How to start keeping a diary
Most diaries stop after a couple of weeks. That is rarely because people have nothing to write about. It is because the bar was set too high on the first day.
I built Inklings around a single idea: a diary should be small and quiet. The method below works just as well in an ordinary notebook. Where the app saves you a step, it says so.
1. Decide where you write
Notebook or phone. Choose whatever you have to hand when it is time to write. Do not spend a week choosing. You can switch later.
2. Write one thought a day
Two sentences are a full diary entry. Do not try to sum up the day. Pick one thing: something you noticed, something someone said, something you wondered about.
If you do not know what to write, answer a question. It can be the same one every day, for example “What did I notice today?”.
In Inklings: The app can show a sentence that gets you started. If you would rather have a blank page, you switch it off.
3. Choose a fixed time
Tie the writing to something you do anyway: the morning coffee, the bus home, brushing your teeth at night. Which time you choose matters less than it being the same every day. Keep the notebook where you are at that time.
Set an upper limit instead of a lower one. Ten minutes is enough. Then it does not become a task you have to make room for.
In Inklings: With Siri Shortcuts you can say “Hey Siri, open today’s Inklings”.
4. Do not catch up on days you skipped
You will skip days. Do not write them afterwards. That turns the diary into a list of what you owe, and it grows longer for every day you wait.
Open at today’s date and write today’s thought. The gaps are part of the diary.
In Inklings: There is no streak to lose and no reminders nagging. Skip four days, and nothing is different on the fifth.
5. Write for yourself
Nobody is going to read this. You do not need to explain who people are, and you do not need to write well. Half sentences will do. If you write for an imagined reader, you start polishing the text, and then it becomes work.
Make sure it really is private. A notebook can live in a drawer. On a phone, you should know where the text is stored and who can open it.
In Inklings: The diary is stored locally on your device. There is no account and no login. iCloud sync is off until you turn it on yourself, and you can require Face ID to open the app.
6. Read back once in a while
Short notes do not look like much on the day you write them. What they are worth only shows once you have many. Flip back after a few months. Do not correct what you wrote. It was true that day.
In Inklings: You can flip back to this date last year, and search by word or theme across everything you have written. If you want to take the text with you, you export it as markdown or PDF.
Common mistakes
- Starting too big. A full page every day is hard to keep up. Two sentences are not.
- Waiting for something to write about. Ordinary days are most days. Write about them.
- Catching up on what you missed. Write today. Leave yesterday alone.
- Writing well. Nobody reads it. Write the way you think.
- Switching tools all the time. A new notebook does not write for you.