The #1 Self Improvement Habit (it’s free and needs no training)
Socrates said the most important thing you can do, philosophically, is to “know thyself”.
What is the best way to know yourself? Look at yourself in a mirror all day?
If you grew up in the 1990s you might remember the cartoon Doug. He is a teenager growing up and dealing with typical high school drama who kept a diary. I vaguely remember the running gag on how he wrote “Dear diary” but insisted it be called a journal when talking about it to others. He used his diary to remember the fun things he did, what life lessons he learned, and reflect on the most important things in life.
The best way to know yourself is to regularly journal or diary whichever you want to call it. It is like having a personal mirror into your own psyche.
I have regularly journaled since 2021 and made a tally of how many pages and words I have written as of January 2025.
Want to take a guess how long it is? Since 2021 I have written 975 pages with over 435,000 words.To put in perspective, that is roughly the length of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Did writing all that take a lot of time? Why do it?
Averaging things out, I spend no more than an hour a week journaling. That is equivalent to watching a show or two in your free time. Compared to sitting on your couch and watching TV, journaling has serious personal benefits.
It helps you process your life events and how you felt about them
You start to notice trends in your own life both bad and good
It makes life feel like less of a blur and you realize how much you change and grow
I do not do it often, but it can be interesting to go back into my journals years ago and see what I was doing, learning, and thinking about. It is amazing how certain things stay the same and how other things change. I largely have the same dreams and aspirations as I did four years ago but the way I go about them has evolved and improved.
My hope is some day I can feed my journals into a local, private artificial intelligence tool and then dialogue with my journal like it is an avatar. We can talk about memories and lessons together.
“Okay”, you think, “journaling sounds great and all but I do not know what to write”.
The key is to not overthink it. Do not even concern yourself with grammar or spelling. You cannot be an editor and creator at the same time. Just start jotting down what is going on in your life in whatever format is easiest for you. You do not need to share your private words to anyone for any reason, so you should not feel judgemental towards yourself.
Personally I have found a rhythm that has worked well for me and it works like this:
At the end of my day, I will quickly write down in a plain text file anything interesting or frustrating or wonderful that happened that day. It is crucial to make a note, no matter how short, because I find myself easily forgetting these details as the week goes on and the whirlwind of daily life distracts me.
At the end of the week, I copy and paste these notes into MS Word for my weekly review (inspired by Getting Things Done, my favorite productivity book). In the past I used to write a formal journal entry daily but I later discovered it was overkill. A lot of events, especially at my day job, take several days to play out and know where it is going. I found one entry per week is more than good enough. I can review how my week went and what I plan for the next week. It is a simple layout with the date at the top and my journaling under it.
I usually do my reviews on Sunday evenings. The best part is that since I already have quick notes from earlier in the week, it is only a matter of cleaning it up and elaborating on some parts. Altogether the process takes no more than an hour a week—around five or so minutes Monday through Saturday and maybe 20 or so minutes on Sunday for the review.
In my journal I like to do monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews too. It is simple—at the end of each period I make a bullet list page outlining my biggest topics, wins, lessons, and future plans. The monthly and quarterly reviews are usually a page or two.
I do my yearly annual review in early January and it is lengthier at five or more pages. It is an excellent way to close out the prior year and think ahead for the new year. I have separate documents for each year with the annual review being the final entry.
My point is to find whatever system works best for you. It can be a pen and paper notebook. It could be a single Google Docs that scrolls forever. It could be an app on your phone. If you want to pour your heart out every night, go for it. If you want to grunt out a few sentences here and there, that is fine too. Just having a consistent system is all that matters. And it goes without saying, make sure to keep it somewhere safe and maintain electronic backups if you can.
Try it for a month and see how it makes you feel. You may be pleasantly surprised and create a new, helpful habit that pays dividends for years to come.