As with most things related to the interior life, what works best for you is intensely personal. For myself, I have journaled sporadically for the last decade,

As with most things related to the interior life, what works best for you is intensely personal. For myself, I have journaled sporadically for the last decade, as the occasion presented itself. At first, I bought the notebook to catalogue a trip to Europe. The first pages contain detailed daily logs of about 2 months of my life while I was there. At the time, I recall feeling like I was wasting valuable time that I could spend having more experiences, and there are many missing days as a result. But now 10 years later those pages contain stories I have failed to retain in my memory, and help me to reconstruct the days I didn't record. People and interactions I would have forgotten, short-lived but vivid crushes, a tomato sauce recipe transcribed poorly via a picture dictionary from a retired Italian grandmother at a hostel in Lourdes. Other times, I've used the journal to clear my head during times of turmoil. Weak and unfinished thoughts on difficult circumstances, poetic images of my emotions, scribbled bullet lists of what happened and in what order as I tried to piece things together. For a spell, the same journal was where I kept daily todo lists. Today, I'm using it as an outlet for my personal thoughts and goals, to keep them distinct from research notes and work notes. I find that writing them down helps me to clarify what I want and to move in a consistent direction over longer periods than focus and determination alone would allow. The only consistent format for my journal is putting a date at the top of each entry and writing in pen so I can't erase it. Every time I look back over what I've written, I take something different away; Rarely do I read what's there and count the act of writing it as a waste of time. It's a window into the past.