I recently wrote about a trip I took and how I had hoped to keep up with my blogging while traveling. Unfortunately, I ended up not blogging during that trip, but I did keep up with my personal journal. Denny commented on the post, asking me if I’d ever written about my journaling habit, which I hadn’t. It seemed like a good idea for a post.

I started my first journal in 1998. I wrote exactly one entry and then didn’t come back to it again until 2004. I then continued journaling on and off until 2007, when, for some reason, I stopped again. In 2010, I started again, and while I wasn’t writing daily, I managed to keep writing, though with some fairly significant gaps, through the end of 2021.

In December 2022, I was thinking about 2023 and what I wanted to accomplish in the coming year. I decided to make a concerted effort to journal every day. In the past, I’d gotten a lot out of the practice and wanted to make it a consistent habit.

Forming The Habit

Since setting that goal, I’ve been journaling every day since January 2023. How did I finally get to the point where I was consistently journaling every day? The most important difference is that I changed when I was writing.

Previously, I would write in the evening. It seemed like the perfect time: the day was over, and I could put down some thoughts from the day, and go to bed. The problem was that most nights, I was tired. And summoning the willpower to write when I was tired was difficult. So difficult, that I often would just skip it. After skipping a few nights, I wouldn’t even think about it for days, or weeks, or longer.

Late last year, I read an article about journaling that suggested writing first thing in the morning. I didn’t really think this sounded like a good idea. After all, I need my coffee in the morning before I feel ready to do anything. But, I thought I’d give it a try. And, to my surprise, morning was the perfect time for me.

So now, every morning, I get up, make a cup of coffee, and write. I do this before looking at my calendar or email. I don’t check the news. I just write.

I occasionally write in my journal at other times during the day, too, especially if I have something on my mind that I need to work through.

Why Journal?

There are many reasons people journal: chronicling their life, getting ideas down “on paper,” expressing gratitude, or just wanting to practice writing. While all of those apply to me, they are not the main focus of my journal.

I have a brain that often won’t shut up, if that makes sense. There are times when I can’t stop thinking (obsessing) about a worry, a problem, an idea, a family member struggling, an injustice, and so on. This can make it hard for me to concentrate, be engaged with those around me, sleep, or just relax. I’ve found over the years that if I write down and work through what’s going on in my head, essentially having a conversation with myself, it helps. It sometimes helps a lot. This, mostly, is why I journal.

How I Journal

I do most of my journaling on my iPad with its Magic Keyboard attached. I sit in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and write. I occasionally use my iPhone as well for quick entries later in the day.

I’ve used many apps over the years for my journal: Word, Outlook (using its old Journal feature!), OneNote, Day One, and more recently, Apple’s Notes app. A couple of months ago, I switched to using Bear for my journal, and that’s my current setup.

I was pretty happy with Apple Notes and had used it for several years. It’s built-in, fast and works well. But, there were two main things that pushed me to find a new app:

1. Search: I use Apple Notes for keeping track of everything, and I use search fairly regularly. Having all my journal entries in Notes meant that when I searched for something, I’d often get journal entries mixed in the results. This wasn’t always a problem, but I was noticing it more and more. For example, if I searched for “iPad”, I’d get many journal entries returned. Apparently, I gush about how awesome the iPad is in my journal quite regularly 😀.
2. Formatting: I have a format and structure I use for my entries and created a shortcut that sets that up (more below). This has always been finicky in Notes, but in iPadOS 17, it got worse, and I could no longer get the formatting I wanted.

Choosing Bear

When I decided to look for a new app, there were many to choose from. The most well-known is Day One. I used it many years ago and liked it, but they moved to their own sync service without encryption. I didn’t want my private journal going to their servers, so I switched to Apple Notes. (They’ve since added end-to-end encryption)

I looked at Day One again, but they have a fairly steep subscription price, as well as a privacy statement that just doesn’t work for me.

I thought about using Ulysses, which I use for writing my blog posts and other long-form work. I had tried using this for my journal some time ago, but it just didn’t feel right. To me, Ulysses is about producing something: a blog post, a document, or a book. It’s not about capturing and keeping thoughts.

I looked through the App Store for other journaling apps, but nothing really jumped out. I just wanted something simple, and everything seemed to be focused on themes and prompts and had in-app purchases or ads. No thank you.

Then I remembered that I had tried Bear for my notes a while ago and still had some time left on my subscription. I don’t love the idea of another subscription but figured I’d give it a try.

Bear has been a great solution. It has a lovely, clean user interface that’s focused on writing. It has great Shortcuts support, so I was able to rewrite my journal shortcut and get just what I wanted. And, importantly, Bear uses iCloud for storage and sync, so there’s no new account needed, and my entries are somewhere that I trust. Bear has many features that I don’t need for a simple journal, but they don’t get in the way. I really like it.

Now my journal is separate from my notes, which feels like the right approach. My search problem in Apple Notes is solved, and I get better Shortcuts integration to make working with my journal super easy.

Journal Shortcut

I wanted to reduce friction as much as possible when writing in my journal, so I created a Shortcut to make it easy. I have the Shortcut on my home screen (both iPad and iPhone) so it’s quick to access. It’s pretty simple, but saves me a lot of time. It does the following:

• Creates a new journal entry for the day if one doesn’t already exist.
• If it’s the first entry for the day:
  
  • Adds the current date as the title.
  • Adds the current day of the week (i.e., Thursday) as a second heading (H2 style).
  • Adds the tag #journal (Bear doesn’t have folders).
• Then, for all entries
  
  • Appends the time (H2 style).
  • Appends my location, in italics, under the time.
  • Appends the current weather, in italics, under the location.
  • Adds a horizontal line.

I have a single note per day, and each time I use the shortcut during the day, it appends that entry to the bottom of the daily note. I end up with something like this:

If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to share the Shortcut I use. It could easily be updated to work with other apps that support Shortcuts.

For the Long Term?

So far, I like how Bear is working. Will this be my long-term journaling solution? I’m not sure. While I don’t mind subscriptions for the apps that provide a lot of value and functionality, I don’t like the idea of yet another one, especially for a fairly simple task.

I might take another look at Obsidian, as Jason recently wrote about. That is overkill for me, even more so than Bear, but it’s free and has some other benefits.

And then there’s Apple’s upcoming Journal app. It might be a good solution, but it seems to be iPhone only, which isn’t ideal for me. I’ll definitely give it a try though when it’s available.

I have some time before my subscription for Bear renews, so I’ll likely keep looking. But for now, I’m happy with how this is working.

What about you? Do you journal regularly? What apps do you use?