journal in ten seconds. the one-line log protocol

Most journaling advice asks for too much. Five minutes of three prompts. Twenty minutes about your emotions. A blank page on a wooden desk in the morning sun. The bar is high and the day is long, and so the notebook stays closed.

The one-line log is the opposite move. One specific concrete sentence, once a day. No prompts. No mood scale. No streak. The bet of this -pillar post is that a deliberately small ritual, repeated, beats an ambitious one practiced occasionally. Three steps. Each step earns a citation. A sample week is included.

the published floor for very brief writing

Burton and King ran the lower-bound experiment in 2008. Forty-nine undergraduates wrote for two minutes a day, two days in a row, about either a personal trauma, an intensely positive experience, or a neutral topic. [1] Both writing groups reported fewer physical health complaints than the neutral controls four to six weeks later. The paper's own framing: a test of the lower boundary of the dosage required to garner health benefits from written emotional expression. The post goes deeper on the same study.

step one. anchor

Most journaling habits fail at the same place: the moment between intention and action. You meant to write. You ended up checking your phone. Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions addresses that gap directly.

A goal intention is a wish ("I want to journal more"). An implementation intention is a plan that pre-specifies the when, where, and how of the behaviour. [2] Gollwitzer's canonical phrasing is the form: