How I Practice Gratitude With a "Max-Lazy" Gratitude Journal

Reading time: 1.5 min

Summary:

• Practising gratitude is an evidence-based way to raise happiness.
• After trying numerous methods, I now use my task manager as my gratitude journal.
• There are numerous benefits to this task manager method (high habit consistency, benefits of digital, delight of easy cross-day review of daily wins/gratitude).

There's evidence that practising gratitude raises your happiness and emotional well-being.

Practising gratitude is simply recognising and appreciating something in your life.

Keeping a gratitude journal is a way of practising gratitude.

I've tried these methods of keeping a gratitude journal:

1. Digitally writing it in GoodNotes, an notebook app designed for digital handwriting
2. Typing one up in my digital notes app (Standard Notes) (one note per day and one line per day both tried)
3. Keeping a physical gratitude note book (I have the Kurzgesagt one (link to their store))
4. Scribbling on a piece of scrap paper (at work) and taking a photo of it
5. Writing a line for a task in my Task Manager (Todoist).

I found number 5, using my Task Manager the best way to do it.

This is the method that I found the quickest, easiest, and most consistent habit-wise.

It opens the quickest, synchronises across all my devices, and I often look at it.

I keep a task called "Gratitude/Wins sheet", and I just add a new line (and date) in the description/comments section every day.

A few benefits to this method:

• I'm often reminded as a side effect of checking my tasks for the day.
• There is minimal friction, less barriers to action, which made me much more consistent at practising this habit. Max-lazy.
• It's digital, I can search entries.
• It's digital, I can copy it into my notes database for archival and future re-visiting.
• One-line-per-day means I can get a very quick glance at my highlights across the month. A unexpected delight.
• One line means minimal effort required. Minimal friction. Max-lazy.