How to Start an Audio Journal: 6 Easy Steps to Begin Recording
By: Sound Off
Tags: Reflections, Journaling, Audio Journaling, Mindfulness, Podcast

How to Start an Audio Journal: 6 Easy Steps to Begin Recording

To help you kickstart your audio journaling journey, here is our step-by-step guide to getting started. Sound Off Jun 17·4 min read

Photo by Samuel Ferrara on Unsplash

So you want to start audio journaling! But where to begin? Here is our step-by-step guide to getting started.

Step 1: Download an audio journaling app

While you can always record your voice through voice memos, it doesn’t always make for the best experience.

For one, there are no prompts to help guide you through audio journaling. Just an intimidating big red record button. And for someone just getting started, it can be hard to motivate yourself to regularly audio journal if you don’t have any form of engagement with the app you are using.

Voice memos also offer minimal ways of organizing or keeping track of your audio journaling reflections. This is why we recommend a free audio journaling app like Sound Off to help guide you through the practice of audio journaling.

Step 2: Hit record and just start talking…

Audio journaling is just like written journaling, only instead of a blank piece of paper you hit record and start talking through your thoughts.

Before you start, you can think through what you want to talk about ahead of time or you can just start talking without building any kind of plan. Sometimes having no plan is the best plan, especially for audio journaling. It gives you the freedom to speak whatever comes to mind without having to stick to any one topic.

Step 3: … Or choose a prompt for inspiration

For some people, step 2 sounds like the most intimidating request imaginable. That’s why with Sound Off you have both the option to start talking or get inspiration through our wide selection of daily starters.

These are one-minute episodes designed like mini-podcasts. The goal is to discover and learn more about a topic and use our Sound Off prompts as a guided pathway for your audio journaling.

Step 4: Embrace the silences

It’s going to feel awkward at first. You might have pauses between thoughts, moments where you’re not sure what to say next, and times where you go to hit that record button but you can’t find anything to talk about. This is completely normal!

Just like starting any other activity, audio journaling takes practice. Here are a few things you can do to break the ice:

Play around with when you record: You might be too exhausted at the end of your day to put coherent thoughts together. See if another time of day works for you!

You might be too exhausted at the end of your day to put coherent thoughts together. See if another time of day works for you! Try a daily starter: Our one-minute episodes help guide your audio journaling process, so use them to get started!

Our one-minute episodes help guide your audio journaling process, so use them to get started! Talk through your day: Start off your audio journaling by describing your day. What did you do? How did it go? This can help get the ball rolling.

Start off your audio journaling by describing your day. What did you do? How did it go? This can help get the ball rolling. Pretend like you’re talking to a friend: Audio journaling is just like sending a voice message to a friend. Only in this case, the message isn’t going anywhere. But sometimes it’s helpful to envision yourself in a conversation.

Audio journaling is just like sending a voice message to a friend. Only in this case, the message isn’t going anywhere. But sometimes it’s helpful to envision yourself in a conversation. Think out loud: What is going through your mind right now? It doesn’t matter if the thought is mundane or “I need to buy this at the grocery store”. Just start thinking out loud about everything that’s on your mind until you run out of things to process.

Step 5: Don’t listen back.

A big concern we hear from a lot of people getting started with audio journaling is that they don’t like hearing any kind of recording of their voice. But here’s the beauty of audio journaling: if you don’t want to listen back, then don’t.

Audio journaling is about sounding off about how you feel in the moment, there’s no reason to listen back unless you want to. This gives you the freedom to speak freely and to just sound off about whatever comes to mind, without any concerns around how it sounds.

Step 6: Keep going

Build a habit of audio journaling for a few minutes every day. It might take a few tries to get into the routine, but the more you sound off the easier and more meaningful it will get.