Shortcut Monday: Daily Journal Prompts in Day One Tracked with Streaks
Shortcut Monday is a series highlighting Shortcuts that I use on a regular basis. If you haven’t downloaded the Shortcuts app yet, you can do so for free here.
I try to do a little bit of journaling everyday. One of the sticking points for me is knowing what to write about. There are numerous suggestions on the internet of different prompts you can use. Some, such as James Clear, suggest writing one line per day with certain prompts. I like his approach because it is not threatening or stressful and its something you easily can do. I’ve taken his idea but modified it a little bit but still with the idea of a minimal barrier of entry.
To this end I created a Siri Shortcut that randomly chooses one prompt from a list that I have created. My minimum requirement is to write a one sentence response to the prompt that will be catalogued in Day One. Some days I end up writing more but this is not required. Depending on the day, all I have time for is a one sentence reflection.
The nice part about this workflow is that its easy to change the prompts if I come across another one that I’d like to add or I can easily remove one.
The prompts:
- What was the highlight of my day?
- What am I grateful for today?
- What was a stressor in my day?
- What was my most important task today?
- How do I feel emotionally today?
Journal Prompt Shortcut
- The first step will mark a completion in the Streaks app for tracking. You can easily remove this step or change the streak for your own use.
- The second step is my list of prompts. If you would like to add/remove an item you can do so here. Make sure that each item is on its own line.
- The third step makes sure to separate each item into its own line.
- The fourth step will randomly grab an item from the list. I originally used the Choose from List action but I found this created a little too much friction as I would stare and think about each item and eventually choose one. The random function removes that barrier.
- Finally, I use the Create Day One entry and format it consistently. The header is the question, the ask for input will bring up a text box where I type my reply, and it will automatically add it to my main journal with the tag “daily journal prompt”
