Gratitude journal

To keep a gratitude journal, you need a notebook, a pen and about five minutes before bed. The box further down this page works too.

1. Put the notebook where you sleep. Leave it on your pillow, or on top of your phone charger. Then you see it at the moment you have time for it.
2. Write three good things from today. They can be small. A hot lunch counts. So does a bus that waited for you.
3. After each one, write “because” and finish the sentence. For example: “Dad called, because he wanted to know how my new job is going.” The “because” makes you think about who or what made the good thing happen.
4. Say who, what and when. “Dad called on my way home” will help you remember that evening when you read it next month. A line like “my family” will not.

On a bad day, write one thing. You do not have to pretend the day was good. If nothing comes to mind, the gratitude journal prompts give you questions to answer, and the list of things to be grateful for gives you ideas.

Gratitude journaling helps a little. Researchers have tested gratitude writing since 2003. Here are two things they found.

People who did a gratitude exercise ended up a little happier.

One research team put together the results of 145 papers. In those studies, some people did a gratitude exercise, such as keeping a gratitude journal, and other people did not. The people who did the exercise ended up a little happier (Choi and colleagues, 2025). The difference was small.

Writing a few sentences did more than writing a list.

In one study, adults in Australia wrote about what they were grateful for, every day for a week. Some wrote lists. Others wrote a few sentences, as a letter or a short essay. The people who wrote sentences felt more grateful and more satisfied with their lives afterward than the people who wrote lists (Regan, Walsh and Lyubomirsky, 2023). That is why each good thing in your journal gets a “because”. The study did not test a “because” line itself, so it is a reason to try one and not proof that it works.

How often you write in a gratitude journal matters less than you might think. In a review of 145 papers on gratitude exercises, people who wrote more times did not gain more than people who wrote fewer times (Choi and colleagues, 2025).

The good feeling may not last long after you stop. In a study where adults wrote about what they were grateful for every day for a week, most of the difference it made was gone one week after they stopped (Regan, Walsh and Lyubomirsky, 2023).

So pick a pace you will keep. Every night is fine. Two or three nights a week is fine too. If the journal starts to feel like homework, write less often. That is better than stopping.

Write at the same point in your evening each time, like right after you set your alarm. That is how a habit forms. If you have never kept a journal, start with how to start journaling.

The findings on this page come from the two studies below. We read the full text of both for this page. Ben and his week are made up.

1. Choi, H., Cha, Y., McCullough, M. E., Coles, N. A. and Oishi, S. (2025). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of gratitude interventions on well-being across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(28), e2425193122.
2. Regan, A., Walsh, L. C. and Lyubomirsky, S. (2023). Are some ways of expressing gratitude more beneficial than others? Results from a randomized controlled experiment. Affective Science, 4(1), 72 to 81.