Keeping a daily journal since 2010

I went on the Day One podcast to talk about my daily journaling habit. I've been journaling every day since 2010, and in Day One since...day one of the app, I think.

Every Single Day: C.J. Chilvers on Journaling as Reflection and Meditation

C.J. Chilvers has journaled every night since 2010, treating the practice as a form of quiet reflection—part habit, part meditation.

Day One | Your Journal for Life

I only have two rules. They constrain me just enough to get it done every day and no more.

1. Create an entry in Day One once every day. It’s doesn’t matter what’s in the entry. It can be a word, a paragraph, a photo, or an essay.
2. Drill it into your head that no one will ever seen it. Keep it encrypted. Never give anyone your password. Go wild. Kill perfectionism.

That's it.

What really interests me is the intersection of journaling and meditation. I go into it a little during the podcast, but I still need to do my research before writing about it here.

There's definitely something weird about that intersection worth studying. Meditation is the letting go of thoughts in an attempt to get a tiny bit closer to the present. Journaling is the detailed examination of thoughts, which puts you in a flow state with outcomes that are very similar to meditation. They're opposite approaches that reach (seemingly) similar results.

Cutting through the woo-woo and getting to good, independent, replicate-able studies on this is probably going to be difficult. But what a fascinating topic to explore!