The 5-Minutes-a-Day Journal
The 5-Minutes-a-Day Journal
Author: Louise Plummer Source: Reading For Intensive Writers, 5th Edition (recommended by BYU) One-line: A short essay arguing that keeping a journal — even five minutes a day of unpolished, first-thought “rush writing” — is how we record our own uniqueness in our own voice, rather than being remembered second-hand.
Key claims
- The things we most wish we knew about our ancestors are the small daily particulars — their routines, meals, dreams, marriages, whether they were satisfied with their lives — and these are exactly the things that go unrecorded when no one keeps a journal.
- Most people don’t write about themselves because they think their lives are boring, missing that “just by being alive we are unique” — and the journal is the instrument that records that uniqueness.
- Rush Writing (timed writing of your first thoughts) beats the censor: writing fast records thoughts before they can be edited into something more flattering.
- Journaling forces a reckoning with our own imperfection — “when you rush write, you decide to be imperfect.”
- Lists are a low-friction journal form (people loved, teachers, fears, daily pleasures, counterfactuals of “how my life would be different if…”).
- The point of a journal is less posterity than voice: better that anyone curious about your life read it “from my voice” than from a grandchild’s second-hand account — “It only takes five minutes a day.”
Notable quotes
“What do I want from them? What do I want to know? … I would like to know what their daily routine was like. … I would like to know what they ate. … What did they dream? … What were their wedding days like? Did they love their husbands? … What did they think about their own lives, their children, their homes?”
“I wish they had written about themselves. I wish I could hear those two unique voices in their own writings, but I can’t.”
“Many of us do not write about ourselves either, because we think our lives are boring.”
“We don’t understand that just by being alive we are unique. I wish my grandmothers had kept a journal. It is through the journal that we record our uniqueness.”
“Rush writing is simply writing down your first thoughts. It is timed writing.”
“The advantage of writing fast, of writing your first thoughts, is that it allows you to record your thoughts before you can censor them.”
“All of this raises the question, how comfortable are we with our imperfections, our humanness, our vulnerabilities, our silliness, our pomposity.”
“It’s a great disappointment when we don’t look better on paper. When you rush write, you decide to be imperfect.”
“No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.” — Florida Scott-Maxwell
“Writing a journal is a way of making a mark in the world — our own personal mark.”
“I wish my Dutch grandmothers had made just a few lists.”
“To read old journals is to see both the sadness and humor of our lives. Possibly we write journals for our posterity — I think so less and less. In any case, if anyone down the line is remotely interested in my life, I’d rather have them read it from my voice than from the voice of a grandson or granddaughter who knew me only as an old lady. I will write it myself. It only takes five minutes a day.”
Prompts the essay offers
A list of possible lists (verbatim from the source):
- Write a list of everyone you have ever loved
- Write a list of all the teachers you ever had
- Write a list of your fears
- Write a list of pleasures you enjoyed during the day
- Write a list of what is in your refrigerator before you go shopping and then write another list after you go shopping
- Write a list that begins, “How my life would be different if I had gone to college,” or, “How my life would be different if I had not joined the Church?”
- Write a list of everything you’ve done since the last time you wrote in your journal
How it connects
- Louise Plummer — the author; a BYU writing teacher whose essays return to voice, imperfection, and first-thought writing.
- Rush Writing — the core practical technique the essay teaches: timed, uncensored first-thought writing.
- Journaling — the essay’s subject; the case for a daily, five-minute record kept in one’s own voice.
- Florida Scott-Maxwell — quoted for the line on a mother watching her middle-aged children “for signs of improvement.”