Memoir Journaling
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Memoir journaling is a method Lana Blakely says she made up and later taught as a class. Rather than logging what happened, you pick one moment, present or past, and write it as a story with as much sensory detail as you can reach: the atmosphere, what you could see, whether music was playing, whether that music changed the mood. The mechanism has two effects. The first is archival, producing carefully documented moments you can return to years later. The second is the more useful one: writing this way trains attention, so you start noticing and appreciating detail in ordinary life instead of rushing through it oblivious. Lana has journaled since she was eight or nine, and says flatly that she would not have a YouTube channel without it, because the thinking that becomes her videos happens on the page.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Pick one specific moment
Choose a single scene rather than a day. It can be something that just happened or something from years ago. Lana's worked example is a first date rather than a whole week.
- 2
Refuse the summary version
The default entry is we grabbed a cup of coffee, it was fun. That sentence stores nothing. The method starts where the summary stops.
- 3
Interrogate the scene for sensory detail
Work through what the atmosphere was, where you were sitting, what the feeling in the room was, what you could see, whether music was playing and whether you think that music affected the mood. Lana's instruction is to go into too much detail deliberately.
Pro tip Write it as though telling someone the story, which pulls out detail that a log format leaves behind.
- 4
Use whatever tool is nearest
Lana journals everywhere: a notebook, Google Docs, and a phone notes app that holds most of her entries. The notes app wins because entries are in the moment and there is no setup friction between the impulse and the writing.
Watch out Do not let the choice of pen, notebook or app become the project. Worrying about the things surrounding the thing is what stops people doing the thing.
- 5
Write past the cringe
Expect entries that feel embarrassing, that do not make sense, or that record feelings you are not proud of. Nobody has to read it. Lana's instruction is to be a bit nicer to yourself and accept that it is totally fine to feel that way.
Watch out Perfectionism about handwriting, wording or mess is the same delay mechanism that stops people starting channels. Nothing bad happens if you write a few messy sentences.
- 6
Let the archive change how you look at ordinary days
Over time the practice pays out twice: a detailed record of your life, and the habit of paying attention as you live it. Ali reports the same effect from nightly logging, that time slows down because he is actively reflecting rather than letting a month blur past.
In the wild
Lana's own illustration is a first date. The summary entry is: yeah, we grabbed a cup of coffee, it was fun. The memoir entry asks what the atmosphere was, whether you were sitting at a cafe, what the feeling there was, what you could see, whether there was music playing and whether you think that music affected the mood. Written this way, the entry brings the moment back to life on rereading, and the act of writing it makes you notice more the next time.
→ One evening preserved in usable detail, plus sharper attention on subsequent ones.
Ali runs a lighter nightly variant in a bullet journal, borrowed from Matthew Dicks's Storyworthy: a few things he is grateful for, plus the one story-worthy moment of the day. He had been doing it for around four weeks at the time of recording, with earlier on-and-off stretches. The reported effect is that time slows down, because he is actively reflecting on the day, and that looking back over the log corrects the illusion that the month flew by and nothing happened.
→ A low-effort daily entry that changes the felt speed of a month.
Common mistakes
Optimising the stationery instead of writing
Lana gets asked what to journal on and which notebook to use, the same class of question as which camera to buy before starting a channel. It is preparation posing as progress, and it reliably prevents the practice from starting.
Writing for an imagined reader
The entries are private, and most people never share theirs. Writing as though someone will read it filters out exactly the confused, unflattering material that makes the practice useful.
Logging events instead of scenes
A list of what happened is not memoir journaling. Without the atmosphere, the senses and the mood, there is nothing to bring the moment back later and no attention training in the writing.
From the transcript
“memoir journaling is just a concept that I made up, which is basically writing about a moment in time”
“Okay, what was the atmosphere? Were you sitting at a cafe and what was the feeling there and what could you see and was there…”
“I journal everywhere. I have my notebook, I have Google Docs, I have a notes app on my phone”
From the episode
How To Find Tranquility, Meaningful Productivity and Healthy Relationships - Lana Blakely
Lana Blakely