Keeping a personal journal is very important and useful. Read my motivation here.

Paper or digital?

Many people keep their journal in a physical book. Although I agree that the feeling of a physical book is irreplaceable, there are many advantages to using digital technology for your journal. We all carry our cell phones everywhere with us, so keeping your journal as a digital document, means you can access it any time you have something new to add to it. If you save your document in the cloud (e.g. using Google Drive or similar), it is always backed up. This means you will never lose this precious and irreplaceable document even if your phone is stolen or destroyed. Your journal will also be secure from the eyes of others. And if you make it offline available too, you will be able to edit your journal even if you do not have access to the internet at that point in time.

But just as important, you will also be gaining other advantages digital documents have over paper versions. You will be able to search for words or ideas in your journals if you cannot remember when you wrote it. And if you base your journal on my template, you will be able to filter your journal entries according to category, which makes it very easy for yourself (or your descendants one day) to find specific information.

Daily or weekly?

I like to journal on a weekly, not a daily basis (unless it is something so profound that I am worried that I will forget the details). A week is not so infrequent that I will forget what happened during this past week. I journal on Sunday mornings when I do not have other appointments and am relaxed. Try to find a day and time in the week that works best for you, and then set a reminder. After a couple of months you will have formed a habit, and you will not need a reminder anymore.

Additional ideas

I personally like categorising my journal entries according to the following category types:

• Idea: something new I came up with to consider later, when I have more time.
• Miracle: any out of the ordinary event that occurred which, I believe, points to Divine intervention in my life.
• Bible: a Bible verse that is very special to me.
• Personal Victory: anything I have accomplished that I am proud of.
• Prayer Request: anything I am asking the Lord for.
• Prayer Answered: any prayer request answered. I mark my prayer requests, and its associated answered prayer entries, with special symbols that makes it easy for me to find any request that was answered. This is a very interesting exercise – I find that the majority of my prayer requests are answered.
• Lesson: a life lesson that I have learnt.
• Book: a book I have read recently that meant a lot to me.
• Quote: a quote by someone that meant a lot to me.
• Journal: a general journal entry that does not belong in any of the other categories.

I have a separate journal document for each calendar year. This makes it smaller and faster to work with.

Download

You can download my journal template here.