In 2016 I learned of a method of journal keeping called the five minute journal, of which a good Dutch description can be found here.

I was thinking about keeping track of things happening in my life a bit, and I was not feeling really happy with the amount of energy I was able to muster in my daily life. Part of that was because of being a parent of young kids, part of it maybe just restlessness in general. Whatever the exact reasons, I liked the idea of forcing myself to think about the good things that happened to me in a day.

I adapted the ideas of the Five minute Journal to an electronic format that looks like this:

## 20180205 Maandag

Ik ben dankbaar voor
Wat zou vandaag goed maken?
Dagelijkse bevestiging. Ik ben

Drie geweldige dingen die vandaag gebeurd zijn:
1)
2)
3)

Hoe had ik vandaag beter kunnen maken?
>

Food:
Weer:

I write this in Dutch, but it has the same questions as the English original: 'what am I thankful for', 'what would make this day', 'daily affirmation, I'm...' for the start of the day, then a list of three good things that happened today, to be filled in at the end of day, and a question about how I could have made the day better.

I added a 'food' and 'weather' line, just to keep track of the little things in life.

After this pre-formatted piece, I can write some free-form things about what happened that day.