Don't start journaling. Just write.

People ask me how to start journaling. Here's my answer, and it's kind of a joke, but not really: if you want to start journaling, don't start journaling. Just start writing. Like, a sentence.

I've kept a journal for fifteen years, and I've tried a lot of ways of doing it. The only thing that ever really worked for me is writing. Not the system around it. Not the perfect notebook or the perfect prompt. Just putting words down.

How to start journaling: just sit down

You don't need to know what you're going to say. Most mornings I don't. I open a new page and see what comes out. Sometimes it starts with "I don't know what I feel like writing," and two paragraphs later I've figured out exactly what I feel like writing.

That's kind of the magic of it. You don't have to show up with a thought. You show up, and the thought finds you.

Some days it's one sentence

Here's what my journal actually looks like, day to day:

• Some days I write one sentence.
• Some days I write nothing and leave a voice note instead.
• Some days I take a photo, drop it in, and I'm done.
• Some days I don't do anything at all.
• And some days I follow a formula.

You've probably heard the advice: keep a gratitude journal and it'll change your life. Like, that's cool too. Sometimes I do that, and listing a few things I'm grateful for can shift my whole morning. And sometimes I won't, for weeks. Neither one is the right way. They're both just ways.

The point isn't the format. The point is that you came back to the page, in whatever shape you showed up in.

Journaling isn't a life system

For me, journaling isn't about building a life system. It's not about trying to track everything in my life.

I do like tracking things. But I like tracking the things that make life feel more magical, more mystical, the stuff beyond the mundane. I keep a little of the mundane in there too, habits and tasks and things like that, because they help me navigate. But in general, that's the boring part. It's not that much fun.

The real fun is exploring the inner world. The magical side of life, the mystical side, the higher ideals. My real thoughts, as wrong as they may be. Like, why am I so mad at so-and-so? And why is it so futile and dumb to be mad at so-and-so? Maybe I'm the problem? Getting the chance to flesh that out on a page, trying to find some sort of resolution, and at the very same time being able to sit with not resolving anything at all. Just appreciating the experience of life as it is, even when it doesn't conform to a system. To me, that's the fun.

I want a journal that helps me capture that, so sometimes I can look back and go, haha, that was really immature of me. Or, that thought wasn't fully fleshed out. Or, man, I totally think differently now.

But there's the other side too. Sometimes I find something I wrote that's kind of brilliant, and I'm like, man, I wish I could live with that for the rest of my life. I didn't even know I said that. Not long ago Claude helped me find a line from January 2024, and I kept it in my commonplace:

There is a road that is only meant for me. Can I find it?

That's so cool, that I was asking those questions back then.

Getting to see both sides is one of my favorite parts of keeping a journal. It's the same thing I was complaining about back in 2024, when I'd written more than 200,000 words and didn't even know where it all went.

You can have two places

Everyone's going to be totally different, and I'm cool with that. If you're on more of a hustle culture vibe, some of those other apps, the ones built for tracking and optimizing everything, might be better for you. This place might not be the place for you, and that's okay.

But you could also have two places. I think the magic of life is being able to occupy both spaces.

For ten-plus years I was in hardcore entrepreneur mode, living the advertising life. I lived by this mantra: a focused mind can pierce through stone. I was going to do the one thing I wanted to do, and only that. High personal optimization toward one clear, defined objective.

And man, it became totally overwhelming. My inner world got underdeveloped. There were parts of me missing.

So I took a lot of time off to develop that inner world, and it took a long time. Journaling really helped me through that. It helped me come out the other side and deepen parts of me I'd never really been able to reach before.

Journaling comes in phases

Life comes in phases, and so does journaling. As I come in and out of responsibility, a big project, a move, a busy season, my writing changes with it. Some stretches I write thousands of words a week. Some stretches it's a line here and there.

I'm a pretty intuitive person. A little more animal in how I move through things, maybe. When I'm working on something, I dig in and try to understand it, and then I metabolize it and process it, and it just becomes part of who I am. I don't need to keep lingering on it for months.

So sometimes my journal gets quieter for a bit, and that isn't me failing. That's me being done with a chapter.

If I was somebody else, with a different job or some mega passion, really into botany or figuring out how everything works, maybe I'd journal differently. More structure, more notes, more systems. That's cool. But that's not me, and it doesn't have to be you either. How you journal really comes down to how you want to do it.

Building the habit, one light pole at a time

Then there's the whole question of habits. Everybody wants to know how to make journaling stick.

The way I build a habit is the way I get back into running. I start by walking. Then I'll walk and jog to the next light pole. Then walk again. The next day I'll walk, and run to that same light pole. Then I add a light pole. Then another. Slowly, it builds.

One of my mentors gave me an old adage years ago, and honestly, it kind of makes me upset because it's so common and so boring. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. But man, that's just how you do it.

And then I fall off. And man, I'm totally cool with that, because I know the first light pole is always there when I come back.

This is contrary to a lot of advice out there, so I want to be clear: I'm not an expert, and I'm not giving you advice. It's just my method. I'm not really into hustle culture or mega discipline. My world is a little more watery, a little more fluid. Habits come in and out of my life. Exercise might be on my list today and gone in three months, and that's okay. I want my habits to sit in support of my life, not be the whole point of it.

So I needed a journal that could bend with that. One that wouldn't make me feel like I'd broken something by missing a week. That's a big part of why I made Haumm.

A blank page that's yours

Haumm is a place for you. Our job is to hold the space: a page that's always there, and an easy way to say what you need to say, however you want to say it. Write it, say it out loud, snap a photo. There's some gentle accountability in there too, like habits and gratitude, but you're the one who chooses how much of that you use, if any.

It's a blank page and a choose-your-own-adventure. There's no wrong way in.

If there's something we could be doing better, please write to us at hello@haumm.com.

But if you're wondering how to start journaling, it really comes down to something super simple.

Don't start journaling. Just write a sentence. Tomorrow, maybe you run to the next light pole.

See how Haumm works →

— Kit