My journal habit started with a deadline
Every day at our office starts with a fresh list of emergencies. I'm the operations coordinator at a B2B office supply distributor, which means I'm the person who gets the call when a client needs 300 Lamy Safaris engraved and shipped for a partner event. Usually, that call comes with 48 hours to spare. Actually, make that 36. It's never 48.
In March 2024, a corporate client called 36 hours before their annual conference. The 250 fountain pens we'd delivered a week earlier were engraved with the wrong name — a spelling mix-up that was somehow their fault and somehow ours. We paid €540 in rush fees to a local engraver, worked until 3 AM, and delivered at 6 AM before the doors opened. Missing that deadline would have meant a $12,000 contract and a very awkward handshake.
I'm telling you this because it's the reason I started journaling. Not the beautiful, washi-tape kind of journaling. The “my brain is holding too many moving parts” kind.
How to start a journal, it turns out, is a question about goals, not gear. When I first started this role, I thought the answer was trying harder to remember things. That was completely wrong. The details I missed weren't the ones I forgot to think about. They were the ones I never wrote down. Three near-disasters later, I started keeping a daily log — and it changed how I work.
If you've been searching for how to start a journal and finding advice about aesthetics and accessories, ignore it. A journal isn't one activity. It's three, and each one needs a different format.
Why there is no “right way” to journal
It's tempting to think a journal is just “write about your day.” But that simplicity is why that advice fails so often. Journaling doesn't fail because you lack discipline. It fails because the format doesn't match what you actually need.
In my experience, there are three distinct reasons to journal — and three formats that work:
- Scenario A — You're overloaded. You can't remember what you did yesterday or who's waiting on you. You need a system, not self-reflection. → The ops log.
- Scenario B — You're stressed. Your head is full of noise and you need to drain it somewhere. → The morning washout.
- Scenario C — You're repeating your mistakes. You want evidence of how you think, not just a vague sense that you should've known better. → The decision journal.
Let me walk you through each one.
Scenario A: the ops log
This is the format I started with, and honestly, it's the most underrated one. An ops log is a daily record of three things: decisions you made, work that's in progress, and open loops — people waiting on you, deliveries pending, questions still unanswered.
Structure is the whole point. No prose, no feelings, no “dear diary.” Set aside five minutes at the start or end of your workday and write it down. Writing instead of typing matters. It slows your brain down just enough to actually register what you're recording.
Tool-wise, you don't need anything fancy. A Lamy Safari with a fine or medium nib and a notebook with 90 gsm paper or heavier is plenty. Cheap 75 gsm paper will feather and bleed with fountain pen ink. An annoying pen is a pen you stop using.
If this sounds too simple — take it from someone who triages crises for a living: nearly every rush order that went sideways in our office failed because someone didn't write down a detail. The spelling. The shipping cutoff. The contact person's name. An ops log catches those.
Scenario B: the morning washout
If your problem isn't organization — it's stress — an ops log won't help. You need a free-write, done first thing in the morning before the phone steals your attention.
Open a notebook, pick up your pen, and write whatever comes out for 10 or 15 minutes. No structure. No audience. Grammar doesn't count. Most pages will look terrible. That's exactly the point.
I'm not a psychologist, so I can't tell you this is therapy. What I can tell you from an operations perspective is that handwriting slows you down. Your hand can't keep up with your brain, and in that gap, the real anxious thought finally surfaces. It sounds kind of fluffy. It isn't.
This is where the Lamy AL-Star EMR stylus pen gets interesting. It's a digital stylus, not a fountain pen — you use it on a tablet. But it has the same ergonomic shape as the AL-Star, and it's a practical bridge if you want the feel of handwriting without the paper. As of January 2025, it works with a range of EMR-enabled devices, no charging, no pairing. If your workplace is fully digital, it's a smoother entry point than a traditional fountain pen.
And if you're using a fountain pen, get an ink color you actually like. Lamy has a huge range of ink bottles — Petrol, Turquoise, Black, plus limited editions that people still ask about years later. It sounds cosmetic, but a color you look forward to makes a daily routine easier to keep.
That said, the gear is secondary. A Lamy Safari and an inexpensive notebook do the job. What matters is that you pick a pen you genuinely like holding, because you'll be holding it while your brain does the work.
Scenario C: the decision journal
This is the one I wish I'd started earlier. A decision journal is where you write down an important choice before you make it — then check your reasoning later.
For each significant decision, answer five questions:
- What's the situation? One paragraph. No judging.
- What am I actually deciding?
- Why do I think this is the right call?
- What would change my mind?
- When will I look back and know if I was right?
Ten minutes of writing. That's the whole system. At our office, we run a 15-minute postmortem on every rush order: what triggered the emergency, what we missed, what we'd do differently. Those notes turned into my decision journal, and it's the reason our emergency process looks the way it does now.
People love shortcuts here, and it's easy to see why. The FFMI calculator tells you whether your body composition is “naturally possible.” The female delusion calculator went viral on TikTok in 2023 because it gives you a blunt, single answer about your relationship expectations. They're popular because they settle an argument with yourself instantly. But a number you can argue with isn't the same as a record you can learn from.
A decision journal is slower and less satisfying. It won't go viral. But after four months, you have a document of your own reasoning — your assumptions, your blind spots, the patterns you repeat. For anyone who makes decisions under deadline, that's the most useful kind of journal there is.
If you only start one format, start this one.
How to clean a Lamy pen (in about five minutes)
Once the journal habit sticks, you'll use the same pen daily. At some point, its flow will feel different. Before you replace it, know this: a skipped nib is almost never a broken pen. It's dried ink and paper residue.
How to clean a Lamy pen is one of the most common questions our customer service team gets, and the answer is simple. Lamy inks are water-based, so no harsh chemicals are needed.
- Take out the cartridge or converter. If it's a converter, empty the ink that's left.
- Rinse the grip section under lukewarm water. Not hot. Hot water can warp the plastic and damage the nib feed.
- Flush water through the nib. Fill the converter with clean water, reattach it, and push water through until it runs clear.
- Soak if the ink is dried on. Leave the nib section in a glass of lukewarm water for a few hours, or overnight. The water will turn ink-colored; that's normal.
- Dry, reassemble, write a few lines. The first lines may look pale, but it clears up fast.
Do this every three to four refills, or whenever you switch ink colors. And don't use alcohol or acetone on Lamy pens — both damage the finish. Cold water is all you need.
If you chose the AL-Star EMR stylus instead, skip the cleaning routine entirely. There's no ink channel to clog; the tip is the only part that touches anything. A dry cloth keeps it tidy. Just don't expect the ink ritual of a fountain pen — that's not its job.
Which scenario are you in?
Here's how to tell which journal you need, honestly, in about 15 seconds:
- You're losing track of tasks and can't remember what you did yesterday → start with the ops log.
- You're stressed, mentally exhausted, or stuck in overthinking → start with the morning washout.
- You keep making the same mistakes and want better judgment → start with the decision journal.
Still unsure? Ask yourself what winning would look like in a month. If you'd feel calmer, you're Scenario B. If you'd know exactly where every project stands, you're Scenario A. If you'd have a record of decisions and outcomes you can learn from, you're Scenario C.
These formats aren't competitors. Start with the ops log if you're not sure, then add the decision journal when something important lands on your desk. Bring in the morning washout during rough patches and drop it when the noise dies down. The journal is your system, not the other way around.
One last thing for the procurement managers reading this: if you're buying Lamy pens as corporate gifts, a notebook with 90 gsm paper and a card that explains one of these three formats is a better gift than a pen alone. The habit is the product. The pen is just the tool.
So — which scenario sounded like you?
