People who maintain a semi daily journal, do you prefer a journal with dates or undated? I find the ones with dates add more pressure to write daily as opposed to writing when you can. Maybe not appropriate but I had this thought after visiting the Anne Frank House

@pratik I don’t want pages to be pre-written with dates but I date every page I write on.

@jsonbecker I’m with Jason on this.

@Ddanielson @jsonbecker Yup, that’s what I meant. Adding a date before you write so there’s no pressure of seeing so many blank pages if you’re writing after a while.

@pratik I have a Hobonichi 5-year journal with a small amount of space per day. That one is dated. It keeps me on the schedule of writing a few sentences before bed every night. My other notebook(s) are undated, which I sometimes use for journaling 1-3 pages at a time. Each has its place, IMO.

@pratik I use a plain paper journal and date as I go along. I am able to write most days but not every day so a dated journal wouldn’t work for me.

@pgkr @brad I can see that but for now, doing the schedule of writing before bed at night hasn't worked for me. So the blank pages of the days I missed make me even less likely to write as I feel the need to have a complete log. I'm going to try the undated approach.

@pratik Depends. Still then and now trying to find the "right" way and in a way also accepted that this is something to change. At some point, I discovered that writing at fixed dates / times encourages and motivates to get into some sort of ritual - but at the same time, getting back from there to writing whenever there's something to actually write down keeps one - or me at least - from stumbling into the trap of writing things just for the sake of writing.

@z428 True. I think I fall into the trap of writing for the sake of writing and then hating that I have to do it. I'm going to try the undated method for a while. I just might end up writing every day anyway but still gives me the option of not feeling bad if I miss a few days.

@pratik Good luck on that. 🙂 (Sometimes it's also the change itself that helps. I spent two years in sequence, earlier, trying to post one picture per day to Flickr, which ended up, too, in an astoundingly uncomfortable pressure I ultimately didn't enjoy. Right now, I'm trying the same again, but with a some-years-later mood, ready to give up whenever it doesn't feel good anymore. That is inspiring in an odd way...🙂)

@pratik I prefer a dated journal because I like the extra nudge to write something every day.

@pratik Before moving to a daily journal this year, I wrote exclusively in blank journals that I dated myself. Reading back through them, the frequency of my journaling is far less important than having an honest record of my thoughts slightly ahead of important life events. The journal I wrote the year COVID changed everything is especially precious for that kind of thing.

@pratik My son and his wife keep one of those 5-year diaries 5 years of each date on a page. Once you've done one cycle, seeing your entries from the year/s before is cool. A good argument for the dated journal.