Journaling and stoicism could be two things that help get us through these strange times – and, thanks to Ryan Holiday, you can practice both at once. In this article, the expert journaler and bestselling author of The Daily Stoic, shares his journaling tips.
This article is from Ryan Holiday’s newsletter – you can sign up here.
Journaling is something countless writers, creators, thinkers and leaders have done for thousands of years. Read on to learn more, or read the whole article on DailyStoic.com.
Buy your copy of The Daily Stoic from Amazon, Waterstones or Hive
Buy your copy The Daily Stoic Journal from Amazon, Waterstones or Hive
The Timeless Art of Journaling: How to Start Journaling, the Benefits of Journaling, and More
A little less than two thousand years ago now, in the morning from inside his tent on the front lines of the war in Germania, a man named Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, sat down with ink and papyrus and jotted down reminders and aphorisms of Stoic thinking to himself.
Where did he learn to do this journaling? Whose model was he following? We don’t know. Perhaps it was Epictetus, a former slave who had become a Stoic philosopher, who had taught that everyday we should keep our philosophical aphorisms and exercises at hand, that we should “write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.” Or maybe it was Seneca, another Stoic, who spoke about putting our lives up for review, and journaling about where we can improve.
In any case, this few minutes he spent alone with a journal in the morning were not just relaxing, they helped make him one of the greatest men the world had ever seen. You see, journaling is not just a little thing you do to pass the time, to write down your memories–though it can be–it’s a strategy that has helped brilliant, powerful and wise people become better at what they do.
Some of them include: Oscar Wilde, Susan Sontag, W.H. Auden, Queen Victoria, John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, Shawn Green, Mary Chesnut, Brian Koppelman, Anaïs Nin, Franz Kafka, Martina Navratilova, and Ben Franklin.
All journalers. You think they were doing it for fun? No, it was, for them, as Foucault said, a “weapon for spiritual combat.” A way to practice their principles, be creative and purge the mind of agitation It was part of who they were. It made them who they were. It can make you better too.
Whether you’re brand new to the concept of journaling or you’ve journaled in the past and fallen out of practice, this guide will tell you everything you need to know to help you make journaling one of the best things you do in 2020 and beyond.
The Benefits Of Journaling: Backed By Research
The scientific research to support journaling is extensive and compelling:
- According to a study conducted by Harvard Business School, participants who journaled at the end of the day had a 25% increase in performance when compared with a control group who did not journal. As the researchers conclude, “Our results reveal reflection to be a powerful mechanism behind learning, confirming the words of American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey: ‘We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.’”
- Another study by Cambridge University found journaling helps improve well-being after traumatic and stressful events. Participants asked to write about such events for 15–20 minutes resulted in improvements in both physical and psychological health.
- Improved Communication Skills — A Stanford University study found the critical relationship between writing and speaking. Writing reflects clear thinking, and in turn, clear communication.
- A study by The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that writing “focused on positive outcomes in negative situations” decreases emotional distress.
- Improved Sleep —The Journal of Experimental Psychology found that journaling before bed decreases cognitive stimulus, rumination, and worry, allowing you to fall asleep faster.
- Boosted Cognition — Research published to the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that reflective writing reduces intrusive and avoidant thoughts about negative events and improves working memory. These improvements in turn free up our cognitive resources for other mental activities, including our ability to cope more effectively with stress
How To Start Journaling
How To Start Journaling By Starting Small
The writer James Clear talks a lot about the idea of “atomic habits”—a small act that makes an enormous difference in your life. It started with an idea he learned about habit formation from Leo Babatua. Leo’s advice to people who want to get in the habit of flossing daily? Start by flossing just one tooth a day. Or if you want to start exercising regularly: start with 1-2 minutes a day. Or if want to eat healthy: eat one vegetable a day. Or if you want to read more: read one page a day. “Of course, that seems so ridiculous most people laugh,” Leo says, “But I’m totally serious: if you start out exceedingly small, you won’t say no. You’ll feel crazy if you don’t do it. And so you’ll actually do it!”
That’s why my journaling routine starts with the One Line a Day Journal. Tim Ferriss similarly starts in the 5-Minute Journal, which “I use for prioritizing and gratitude,” Tim explained. “The 5MJ is simplicity itself and hits a lot of birds with one stone: Five minutes in the morning of answering a few prompts, and then five minutes in the evening doing the same…Think of it as my boot-up sequence for an optimal day. The rest varies wildly, but the first 60 to 90 minutes after waking are what I focus on most.”
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Your journaling does not need to produce Nobel Prize-worthy prose. You don’t need to commit to a life practice right now. Start with one line—about how you are feeling, something you did yesterday, something you are excited about, someone you are thinking about. Start by doing it for one week. Start by writing a few things you are grateful for. Start with a sentence about the mindset you are going to attack the day with, about something interesting you learned in your reading yesterday, about your plans for the day. Whatever it is, start ridiculously small. You’ll know when you’re ready to build on it and write in more depth.
Track Something In Your Journal
Most people drop the journaling habit, or never begin, out of intimidation. The blank page is scary. Where do I even start? I have nothing important to say. Take the pressure off by creating an easy metric to track each day as the first line of your journal entry. After the One Line a Day Journal, in a black Moleskine, I journal quickly yesterday’s workout (how far I ran or swam), what work I did, any notable occurrences, and some lines about what I am grateful for, what I want to get better at, and where I am succeeding.
James Clear records his pushups and reading habits. Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman suggests keeping track of the decisions you’ve made in your journal. Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart lists what she is grateful for and what she accomplished. Bestselling author and avid runner David Epstein tracks workouts and training goals. Tim Ferriss has recorded every workout he’s done since the age of 15. Bestselling author and artist Austin Kleon keeps a logbook — writing down each day a simple list of things that have occured. Who did he meet, what did he do, etc. Why? For the same reason many of us struggle with keeping a journal: “For one thing, I’m lazy. It’s easier to just list the events of the day than to craft them into a prose narrative. Any time I’ve tried to keep a journal, I ran out of steam pretty quick.”
You can track what time you woke up and how many hours of sleep you got. You can log everything you ate that day. You can record the tasks you accomplished at work yesterday. The point is to know exactly where to begin when you open to the blank page each day.
Use Your Journal to Prepare In the Morning
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Despite his admitted struggles to get out of his warm, comfortable bed, Marcus Aurelius seems to have done his journaling first thing in the morning. From what we can gather, he would jot down notes about what he was likely to face in the day ahead. He talked about how frustrating people might be and how to forgive them, he talked about the temptations he would experience and how to resist them, he humbled himself by remembering how small we are in the grand scheme of things, and journaled on not letting the immense power he could wield that day corrupt him.
Who knows what kind of emperor, what kind of man, Marcus would have been without that preparation? Instead of letting racing thoughts run unchecked or leaving half-baked assumptions unquestioned, he forced himself to write and examine them. Putting his own thinking down on paper let him see it from a distance. It gave him objectivity that is so often missing when anxiety and fears and frustrations flood our minds. It let him enter his day and the important work calm and centered.
My morning journaling concludes in The Daily Stoic Journal where I prepare for the day ahead by meditating on a short prompt. Marcus said, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.” I think about all the things that I’m going to face in the day and how I want to be ready for them and how I want to respond to them. “A healthy mind should be prepared for anything,” Marcus was reminding himself.
What I am really doing with The Daily Stoic Journal is setting an intention or a goal for the day. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to lose my temper or my patience when I go talk to my neighbor about something that’s been bothering me. Maybe it’s that I want to make more time for stillness than I’ve been able to lately. Maybe it’s that I want to get the draft of an article finalized. It doesn’t need to be some lofty, earth-shattering goal. The point is to give myself something I can review at the end of the day–that I can actually evaluate myself against. More on that next.
Use Your Journal To Review Your Day In The Evening
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Unlike Marcus, Seneca seemed to do most of his journaling and reflection in the evening. As he wrote, “When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” He would ask himself whether his actions had been just, what he could have done better, what habits he could curb, how he might improve himself. Winston Churchill was famously afraid of going to bed at the end of the day having not created, written or done anything that moved his life forward “Every night,” he wrote, “I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.” That’s what the path to greatness requires. Self-awareness. Self-reflection.
It’s also what journaling is uniquely suited to help you do.
The founder of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman, jots down in his notebook things that he likes his mind to work on overnight. Similarly, chess prodigy and martial arts phenom Josh Waitzkin, has a similar process: “My journaling system is based around studying complexity. Reducing the complexity down to what is the most important question. Sleeping on it, and then waking up in the morning first thing and pre-input brainstorming on it. So I’m feeding my unconscious material to work on, releasing it completely, and then opening my mind and riffing on it.”
Dutch scientist Marije Elferink-Gemser studied the qualities that helps people get past performance plateaus and found that “Reflection is…a key factor in expert learning and refers to the extent to which individuals are able to appraise what they have learned and to integrate these experiences into future actions, thereby maximizing performance improvements.”
Copy Down Important Quotes In Your Journal
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius twice quotes from the comedies of Aristophanes, the Athenian comic playwright. Half a dozen times, we see him quote the tragedies and plays of Euripides, as well as the teachings of Epictetus. He quotes the tragedian Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. He quotes philosophers Democritus, Epicurus, and Plato. He quotes the poets Empedocles, Pindar, and Menander. As author Steven Johnson said,
“Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters—just about anyone with intellectual ambition…was likely to keep a commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations.”
Petrarch kept one. Montaigne, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, Ronald Reagan, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Ludwig van Beethoven—they all kept a journal, a depository of quotes and anecdotes. According to his biographer, the author and columnist H.L. Mencken “methodically filled notebooks with incidents, recording straps of dialog and slang,” and favorite bits from newspaper columns he liked. Record what strikes you, quotes that motivate you, stories that inspire you for later use in your life, in your business, in your writing, in your speaking, or whatever it is that you do.
In his book, Old School, Tobias Wolf’s semi-autobiographical character takes the time to type out quotes and passages from great books to feel great writing come through him. I do this almost every weekend in a separate journal I call a “commonplace book” that is a collection of quotes, ideas, stories and facts that I want to keep for later. It’s made me a much better writer and a wiser person. I am not alone. In 2010, when the Reagan Presidential Library was undergoing renovation, a box labeled “RR’s desk” was discovered. Inside the box were the personal belongings Ronald Reagan kept in his office desk, including a number of black boxes containing 4×6 note cards filled with handwritten quotes, thoughts, stories, political aphorisms, and one-liners. They were separated by themes like “On the Nation,” “On Liberty.” “On War,” “On the People,” “The World,” “Humor,” and “On Character”. This was Ronald Reagan’s version of a commonplace book. Robert Greene, detailing his reading and notetaking process, writes: “When I read a book, I am looking for the essential elements in the work that can be used to create the strategies and stories that appear in my books…I then go back and put these important sections on notecards.” Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson all kept their own version of a commonplace book.
Brainstorm Ideas In Your Journal
Ludwig van Beethoven was rarely seen without his notebook, not even when out to drinks with friends. One of his biographers, Wilhelm Von Lenz, wrote in 1855, “When Beethoven was enjoying a beer, he might suddenly pull out his notebook and write something in it. ‘Something just occurred to me,’ he would say, sticking it back into his pocket. The ideas that he tossed off separately, with only a few lines and points and without barlines, are hieroglyphics that no one can decipher. Thus in these tiny notebooks he concealed a treasure of ideas.”
Pliny the Younger, a prominent lawyer and prolific writer in ancient Rome, was another to keep a notebook always at hand. In one letter to the eminent senator and historian Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny describes a morning hunting trip. “I was sitting by the hunting nets with writing materials by my side,” he writes, “thinking something out and making notes, so that even if I came home emptyhanded I should at least have my notebooks filled. Don’t look down on mental activity of this kind, for it is remarkable how one’s wits are sharpened by physical exercise; the mere fact of being alone in the depths of the woods in the silence necessary for hunting is a positive stimulus to thought. So next time you hunt yourself, follow my example and take your notebooks along with your lunch-basket and flask; you will find that Minerva walks the hills no less than Diana.”
Thomas Edison kept a notebook titled “Private Idea Book” in which he kept different ideas that popped into his head, possible inventions he’d later work on, such as “artificial silk” or “ink for the blind” or “platinum wire ice cutting machine.”
Entrepreneur and Bestselling author James Altucher carries with him a waiter’s pad and forces himself to come up with at least ten ideas per day. “Most people don’t realize this: The idea muscle is a real muscle,” says Altucher. “And it atrophies super quickly.”
Before Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species became a book that altered our understanding of biology, natural sciences, and several other disciplines of human knowledge, it was just a running list of thoughts, observations, and lessons learned throughout the day that Darwin recorded in his journals. Regardless of whether it was on index cards or in journals or a waiter’s pad—the Twains, the Darwins, the Beethovens of the world weren’t some innate geniuses. They were exercising their idea muscle every day.
The Bullet Journal Method
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Epictetus uses the word ataraxia fourteen times in the Discourses and twice in the Enchiridion. Epictetus said it is the fruit of following philosophy. It means tranquility or freedom from disturbance by external things. It is the state of mind and being that the Stoics aspired to. It is a state free of clutter and chaos. And, it is a state of being that is never not hard to achieve, because each day presents plenty of opportunities to clutter or minds—responsibilities, the dysfunctional job that stresses you out, a contentious relationship, reality not agreeing with your expectations. We’re anxious, then we’re scared, then sad, then angry. Then we spiral.
I favour creaminess, complexity and balance in a Stilton – with a restrained amount of blueing. 
This gentle, mild slightly crumbly cows’ milk cheese is part of a family unique to Britain – the Territorials – which includes Red Leicester, Double and Single Gloucester, Cheshire, Lancashire and Caerphilly. There are many producers to choose from, some of my favourites in order are, 
Fromagerie Reaux’s camembert de Normandie would be a very traditional choice, but whichever producer you favour, do look for the ugly fruit of the Camembert family, a good one ought to have a rumpled wrinkly surface with tawny pinkish flecks setting off the snowy white of its mould rind.
Washed in brine, and often after that in some sort of booze, these cheeses are a little more contentious, since the washing creates a pink sticky rind with pungent aromas of the farm yard along with meaty smokey flavours. Epoisses washed in Marc de Bourgogne, is pretty hefty, Langres, washed in Marc de Champagne is gentler.
Order the book from 
