---
title: Journaling
description: Journaling is structured reflective writing. You will learn methods from bullet journals to expressive writing, the evidence for its effects, and how to keep a practice going.
category: personal-development
subcategory: personal-development
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/journaling
---

# Journaling

Journaling is structured reflective writing. You will learn methods from bullet journals to expressive writing, the evidence for its effects, and how to keep a practice going.

## Available Resources

2 Books • 2 Websites • 1 Papers

## Websites

### 1. Gratitude Journal (Greater Good in Action practice)

Research-based protocol for gratitude journaling from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center: frequency and duration, specific tips such as depth over breadth and subtraction thinking, the Emmons and McCullough study it derives from, and limits of the evidence.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/gratitude_journal

**Tags:** gratitude-journaling, positive-psychology, well-being, journaling-practice

### 2. Expressive Writing (Greater Good in Action practice)

Free step-by-step protocol for Pennebaker's four-day, twenty-minute expressive writing exercise from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, with the studies behind it, the proposed reason it works, and documented cases where it helps less or can backfire.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/expressive_writing

**Tags:** expressive-writing, pennebaker, emotional-processing, writing-interventions

## Youtubes

### 1. How to Bullet Journal

**Author:** Ryder Carroll

Short official walkthrough by Ryder Carroll, the method's creator, on the Bullet Journal channel showing how to set up the index, future log, monthly log and daily log, use rapid-logging bullets, and migrate unfinished tasks.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm15cmYU0IM

**Tags:** bullet-journal, rapid-logging, task-management, analog-planning

## Books

### 1. The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

**Author:** Ryder Carroll

Primary source for the most widely used structured journaling system, from its inventor, instead of the many derivative 'aesthetic BuJo' guides. Ryder Carroll's full account of the analog system he invented: rapid logging with bullets and signifiers, the index, future, monthly and daily logs, collections, and monthly migration, plus the reflective reasoning behind reviewing and pruning tasks.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525533338?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** bullet-journal, rapid-logging, analog-planning, task-management, reflection

### 2. Opening Up by Writing It Down (3rd ed.): How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain

**Author:** James W. Pennebaker, Joshua M. Smyth

James Pennebaker, who created the expressive-writing research paradigm, and Joshua Smyth summarise decades of controlled studies on writing about emotional upheavals, explain proposed mechanisms, and give structured multi-day writing exercises with guidance on when writing helps or does not.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1462524923?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** expressive-writing, pennebaker, health-psychology, emotional-processing, writing-interventions

## Papers

### 1. Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing

**Author:** Karen A. Baikie, Kay Wilhelm

Widely cited 2005 review in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment covering the expressive writing paradigm, measured physical and psychological outcomes, competing explanations for the effect, clinical use, and limits of the evidence in clinical populations.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://sparq.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj19021/files/media/file/baikie_wilhelm_2005_-_emotional_and_physical_health_benefits_of_expressive_writing.pdf

**Tags:** expressive-writing, health-psychology, writing-interventions, mental-health, literature-review

---

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