It was November 14, 2022, around 11:45 PM, and I was staring at my phone screen with a genuine sense of self-loathing. I had just spent $34.99 on a yearly subscription for a ‘habit-stacking’ journal app that I had used exactly four times. The little grey circle for that day was empty, mocking me. I felt like a loser because I couldn’t even manage to type three sentences about my day before falling asleep. I realized then that most of these apps aren’t designed for humans—they’re designed for the idealized, robotic version of ourselves we pretend to be on Sunday nights when we’re setting goals.
I’ve spent the last 14 months testing seven different apps to find the best journal habit tracker app, and honestly, most of them are over-engineered garbage. They want you to track your water intake, your mood on a scale of 1-10, your sleep quality, and your ‘gratitude’ all in one place. It’s too much. It makes the act of living feel like a data entry job. (I already have a day job where I look at spreadsheets; I don’t want my soul to feel like a pivot table.)
The part where I tell you Notion is a trap
I know people will disagree with me on this, and the productivity nerds on YouTube will probably want my head on a pike, but I think using Notion for journaling is a terrible idea. I tried it for 60 days. I built a beautiful database with custom tags and ‘gallery views’ for my entries. I spent more time tweaking the layout than I did actually thinking about my life.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. Notion is a workspace, not a sanctuary. Using Notion for a personal diary is like trying to have an intimate conversation in a sterile hospital cafeteria. It’s cold. It’s clunky on mobile. And if I have to wait 4.5 seconds for a page to load just to write down that I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m just going to close the app and go to bed. I refuse to recommend it. It’s a digital coffin for your thoughts.
Total waste of time.
The 242-day experiment
I decided to get scientific about my failure. I tracked how often I actually stuck to a habit based on the app I was using. I found that the ‘friction-to-entry’ was the only metric that actually mattered. I measured ‘click-to-entry’—the number of taps it takes from the home screen to actually typing a word. Here is what I found over a 242-day period:
- Day One: 2 taps. Completion rate: 84%
- Streaks: 1 tap (but limited writing). Completion rate: 91%
- Notion: 4-5 taps (depending on the sync). Completion rate: 22%
- Physical Notebook: 0 taps (but required a pen). Completion rate: 55% (I kept losing the pen).
Anyway, I digress. The point is that the best journal habit tracker app isn’t the one with the most features. It’s the one that gets out of your way the fastest. I used to think I needed all the bells and whistles to stay motivated. I was completely wrong. I just needed something that didn’t make me feel like I was filling out a tax form.
The more features a journal app has, the less likely you are to use it when your life actually gets messy.
The only two apps worth your storage space
If you actually want to stick to this, there are really only two options that don’t suck.
First, there’s Day One. It’s the gold standard for a reason. It handles photos, voice memos, and location data without being annoying about it. The haptic feedback when you save an entry feels like a tiny dopamine hit in your thumb, which sounds stupid, but it works. My one gripe? The subscription price is getting ridiculous. I think they’re charging $35 a year now? For a diary? I pay it because I’m locked in with five years of data, but I hate myself every time the auto-renew hits my bank account.
Second, if you care more about the ‘habit’ part than the ‘journal’ part, get Streaks. It’s not a traditional journal, but it forces you to be concise. You can set a goal to ‘Write in Journal’ and it integrates with the Apple Health kit or whatever. It’s $4.99 once. No subscriptions. I love that. I have a weird, irrational loyalty to apps that don’t try to rent me my own data every month.
I might be wrong about this, but I think the ‘mood tracker’ features in most apps are actually harmful. They force you to boil down a complex day into a yellow smiley face or a purple sad face. Life is more grey than that. I’ve had days that were technically ‘productive’ but emotionally draining, and trying to pick an emoji for that just makes me feel more disconnected.
A weird thing about streaks
I have an extreme stance on this: Streaks are a lie. Well, not a lie, but a trap. I once had a 112-day journaling streak. On day 113, my dog got sick, I was up until 3 AM, and I forgot to log my entry. When I woke up and saw the ‘0’ the next morning, I didn’t write again for three weeks. The app made me feel like the previous 112 days didn’t count because I missed one.
A bad UI is like a pair of shoes that’s a half-size too small; you can walk in them for a bit, but eventually, you’re going to stop walking altogether. Most ‘habit trackers’ are those small shoes. They pinch you with guilt until you quit.
I’ve started using an app called Stoic lately. It’s… okay. It’s a bit ‘bro-science’ with the quotes from Marcus Aurelius, and sometimes the black-and-white aesthetic feels a bit too much like it’s trying to be a luxury watch brand. But it has this one feature where it asks you a single question every morning. ‘What are you dreading today?’ It’s better than a blank page.
It’s fine. Not perfect. But fine.
Look, at the end of the day, you’re probably going to download three of these, use them for a week, and then forget they exist. That’s just what we do. We buy the tools because we want the results without the work. But if you’re actually going to try, just get Day One and ignore the price tag, or buy a $2 pen and a notebook from the grocery store.
Will I still be doing this in ten years? I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’ll just look back at these digital entries and realize I spent more time tracking my life than actually living it. That’s a depressing thought.
Get Day One. Stop overthinking it.