What to write in a journal when nothing happens

Work, lunch, the commute, dinner, an episode of something. You open your journal and there is nothing to say, because nothing happened. That is usually the evening when people start searching for what to write in a journal. Nobody asks after a wedding or a move, because big days write themselves.

Ordinary days are the main material of a journal. You will remember the big events without help. The Tuesday where "nothing happened" will be close to gone in a year, and it takes with it what your life looked like then: what got said in the kitchen, what was outside the window. Below are six ways to pull an entry out of a day like that, each with an example of how short it can be.

Why an ordinary day is worth writing down

In 2014, Ting Zhang, Tami Kim, Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino and Michael Norton ran four studies on this. In the first, people put together a time capsule of everyday things from their lives and predicted how interesting it would be to open it a few months later. When they opened it, they found it more interesting than they had predicted.

Then the researchers compared ordinary experiences with extraordinary ones. People misjudged the ordinary ones more.

People underestimate how much they will enjoy rediscovering records of their past, and they underestimate it most for ordinary, mundane moments. The authors link this to misplaced faith in our memory of everyday events.

That is one paper, and what it measured was curiosity and pleasure on rereading, nothing about health or mood. Still, on a night with nothing to write, it helps: the feeling that today is not worth an entry looks a lot like that same wrong prediction.

What to write in a journal when the day was ordinary: six moves

Each move shrinks the day down to one point. The examples are made up to show the shape. They are not from anyone's real journal.

One detail

Take one object, sound or image instead of the whole day. Smaller is better. A detail drags the rest of the day in behind it, and two lines later you are writing about the day anyway.

The café on the corner has a new sign. The old one had a crooked "e" for about three years, and the street looks slightly wrong without it.

Your body

How the day felt physically: what got tired, what got cold, what you wanted to eat. When you have no words for a day, your body still spent all of it with you.

Neck stiff by lunch. Hot shower tonight, and only then did I notice my shoulders had been up around my ears since morning.

A line someone said

One sentence someone said, word for word. It does not need to be clever. A year from now that line brings back the person's voice. "Talked to Mom" will not.

Coworker at the printer: "It jammed again, but we've reached an understanding." Two minutes of laughing.

What you noticed

What changed since last week: the weather, the light in the window, the line at the store, a new word your kid uses. Weekdays look identical until you put two of them side by side.

Dark by five now. The streetlight by our door was already on when the bus pulled in. First time this fall.

A list of small things

Five items, no connecting words, no conclusions. A list gets you out of writing "proper" sentences. It is close to a gratitude journal, except nobody needs thanking. You just name things.

Warm bread from the bakery. Found the other sock. Bus came right away. Finished the chapter where it all comes together. Quiet after ten.

The "same as always"

Once, write down the routine itself: what time you get up, which way you walk, what is on your desk. Today it is boring. In a couple of years the routine will be different, and this entry may be the only description of a whole stretch of your life.

Up at 7:10, kettle, two scoops of food for the cat, then breakfast for me. The 34 bus, window seat if I'm lucky. The stack of papers on my desk I said I'd sort in September.

What to write in a journal every day when you don't want to think

You do not have to pick the best move. Rotate them: a detail on Monday, your body on Tuesday, and so on. One line is enough. On a really heavy night, "wiped out, going to bed" is an entry too. If the trouble is keeping it going at all, there is a separate piece on how to start a journal without a page-a-day rule.

If you do not feel like typing, say the line out loud. A detail or a quote takes about ten seconds to speak.

When you would rather have a question

The six moves above are ways of looking at a day, and none of them is a question. If you want someone else to choose the topic, there are a hundred journal prompts for mornings, evenings and bad days. Some of these moves show up there as questions: a whole section on your body, another on the people around you.

The difference is where you start. A question works when your head is empty. A move works when the day is in your head and it just seems too small to write down.

What an entry like this gives you a year later

The note about the café sign looks like nothing today, and only time will make it worth something. A year from now you open it and that whole fall comes back: the job, who was around, what you wanted then. In the Zhang study the capsules were opened after a few months, not a year, but there too the ordinary turned out more interesting than people expected.