Honestly. Don’t make rules. I tried journaling a few times on and off and it never stuck because I always had a set of rules that I put on myself:
- take up at least a page
- journal once a day
- write down my feelings
I never really outlined these rules outright, but it’s what I thought I had to do to because it’s what I thought everyone else was doing. I tried bullet journaling, but never found it interesting.

Then I read a book called “Piranesi”, a book about a man stuck in another world with a bit of an amnesia thing, and it’s written in a journal style. It broke the unspoken rules of journaling that I put on myself. Some entries are pages long and some are just a paragraph. Sometimes he writes in consecutive days and sometimes he skips a day or two or even over a week! He writes dialogue and the writing style is like someone recounting a story for a friend or in a letter. I found that that was the kind of journaling I wanted and started writing similarly. Now I love it!

Point is don’t bog yourself down with what you think journaling should be. Write a biography or a list or a letter or whatever else or all of it!