn them into a vision board.
- Noticing the good has its own format, the gratitude journal. Here's how to use a gratitude journal.
What is the history of journaling?
Nobody invented journaling. People have kept notes on their days for well over a thousand years. These five moments show how private records turned into a tool for understanding yourself.
| When | Who | What was new |
|---|---|---|
| around 1000 | Sei Shōnagon, a lady at the Japanese court | Private notes, lists and opinions about everyday life at court |
| 1660–1669 | Samuel Pepys, a naval official in London | Nine years of near-daily entries, in shorthand |
| 1942–1944 | Anne Frank, Amsterdam | A diary she revised herself with readers in mind |
| 1966 | Ira Progoff, New York | The journal as a method for self-reflection |
| 1986 | James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall, Texas | Writing about hard experiences, tested in an experiment |
Around 1000: Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shōnagon served Empress Teishi at the Japanese court around the year 1000. Her Pillow Book (Makura no Sōshi) isn't a diary in the strict sense. It's more of a collection: lists like "Things that make the heart beat faster," little scenes, sharp verdicts on the people around her. She didn't write it for other eyes, and people still read it today (Britannica).
1660 to 1669: Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator in London, wrote almost every day from January 1, 1660, to May 31, 1669, in shorthand. His diary covers the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, along with fights with his wife and what he had for dinner. He stopped because he was afraid he was going blind. The diary wasn't deciphered and printed until 1825, and then only in part (Magdalene College, Cambridge).
1942 to 1944: Anne Frank
Anne Frank got her diary for her 13th birthday, on June 12, 1942. Hiding in Amsterdam, she wrote until August 1, 1944, three days before she was arrested. In March 1944, a minister of the Dutch government in exile, speaking on the radio from London, asked people to save their wartime diaries. Anne began rewriting her entries for a book after the war. Her father, Otto Frank, published it in 1947, and the English edition followed in 1952 (Anne Frank House).
1966: Ira Progoff
New York psychotherapist Ira Progoff opened his Intensive Journal method to the public in 1966, through workshops at his Dialogue House. What was new was the structure. Instead of just recording your days, you write in set sections about your life and even hold written dialogues with people, events or your own body. His handbook, At a Journal Workshop, came out in 1975. Here's how Progoff's method works.
1986: James Pennebaker
Psychologists James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall had 46 college students write for 15 minutes on four days in a row. Some wrote about a traumatic experience, the others about trivial topics (Pennebaker & Beall 1986, Journal of Abnormal Psychology). The students who wrote about both the experience and their feelings about it visited the campus health center less often over the next six months. That study launched what's now called "expressive writing" research.
What the study doesn't show:
- That any journal makes you healthier. It was a small group of students, a short writing period and a narrow topic.
- That it feels good right away. Right after writing, those same students had higher blood pressure and a worse mood than the others.
- How big the effect is. A review of 146 studies found a small but measurable effect on average (Frattaroli 2006, Psychological Bulletin).
If you write about something painful, take it in small doses, and stop when it gets to be too much.
What goes in a journal entry?
A date, the word "I," and something that happened along with what you thought and felt about it. That's it. If you're writing one for a class assignment, here are the features at a glance:
| Feature | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Date | At the top, often with a place or time: "Tuesday night, kitchen table" |
| First person | "Today I…" |
| Your point of view | Your take, your judgment, not a neutral report |
| Thoughts and feelings | How you feel about it, along with what happened |
| Tense | What happened in the past tense, how you feel now in the present |
| Tone | Casual, the way you'd talk |
| Greeting | "Dear Diary" is fine, but optional |
How do you start journaling?
With a set time, five minutes and a prompt. This checklist gets you through the first month:
- Pick one purpose from the table above. One is enough.
- Pick where you'll write: a notebook you like opening, or an app if your phone is always within reach anyway.
- Attach it to something you already do: after brushing your teeth, with your first coffee, on the train.
- Set a timer for five minutes. If you stop when it goes off, that's fine.
- Write the date at the top, then your prompt.
- Don't edit. Bullet points are as good as full sentences.
- Skip missed days. No catching up, no guilt.
- After a month, read it back and jot down what you notice.
Once you have the habit, try a few methods: timed sentence starters, long lists, letters you never send, mind maps. Writing practices as a way to understand yourself explains each one, including when to use it and when to be careful. If you want a month of gratitude prompts, try the 30 gratitude journal prompts.
VISIYA's journal is a gratitude journal for iPhone and iPad. It's free, with as many entries as you like and the first two writing prompts, plus mood, tags, a calendar, "Your achievements" and a daily reminder. VISIYA Plus adds images in your journal entries and writing prompts from the third one on.
Scan to download VISIYA on the App StoreStart small: a date and one sentence already count as a journal entry.
Frequently asked questions
What is journaling?
Journaling means writing down your thoughts, feelings and experiences on a regular basis, for yourself. A journal can be a notebook, a notes app or a journaling app. Most people date their entries so they can look back later and see how things changed.
What is the difference between a journal and a diary?
There's no hard line, and Merriam-Webster lists diary as a synonym for journal. In everyday use, a diary usually records what happened each day. A journal tends to have a purpose, like sorting out your thoughts, practicing gratitude or spotting patterns, and often starts from a prompt instead of a blank page.
Who invented journaling?
Nobody. People have kept private records of their days for at least a thousand years. Famous early examples are The Pillow Book by the Japanese court lady Sei Shōnagon, written around the year 1000, and the diary Samuel Pepys kept in London from 1660 to 1669. Journaling as a deliberate tool for self-reflection took off in the 1960s with psychologist Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal workshops.
Is it better to journal with structure or just free-write?
Both work, and it depends on the day. On an ordinary day, free-writing is fine. If you're writing about something painful, a prompt and a timer give you a safer frame, because you know where to start and when to stop. If nothing comes, use a prompt. If it's pouring out, just write.
How long should a journaling session be?
Five to fifteen minutes is plenty. In the best-known writing study, by Pennebaker and Beall, people wrote for 15 minutes on four days in a row. Showing up regularly matters more than length, and three sentences on a busy day still count.
What if I'm not a good writer?
It doesn't matter. Nobody else reads your journal, so spelling, grammar and pretty sentences are irrelevant. Bullet points, lists and half sentences are a real journal too. What counts is writing down what you actually think and feel.
