Microjournaling: The bare minimum journaling habit that actually sticks

For people who love the idea of journaling but never actually do it

The problem with daily journaling

Even though there are technically no rules to journaling, something about doing it every day feels... daunting.

Which pen do I use?
Which notebook?
Or should it be digital?
How much do I write?
3 pages?
Am I supposed to follow a prompt?
What if I miss a day?

Why does it always feel like this????

All of these tiny decisions add up, and most days, journaling just doesn’t happen. Unless life feels like an emergency, my notebook stays shut.

But if there’s one thing I know about my ADHD brain, it’s that the easier something is, the more likely I am to actually do it.

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The bare minimum approach to journaling

Inspired by Bare Minimum Monday, I started wondering —

How can I bare minimum-ize the practice of journaling? What’s the smallest effort I could put in while still capturing something about my day?

I recalled a tidbit from Storyworthy, where Matthew Dicks asks himself, What was the most storyworthy moment of my day? and writes a few sentences about it.

I loved the idea, but I wanted to make it even easier. What if I only wrote a single headline?

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The microjournal was born

The prompt is simple: If my day were a newspaper article, what would the title be?

I called it microjournaling, and it’s infinitely more approachable than committing to three pages a day. My only job is to write a single headline.

Often times, I document an event that stands out:

• Girl Goes to Boyfriend’s Company Christmas Party and Likes All the Engineers

• Pedestrian Girl Avoids Being Hit by Two Trucks

Sometimes it’s an inconsequential moment that I otherwise would’ve forgotten:

• Girl Makes Store Full of T-Mobile Employees Laugh

• Girl Attempts Homemade Soup and Narrowly Avoids Severe Oil Burns

Other times, it’s just the overarching vibe of the day:

• Girl Keeps Trying Despite Feeling Generally Kind of Awful

• Girl Realizes Rotting on the Couch for an Entire Day Does Not Help Her

How it feels to finally be consistent at documenting your life

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Finding meaning in the mundane

The practice forces me to pinpoint a noteworthy moment, something I might have otherwise let slip by unnoticed. It doesn’t have to be clever or profound, and it rarely is — but that’s not the point.

Most of life happens in the small, in-between moments, the ones that seem unremarkable at the time. But when you start documenting them, you realize they weren’t so insignificant after all.

In hindsight, the little things are the big things. Those fleeting details? That’s your life story — and the microjournal helps you capture it.

Steal my microjournal Notion template

Notion users, I gotchu! This template is free, super beginner-friendly, and simple enough to fit into any existing Notion setup.

If you ever feel like writing more than a headline, just click into the entry and keep going. But if one line is all you can muster, you’ve done the bare minimum and you’re good to call it there.

That’s the beauty of lowering the bar: you actually get to see yourself win.

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