I have always been a prolific journaler. Whether it’s been a practice of morning pages, journaling in response to prompts, or just listing ideas and insights, I love the practice of sitting down with a high-quality paper notebook, my multi-colored pens and markers, and feeling the pen stroke on the page as I uncover my thoughts and ideas.
I have dozens of notebooks and journals filled with my thoughts, ideas, travel experiences, and the random musings of my mind.
In recent years, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken pen to paper less often. Instead I’ve replaced my traditional journaling practice with various forms of “digital journaling.”
Some of that has been in my DayOne app, which has been my digital journal app for over a decade. More recently, at times I’ve taken to verbal journaling by dictating thoughts to ChatGPT or Claude.
While there are some benefits to digital journaling, it’s not the same, either in feeling or in the outcome.
Here are 5 reasons why you should journal by hand.
5 Reasons Why You Should Journal By Hand
(1) It Helps You Slow Down Your Thoughts
When you have a ball of tangled threads in your mind and you just want to clear them out, taking pen to paper may feel like adding friction to the process.
In fact, that’s exactly what it is. And sometimes, friction is your friend.
Even if you’re typing or speaking, you can only get one idea out at a time.
Journaling with pen to paper forces you to slow down and listen to yourself. When you give yourself the space to journal by hand, without an agenda for where you “need” to get to, you open yourself up to the magic of seeing what’s beneath those surface thoughts.
(2) More Effective for Processing Emotions
An increasing number of studies have shown that when people write about emotional experiences, they experience improvements in mental and physical health.
Research shows that the physical act of converting emotions into structured language on paper helps create psychological distance from the experience.
The difference may be in part because writing by hand is an embodied, somatic process that involves more regions of the brain. It’s a physical action as well as a cognitive process.
The slower pace of handwriting allows for more processing during the act itself, helping you connect with the thoughts as you write them. This can help you go deeper into your emotions, and to get at the emotions beneath rumination and thought loops. In contrast, typing or speaking can keep you at surface level or in the same loop.
(3) More Effective for Learning and Memory
Journaling with pen on paper is more effective for processing your learning from experiences and consolidating ideas to remember them.
Research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer shows that in a class setting, students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand.
Handwriting forces you to process and reframe information as you write it down.
The same principle applies when you’re encoding your own thoughts. Putting pen to paper puts your thoughts in concrete, tangible form where you can see them.
(4) Easier to Discover Patterns
There’s no comparison to pulling a physical journal off the shelf and flipping through the pages to discover what a previous version of you was processing and the ideas that came through at that time.
When you review a physical journal, it’s easier to see patterns in your ideas and thinking process. You can easily underline and highlight things that stick out. Sometimes I even add notes in different colors to reflect updated thinking at a later date.
Read: 3 Surprising Benefits of Journaling on Paper
You don’t just get insights from reviewing your journals. The mechanical process of journaling by hand also gives you insight.
The act of writing is a form of sensory feedback. When I’m agitated or writing about something that is upsetting, the pen might stick, or my handwriting might be illegible. The pen seems to write more smoothly when I am expressing something that feels like a core truth.
If you’re stuck in a decision about something, paying attention to how the pen moves on the paper while you’re journaling about your options might give you clues as to which option is most aligned for you.
(5) It Becomes a Form of Self-Care
The act of taking out a notebook and pens and sitting down to journal is a ritual that signals what you’re about to do is important and has meaning. Even if you’re sitting in a coffee shop or surrounded by people and noise, this ritual is an act of creating sacred space for yourself.
Before you write a single word, you’ve infused the practice with the energy of intention. It’s a very different energy from jotting some notes on your phone on-the-fly between appointments or while waiting in line at the supermarket, or from dictating ideas while driving.
This act of creating space for yourself is the true act of self-care. The journaling is a bonus.
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