Skip to main content

Journal & morning pages

φ has two daily-writing habits built in. A journal holds dated entries you keep and revisit. Morning pages are the private, write-and-let-go practice. Both feed a writing streak so showing up every day is visible and rewarding.

The Journal space​

The Journal is one of the three spaces in the left rail (the notebook-and-pen icon, Journal — dated entries). Open it and the sidebar lists your dated entries, newest day first.

A journal entry is just a document tied to a day. It lives in your vault like any other document — searchable, linkable, exportable — but it's grouped here by date so a daily practice has a home.

Start today's entry​

In the Journal sidebar, or on the Journal landing screen, click New entry for today. φ creates a fresh document dated to today and opens it.

You can also start an entry for a past day or today from the calendar — see The calendar. Creating there dates the entry to the day you picked. You can't date an entry in the future, though referencing a future date with a date chip still works.

Morning pages​

Morning pages are a longhand, first-thing-in-the-morning practice (the Artist's Way tradition): you write three pages, freely, and you don't reread them. φ honors that. Morning pages are private — kept out of search, the sidebar, and the graph — and they're meant to be let go, not polished.

So the surface is bare on purpose. A morning page is a text-only document: no slash menu, no bubble toolbar, no block tools, no word goal, no status — just the date and the page. Write.

Open today's page​

In the rail, just below the three spaces, there's a sun. That's the door to morning pages. Click it to open today's page (or to start it if you haven't yet).

The sun shows your progress. Hover it and you'll see today's word count toward the goal. Once you reach the goal, the sun lights gold and stays lit.

The goal: three pages​

The goal is three pages, which φ counts as 750 words a day. You don't see a ticking counter inside the page — that would pull you out of the writing. Instead, the status bar at the bottom quietly tracks it:

  • While you write: {words} / 750 words · {remaining} to go.
  • When you cross 750: {words} words — three pages reached, with a Mark as done button.

Marking the page done​

When you've reached the goal, click Mark as done in the status bar. The status changes to Today's pages are done ☀.

Morning pages aren't meant to be reread, so once a page is sealed the sun still opens that day — but it lands on a quiet acknowledgement card rather than your text. Pages you revisit elsewhere (from the calendar) open in reading mode, read-only, never back into editing.

Writing streaks​

A streak is the run of consecutive days you've met a daily word minimum. It's there to make a habit visible — write a little every day and the streak grows.

What counts toward a streak​

  • A day counts once the words you wrote that day reach the minimum — whether you started something new or added to a document you already had. Words are credited to the day you actually wrote them, so a fresh journal entry, a morning page, or an afternoon spent expanding a chapter all count toward that day.
  • The default minimum is 50 words a day. You can raise it in Settings (⌘,) → Editor → Writing streak → Minimum words / day. The floor is 50.
  • There's a one-day grace: a streak ending yesterday isn't counted as broken yet — it gives you the rest of today to keep it alive before it lapses.

Morning pages keep their own separate streak. A morning-pages day counts only when you reach the full three-page (750-word) goal — a light day doesn't keep the sun's streak going.

Where the streak shows​

Your current streak rides in the status bar at the bottom of the window as a flame: 🔥 N. Hover it to read N-day writing streak.

That flame is the Motivational streak display. φ can also show the streak Quiet (a lifetime word count instead of a flame) or Off, and you can set a gentler weekly rhythm goal in its place — you choose per writer profile. See The streak, and how it shows.

The calendar shows the same run on the grid, and surfaces the morning-pages streak too. See The calendar.