I’ve been journaling for a long time. Like most habits worth keeping, my relationship with it has been on and off.

For more than twelve years, I’ve been adding entries to my DayOne journal. There are thousands of them now. Some are nothing more than a photo of what happened that day. Others are long, thoughtful brain dumps of whatever felt heavy or urgent at the time.

Most entries are simple and mundane. They exist to help me remember what happened or to capture how I felt in a moment that seemed big then, and often smaller when revisited later.

Recently, I started experimenting with a new format, and I’m surprised by how much I love it.

The Template

The entry has two parts:

• Two sentences at the top

  No more. No less.

• Images at the bottom

  A few photos I think will be interesting to look back on someday.

Those two sentences answer a single question: What are the most important things that happened today, and what do I want to remember later?

The constraint is the point. Forcing myself to write only two sentences makes me slow down and decide what actually mattered. It turns journaling into an exercise in clarity rather than completeness.

This doesn’t replace long-form journaling. I still write open-ended entries when I need to think something through or get things out of my head. The two-sentence format is different. It’s a snapshot of the day, not the full story.

I’ve found it’s been a powerful way to cut through the noise, focus on what’s important, and leave behind something I’ll actually want to read years from now.