Journaling isn’t about being deep. It’s about catching patterns you’d never see one day at a time.

The value is not in any single entry. One day on its own tells you almost nothing, but thirty days lined up show you that you are always flat on Wednesdays, or that every argument happens when you are short of sleep, and no amount of thinking can produce that from memory. It is less confession than record-keeping.

So keep it short enough that you will actually do it. Three lines: what happened, how you felt, what is bothering you. Then read a month of it in one sitting at the end of October, which is the part most people skip and the only part that pays.