A 7 Minute Daily Journal? Really?

Do you want to start journaling but really don’t know where to start? Are you afraid it will take too much time, or you don’t have the right supplies?

Well, you are in the right place.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry has a routine where she captures important ideas in her journal in only 7 minutes. These entries can then be used as fodder for additional brainstorming sessions to generate ideas for stories or drawings. But you don’t have to, of course. You can stop after 7 minutes if you want to.

I’ll cover her brainstorming process in a later blog post.

The only supplies that she uses are a composition notebook (that you can get from almost any drug store or grocery store) and a black flair pen. But there is nothing special about these supplies, you can use any kind of notebook or paper that you have laying around, and any kind of pen or pencil.

For the 7 minute diary you only need 1 sheet of paper. Here’s a template I found via a quick google search. The template is from this web site. I have no attachment to this site. It’s just the first one that I found.

Once you have your template drawn (you don’t even need a ruler!) you can fill this out as shown above. You can even do it the next day, reflecting on the previous day if you want. Or, do it in the evening, reflecting on your day so far. An example, taken from my evening, is shown below.

You can even replace the bottom right square (question about the day) with a quick sketch of something that you saw, heard, or did. Artistic ability doesn’t matter. It’s just a memory jogger. That’s it!

Here’s an example. I based this on my activities of Sunday, February 18. It’s now 7:17 pm and I’m starting to wind down. So, it’s a good time to recapture the day. And I timed myself (although, I took a wee bit longer than 30 sec for the drawing. I was on a roll. A question would have been easier. Like “am I spending too much time playing Call of Duty?)