You probably know that reflecting on your life is good for you. And that writing is a great way to do this. A common goal is to journal, to spend maybe 5–10 minutes a day reflecting on what went well and what could have gone better.
But how many people actually maintain a journaling habit, or consistently do any kind of written reflection? I would guess that it’s a small minority of people.
What keeps people from regularly doing this kind of reflection? Well, it’s effortful. You have to make time to do it, and you have to focus to do it. Those are never givens.
It probably has some kind of baggage, too. It has associations with self-help and a general touchy-feely vibe, towards which many people have (understandable) hesitations. Many people see this kind of self-help activity as inconsistent with their identities.
It’s hard to change people’s identities. Let’s put that aside here, and focus instead on how to design a written reflection habit. James Clear (author of mega best-seller Atomic Habits) lays down four laws of behavior change:
Make it obvious
Make it attractive
Make it easy
Make it satisfying
I have a recommendation for how to get started with regular reflection in an easy way, and I’ll show how it meets these guidelines. I stumbled onto an app (available on Android and iOS) called Cactus a few months ago. Actions speak louder than words, so here is my streak of using Cactus:
70 days is a long time! It’s by far the longest I’ve ever maintained any kind of reflection habit. So how does this little app follow the laws of behavior change?
Make it Obvious
By default, Cactus notifies you of a daily writing prompt at a certain time every morning (I think the default is 8 AM). So you get a clear time to do the habit every day, and you can easily change it. The morning is a great time to do something creative, anyway. For most people, energy peaks in the morning.
Make it Attractive
It’s a cute app. It’s colorful and playful.
Make it Easy
It’s not a journal or diary as might normally picture it. It’s a simple prompt, a quick note you write on your phone. It’s small: it can take less than two minutes. Just its being on the phone sets the expectation that it will be a brief, unformatted note. Not an essay. You will always have time to do this.
Make it Satisfying
Writing in Cactus is a quick win every morning. Pretty soon, you’ll start building up a streak. You’ll have a feeling of making tangible progress on something we all know we should be doing.
Worth Trying
Well, I think you can tell that I really like this little app. The free version gives you the daily prompts, while you can pay a few dollars a month to get “daily insights, core values, and more.” The free version will get you most of the benefits of the app. The core values assessment feature is nice, but isn’t quite up to par with the core functionality of the app. This isn’t the most polished app overall, but they seem to be regularly improving it.
I highly recommend regular reflection, and this tool offers a really easy way to try it out. So try it out for a week and see how it goes. I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences with this app, as I don’t know anyone else who regularly uses it. And if you have any other suggestions on getting regular reflection prompts, please share!