There’s a holiday coming to town, and it’s one that will definitely be one to take note of, as it strives to fill the world with anecdotes and commentaries and memoirs.
There likely isn’t one of us that hasn’t tried journaling at some point in their lives, especially as teenagers.
Remember all that cringe-worthy poetry? Yep, probably still moldering away in a journal somewhere, just waiting to embarrass you with the soppy angst-ridden days of youth.
National Notebook Day is here to celebrate all of it!
How to Celebrate National Notebook Day
Write Down Some Thoughts
Grab yourself a notebook and bust it open, start writing down all the thoughts and worries of your day and see them put into a form that makes them manageable.
Got an idea forming? Jot it in the corners or write it out in complete detail so that you never miss a beat. You might find it develops into a regular or even semi-regular diary, a new story, or simply helps you move past a difficult or even dull day.
Create Some Fiction
Find your thoughts are emerging into a creative writing piece? Why not take a day or a rainy afternoon to really develop your characters, create a world for them to live in, and then storyboard your plotline.
What might start as a day of brainstorming can grow into hours and even years of story development you never even knew you had in you.
Make a Tech Transition
If you find you are more of a technophile, why not aim to take time away from your screen and jot down your to-do lists or thoughts onto a notepad?
Even those five minutes looking at something other than a glassy screen can help you focus your mind and avoid that zoned out eye-glaze you might experience after hours at a computer.
Even if you’re a regular blogger, if your laptop breaks or runs out of charge, you can always turn to a trusty notebook to jot down your thoughts.
Try Art in a Notebook
Idle and bored? Let your hands do the walking and doodle on the page. Psychologists reveal that a lot can be shown by what a person chooses to doodle.
If you are an art-lover, why not look at developing that sketching hobby by sitting at the park and drawing the world as it goes by, or joining an art class?
You can join a class or start a new hobby for any notebook related hobby. From creative writing to still life drawing, you can enjoy the hobby solo, with friends or in a class environment.
Start Journaling
You might not have time to embark on a new journey if you’re simply trying to understand your current one. Why not start a simple journal where you jot down your daily thoughts for five minutes.
Just carry a notebook and pen or pencil around with you and see what the day’s ideas and opportunities bring.
Whatever you do, National Notebook Day is the best day to open up those old journals, read our past thoughts and see how we changed, and open up a new page in our lives by starting a new one!
National Notebook Day Timeline
Rise of the Codex
Roman-era writers begin using the codex, a bound stack of pages, as an alternative to scrolls, creating the basic physical format that later personal notebooks and journals would follow for centuries.
Printed Paper Books Spread in Europe
Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press helps make paper books and blank volumes cheaper and more available, encouraging wider use of bound paper for personal notes, account books, and early diaries.
Earliest Known English Diary
English lawyer Walter Yonge begins a diary in 1605, one of the earliest surviving examples of a continuous personal diary in English, illustrating the growing habit of using bound books to record daily life and reflections.
Samuel Pepys’s Detailed Diary
Samuel Pepys keeps an exceptionally detailed diary that he writes in shorthand in bound volumes, which later becomes one of the most famous early modern diaries and a model of personal record-keeping and reflection.
Mass Production of Notebooks
Industrial papermaking and mechanized bookbinding in the 19th century lead to inexpensive, mass-produced notebooks, which students, travelers, scientists, and clerks increasingly carry for jotting observations and organizing daily life.
Standardized Composition Notebooks in U.S. Schools
Sturdy, stitched “composition books” with distinctive marbled covers become a classroom staple in the United States, familiarizing generations of students with keeping written notes, drafts, and informal journals in inexpensive bound notebooks.
Bullet Journaling Method Published Online
Designer Ryder Carroll publicly shares the Bullet Journal system, a method that uses rapid logging and symbols in a paper notebook to track tasks, plans, and reflections, helping to spark a modern global notebook and planner culture.
History of National Notebook Day
The inauguration of Notebook Day came in 2016 when the event sought to speak to the world about the importance of journaling and what it can do to help us.
As we’ve mentioned, we know all the things we journaled about before, most of us kept one as a kid, and all the poetry we read in English class often filled us with inspiration to write our own.
As we encountered the challenges of youth, especially first love, the journal began being filled with angry thoughts, deep emotions, and the general process of trying to figure out who we were and what the world would make of us.
Time has come to reveal that journaling is a vitally important process that can have profound psychological effects on the one keeping it.
“The notebook and planner community is so vibrant and alive,” said Mica May, CEO of custom notebook company May Designs. “If anything, our customers have become even more dedicated to paper over the past few years.
There’s this amazing connection between writing something down that you can’t get typing it into your phone or laptop.”
The power of paper has yet to decline, and in certain circles, is being raised in unexpected ways. CEO’s in technology-driven Silicon Valley are jumping on the cellulose bandwagon, choosing paper notes over digital apps. There’s just something that comes into perspective when you see it down on paper.
The emerging popularity of bullet journaling has also led journals to make a fashionable comeback. Who hasn’t seen color-coded and highly organized journals popping up on Pinterest?
From daily to-do lists to yearly yearnings, the bullet journal is designed to compartmentalize your life into identifiable codes that can be matched and cross-referenced across the year to spot themes, trends, and things you didn’t know about your own life.
Insightful and imaginative, the bullet journal became the must-have, from the person who needs to remind themselves to eat their five a day and drink their eight glasses of water, to the super-business-executive with their mammoth to-do task list.
Scientific studies have also supported the benefits of journaling (especially into adulthood) on your mental health.
Taking your thoughts and splurging them onto a piece of paper can be extremely therapeutic and clear your head. You don’t have to create a wonderful weave of detailed thoughts like a bullet journal, simply sprawling your thoughts on a page can work wonders on your mindset.
Creative writing into adulthood can also help keep that imagination alive and helps generate feelings of positivity and happiness.
You might love that element of escapism, from reading that holiday book in darkest winter to creating your own characters and world that might be completely different from your own.
Notebooks can help us organize our thoughts, ignite our imaginations, and generally help us take a bit of time out of the whirlwind world around us.
Facts About National Notebook Day
The First Paper Notebooks Grew Out of Medieval Account Books
Early bound notebooks evolved from medieval account and ledger books, where merchants and administrators stitched together folded sheets of rag paper to keep running records of transactions and inventories.
By the 15th and 16th centuries, these “waste books” and “day books” were common tools of trade in Europe, providing a chronological place to jot rough notes before they were copied into formal registers, a basic function that still defines everyday notebooks today.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks Preserved Ideas Centuries Ahead of Their Time
Leonardo da Vinci filled thousands of notebook pages with sketches, mirror‑written notes, anatomical studies, engineering designs, and observations about nature.
Many concepts that appear in his notebooks, such as designs resembling helicopters, parachutes, and detailed studies of human anatomy, were not realized technologically or scientifically until centuries later, showing how a personal notebook can act as a long‑term incubator for ideas far beyond its owner’s lifetime.
Handwriting Activates the Brain Differently Than Typing
Neuroscience studies using electroencephalography and functional MRI have found that writing by hand engages more widespread and sustained activity in brain regions linked with memory, attention, and language compared with typing on a keyboard.
Researchers suggest that the complex sensorimotor patterns involved in forming letters by hand create richer neural traces, which may help explain why students who take handwritten notes often show better conceptual recall than those who type verbatim transcripts on laptops.
Expressive Journaling Can Improve Physical Health
Clinical trials on “expressive writing,” where people use a notebook to write freely about stressful or emotional experiences, have shown measurable health benefits.
Participants in studies led by psychologist James Pennebaker who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings for just 15 to 20 minutes on several days showed fewer doctor visits, improved immune function, and, in some cases, faster wound healing compared with control groups who wrote about neutral topics.
Scientists Have Long Relied on Lab Notebooks as Legal and Scientific Records
In laboratories, bound notebooks are not just personal aids but formal records that can establish who discovered what and when.
Research institutions and patent offices accept properly maintained lab notebooks as evidence in intellectual property disputes, which is why many labs require entries to be dated, written in ink, and never erased, turning an ordinary notebook into both a scientific tool and a legal document.
Artists’ Sketchbooks Reveal Hidden Working Methods
Many major museums preserve artists’ sketchbooks because they show how finished works evolved from rough studies on paper.
The sketchbooks of painters such as J. M. W. Turner, Frida Kahlo, and Jean-Michel Basquiat reveal color tests, compositional experiments, and personal notes that never appear on the final canvas, illustrating how a portable notebook can function as a private laboratory for visual ideas.
Bullet Journaling Emerged from Analog Productivity Traditions
The modern “bullet journal” system popularized in the 2010s grew out of older analog planning methods such as task indexing, daily logs, and personal organizers that were common long before digital calendars.
By combining rapid‑logging symbols, numbered pages, and an index into a single notebook, the method formalizes practices that professional planners and diarists had used for decades, while research on paper planners suggests that the physical act of reviewing and rewriting tasks may help people prioritize and follow through more effectively.
National Notebook Day FAQs
How does writing in a notebook affect stress and mental health?
Research on “expressive writing” has found that spending a few minutes regularly writing about thoughts and feelings in a notebook can reduce stress, improve mood, and help people make sense of difficult experiences.
Studies suggest it may support immune function and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression for some people, especially when the writing is honest, personal, and repeated over several sessions.
It is not a replacement for professional care, but many therapists and clinicians use journaling as a practical tool alongside other treatments. [1]
Is handwriting in a notebook better for memory than typing notes on a device?
Several education and neuroscience studies have found that handwriting often leads to better understanding and recall than typing.
When people write by hand, they tend to process and summarize information instead of transcribing it verbatim, which supports deeper learning.
The physical act of forming letters and organizing notes on a page also engages more sensory and motor systems in the brain, which can strengthen memory for many learners. [1]
Why do some people feel more creative when using a paper notebook instead of a digital app?
Paper notebooks can minimize digital distractions and give users a more open, flexible space for ideas.
The ability to sketch, draw arrows, combine text and doodles, and move freely around a page can encourage nonlinear thinking, which many people associate with creativity.
Psychologists also note that the slower pace of handwriting can support reflection and incubation of ideas, which may help with creative problem solving and original thinking.
What is the difference between a diary, a journal, and a commonplace book?
A diary usually records daily events in chronological order, such as what happened and when.
A journal tends to be more reflective and may include thoughts, goals, sketches, and plans, not just a timeline of the day.
A commonplace book is a long‑standing tradition in which people copy quotes, ideas, recipes, and observations from reading or life into a single notebook, organizing outside information rather than focusing mainly on personal experience.
In practice, many modern notebooks blend all three styles.
How have personal notebooks and diaries been used in history and different cultures?
Personal notebooks have served many roles across cultures, from private reflection to scientific observation.
Early modern European scholars kept commonplace books for notes on philosophy, science, and literature.
Japanese literature includes famous diary-like works such as “The Pillow Book” from the 10th century. Explorers, scientists, and artists have long relied on field notebooks to record data and sketches.
In many societies, personal diaries have also become valuable historical sources that reveal everyday life and individual perspectives on major events.
Are pen-and-paper planners still useful when most scheduling can be done on phones?
Paper planners remain popular because they offer a tangible overview of time and tasks without notifications or app switching.
Some time‑management researchers note that writing tasks by hand can increase a sense of commitment and help people prioritize more deliberately.
Many users find that physically crossing out completed items is motivating, and that seeing a whole week or month laid out on paper helps with long‑term planning in a way that small screens sometimes struggle to match.
Can doodling in a notebook actually help with concentration?
Contrary to the idea that doodling means someone is not paying attention, some studies suggest that simple, unstructured doodling during a task like listening can help maintain alertness and prevent the mind from drifting.
Light doodling may give the brain just enough extra stimulation to stay engaged, which can support recall of what was heard.
The effect depends on the person and situation, but psychologists generally view low‑effort doodling as compatible with focus rather than a sign of disrespect or boredom.
You may also like
Anne & Samantha Day
Anne & Samantha Day shines a light on two young girls whose voices continue to echo through time. Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager, documented her life in hiding during World War II in a diary that has touched millions. Samantha Smith, an American schoolgirl, reached out to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov...
Dear Diary Day
Read the diary of a historical figure, or start your own diary to log your thoughts and experiences, think through your life, and focus your mind.
- Australia
- Canada
- International
- and 2 more
National Encourage a Young Writer Day
Show some support and care for future generations by getting invovled with this importnat day that helps to foster inspiration for the special craft of writing! How to Celebrate National Encourage a Young Writer Day Schools, non-profit organizations, student groups and so many others can get involved with National Encourage a Young...
National Essay Day
National Essay Day celebrates the art of essay writing, the kind of writing that can be thoughtful, persuasive, funny, personal, or quietly brilliant. An essay is small enough to fit into a busy life, yet big enough to carry an idea that matters. This day highlights how essays help people...
- Australia
- Canada
- International
- and 2 more
National days and holidays on May 21
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most glamorous and important events in the film industry. Held annually in the beautiful city of Cannes on the French Riviera, this festival draws the biggest names in cinema, from directors to actors. The red carpet is a dazzling display of style...
International Tea Day
While everyone loves a cup of tea, many of the workers and producers of that tea face poor conditions and pay. Help raise awareness and keep tea fair.
Chardonnay Day
Celebrate Chardonnay Day by exploring diverse styles, food pairings, and fun tasting ideas while discovering the history and global culture of this iconic white wine.
National Waitstaff Day
Celebrate National Waitstaff Day by honoring the servers who make dining memorable, highlighting their hard work, skilled service, and vital role in every meal out.
Seize Every Day
Join free for personalised recommendations, email reminders and exclusive guides. Never miss a day.