When Journaling Stops Being Self-Care: The Pressure of Productivity ✍️

For many people, February is the “Love Month.” With Valentine’s Day, it’s the perfect occasion to show our loved ones that we care. 💌

But what about ourselves? 🌷

For February, I wanted to write blog posts focused on stationery (of course 🖊️) and self-kindness. And these past few days, I’ve been thinking about something a little unsettling: how self-care tools can quietly turn into productivity pressure.

Let’s have a look.

📓 When Journaling Becomes Another Task

Journaling is often presented as a gentle, therapeutic habit.
And it can be.

But lately, I’ve noticed that I started to dread journaling. Every night, it felt like something I had to do, simply because it was on my list of tasks for the day. 📝

I don’t know if it’s a grown-up thing, a worker thing (or both), but I’ve started making lists. Lots and lots of lists. And while they help keep me (and my thoughts) organized, they also turn everything into a to-do.

Even what should be pure creative joy and self-care. 🎨

I tried removing journaling from my physical to-do list, but I could never erase it from my mental one. And just like that, every evening when I saw my journal, I felt pressure.
Instead of comfort, I felt obligation. And if I skipped a day? Hello guilt. 😔

So I began ignoring my journal completely.

🌸 The Quiet Shame of Rest

In today’s society, our value is often measured through our output. The more we produce, the better we are viewed. Employers value us more, family and friends are impressed with what we can do, and productivity becomes a badge of honor. 🏅

But recently, I’ve started to notice the silent downsides of this.

Burnout is, of course, a very real danger when we push ourselves too hard, but an obsession with productivity can also generate a vast array of negative emotions: shame, anger, even resentment. 💭

We all compare ourselves. And when we compare ourselves with someone extremely productive, we can feel ashamed of how little we managed to do in a day.
“I should be doing more” becomes a familiar thought. And we can start feeling angry with that person because they make us feel so bad,

As for ourselves, not all days are created equal. Some days we have more energy and can accomplish a lot. But if we use those days as the yardstick for every other day, disappointment and shame are ready to roll in.

That’s what happened to my journaling sessions. I turned my rare high-energy evenings into the standard for every day, instead of honoring the many nights when I was simply too tired to put my day into words.

So somewhere along the way, self-care became another performance.
Another way to measure whether I was “doing life right.”

And journaling, which used to feel like a private, gentle ritual, became a silent judge. ⚖️

🖊️ Reclaiming Journaling as Joy

I’m slowly trying to reclaim journaling as something softer, trying to reframe what counts as a journaling session. 🌙

Some days, it can mean writing a full page.
But some days, writing only one sentence is fine too.
Some other days, it might mean pasting stickers and doing nothing else. 🎀
And some other days, it might mean not opening my journal at all.

I’m definitely no expert. I’m still learning that stationery doesn’t have to be productive to be meaningful. A pen doesn’t need to write a brilliant insight. A page doesn’t need to be filled.
And the most beautiful notebook I own doesn’t have to contain the most useful or intelligent content I can come up with. But yeah, it’s a process.

And I have to learn that sometimes, the kindest thing is simply letting the notebook stay closed. 🤍

💭 Final Thoughts

Self-care tools can become quiet instruments of pressure if we’re not careful.
Journaling, planning, decorating pages… they should feel like invitations, not obligations. 🌷

I’m trying to return to that softer place, where stationery is play, comfort, and companionship rather than a productivity system. I’m not there yet, but being mindful of how it feels when I reach for my journal already helps me a lot.

What about you? Have you ever had a self-care habit turn into another source of pressure? 💬