Morning Pages or Evening Journaling? How to Choose

The best time to write may be the ten quiet minutes after everyone leaves, rather than the beginning or end of the day. But if you are choosing between mornings and evenings, start with what you want the entry to do.

Do you want room for stray thoughts before work? A record of what happened? Somewhere to put tomorrow's tasks? Those are different reasons to open a journal.

Morning pages are a specific practice

Julia Cameron describes morning pages as three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing in the morning. It is a creative practice with a particular format, not a name for every short morning entry.

If that format appeals to you, give it enough room in your schedule to try it as described. You might write about a dream, an annoyance, a shopping list, or the fact that you would rather be asleep. The pages don't need a finished argument.

If three handwritten pages don't fit, you can still journal in the morning. Just recognize that a few typed sentences are a different routine, one you are choosing for your own circumstances.

Evening writing has a day to draw on

By evening, you have events to work with. Pick a conversation, something you noticed, or a decision you made. A useful question might be: “What do I want to remember about today?”

Writing late can also become another task on an already crowded evening. If you repeatedly put it off until you're exhausted, an earlier pause after dinner may work better than a bedside routine.

For writing specifically about tomorrow's tasks, see the bedtime to-do list study. Its findings should not be stretched into a promise that any emotional writing at night improves sleep.

A small comparison you can make

Try a few morning entries and a few evening entries. Keep them short enough that the experiment doesn't require rearranging your week. After each, note:

• Was it easy to find a private moment?
• Did I have enough energy to write?
• Did the entry serve the reason I opened the journal?

You don't need to score the quality of the prose. Notice which time makes returning easier.

You may prefer morning notes on busy days and a longer evening entry at weekends. Or neither. Lunch breaks and waiting rooms are real parts of life too, provided you have the privacy you need. Choose a time you can use rather than a routine you only enjoy imagining.