I’ve been journaling on and off since the early 2000s — but never for long. A few weeks in, I’d usually stop. Often because what I wrote felt too trivial to be worth it.

Then, while reading some productivity book, I stumbled on a trick: set the bar for success absurdly low. So low that even on my worst days I could still clear it.

Enter The One-Line Journal: the goal is to write just one single line each day. And, as it turns out, most days that first sentence is quickly followed by a few more — sometimes a lot more. I’ve been doing it almost every single day for 2.5 years now.

In the spirit of keeping the barrier low, I deliberately start with a blank slate each morning by creating a new file for that day. The fresh page lowers the threshold even further. Everything is done in Vim with this little alias:

oneline='printf "## $(date +"%Y") \n \n#" >> /path/to/folder/year/$( date +"%Y-%j-%b-%d" )_ol-jrnl.md && vim +$ /path/to/folder/year/$( date +"%Y-%j-%b-%d")_ol-jrnl.md'

Nothing fancy. Just works for me.

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windowshopping 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I should do that more, the one-line thing. I figured out the "absurdly low bar" trick myself for a lot of other stuff in my life but I hadn't thought to apply it to this. Good suggestion!

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codethief 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Would you mind sharing where else in your life you have applied that trick? I always find it quite fascinating to hear about practical use cases because, while the idea of "Start simple, start small" is so simple conceptually, it's hard to get out of your head sometimes, so hearing actual real-world examples can be quite inspiring.

In my case I wanted to get back into working out more but the pandemic had completely messed up my existing workout routines, plus I travel a lot, so it's not easy to build new habits, either. So I decided I would just do one single exercise every day – doesn't matter when or what, as long as I do something.

I ended up doing the exercise usually right after getting up in the morning to build as strong a habit as possible. Also, I usually do 4 minutes instead of a fixed number of reps because 1) this way I can fully focus on perfecting the movement, 2) when it's early in the morning I often forget to count anyway, 3) this way I always know how long it's gonna take, so even on busy days I can make time.

Then once I had mastered that habit, I decided hey, why not try to do two exercises per day whenever possible? It's only 5 minutes more (including a 1 min break) but 100% more impact!

Now, recently, I've started doing 3-4 exercises because why not, it's only 5-10 minutes more for another 50-100% increase in gains! I think this – (up to) 20 min every morning – is probably my sweet spot. I get a decent workout, yet I can still squeeze it even into the busiest of days with relative ease, as long as I've made it a habit and don't waste time thinking about & hesitating to do it and instead just do it.

	▲	windowshopping 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure! Number 1 is, as you said, exercise. If I can't get myself to do a full routine, I reduce it to "just go do bench press for today. nothing else." Because doing a bench press set beats not exercising at all! Likewise I found getting myself to run a mile regularly was not happening. So I reduced it to running half a mile. That's pretty doable. That's 5 minutes of effort. I do it with my coding projects. If I can't bring myself to really seriously spend hours progressing on my code, I'll do the absolute bare minimum just to move the needle forward a millimeter - write a boilerplate react component template that isn't much more than a div with the right class on it, or write the skeleton for an endpoint (like its function signature) but none of the actual logic, or simply write out a quick pseudocode of the steps for what i need to do the next time i work on it. I do it with chores. Can't get myself to do laundry? Ok, instead just move the laundry to be sitting next to the basement door. Next time I go down for something else, I just take it with me and stick it in the machine since it was already right there. Same with dishes - don't want to do all of them - ok, just load the plates for now and leave the rest for later. I do it with mail that requires a response, like bills. Don't want to go through all of them? Just do the one on top and do another tomorrow. (I don't get enough mail that it piles up faster than I can keep up with.) I do it with guitar. Don't want to practice for half an hour? Okay, just do chord switching for 3 or 4 minutes. When I describe it all this way, it makes me sound like someone who barely gets anything done, but the reality is I actually get A LOT done because of these tricks. Once I'm playing guitar for 3 minutes it usually becomes 30. Once I pseudocode a function I usually just write the whole thing. Once I put away the plates I usually just clear the whole sink. And if it gets put off for a day, that's fine. It's all about tricking myself into being disciplined.