Microjournaling is awesome :D

2025-12-08

Last year, my sister gifted me a tiny 2025 dated planner. I probably should have used it as a planner (my current "planner" is a regular notebook, where I keep a running checklist of undated To Dos) but I decided to use it as a microjournal instead.

Back when I was in middle and high school, I wrote literal pages every single day. When I was bored, I would just start writing down all of my thoughts. I still have those journals (though I'm not brave enough to take another look at them!) When I started college, I assumed I would have much less free time and left journaling behind. Literally. I left my journal at home, hundreds of miles away.

It was true that I had less free time at college, but I spent most of my first semester wishing I had my journal so I could reflect on all of the novel experiences I was having. Somewhere around New Years Eve, I decided to use my new planner as a low-commitment daily journal. Each space is only ~2 square inches, so there's barely enough room for a few sentences. It would take me less than a minute to fill a day's space with a few sentences.

It wasn't really my New Years resolution, but I mostly kept up with writing every day! There were a few days (especially during the summer) where I would forget to write, but I filled in those days during the week. Once I started my second year of college, I kept my microjournal on my desk. It acted as a visual reminder to write about my day, which I usually did before I went to sleep.

Reflecting in my microjournal also led me to discover new things about myself. I noticed all of the entries where I complained about wasting my time doomscrolling when I had work to do usually also mentioned that I was exhausted. I started a new practice: if I felt tired and noticed myself going off task, I would just go to sleep, even if it was still relatively "early" compared to when I usually slept. Then I would wake up early and get the work done. This made my work more manageable and made me feel a bit better about myself.

The main problem I ran into was that on days where I did a lot, I usually ran out of space when trying to describe everything. During one vacation, I accidentally left the journal at home. I kept up my journalling on the Notes app on my phone, but when I got back, I had some trouble fitting my recollections in the space corresponding to each day. I also noticed that the entries on my phone slowly got longer throughout the vacation - not necessarily because I was doing more, but because without the space restraint of my microjournal, I tended to go into more detail about my day.

At the same time, I think the space restraint of my tiny journal was necessary. Back when I was writing pages every day in my larger journals, I made myself finish each page I was on. That meant that if I was halfway through a page and ran out of thoughts, I just started rambling until the end of the page. Sometimes, my rambling sparked something interesting and I started writing more. Other times, it was just rambling. Either way, I set a standard for myself of writing at least one full page for each entry. Considering I have less free time now, forcing myself to write one full page every day would probably just end in me abandoning my journal within a week. With my microjournal, I get the satisfaction of filling the space for each day without feeling like writing is a huge commitment.

Looking back at my entries for this year is going to be fun. I can't justify buying a 2026 dated planner when I have a stack of unused notebooks, but I'll continue microjournalling next year.