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I look at my Fitbit and note despondently that I have done only 2,247 steps today. I haven’t met my ‘hydration goal’ or crossed everything off my to-do list. I didn’t think of three things I was grateful for before I went to sleep last night, nor did I meditate this morning. I didn’t wake up early enough, and I probably won’t get seven to nine hours of sleep. The perfect version of myself hovers in my peripheral vision – healthy, happy and, above all, productive.

We live in an age of self-quantification and the glorification of productivity. Bullet journals, habit trackers, smart watches – all of these tools allow us to collect data about ourselves in a frenzy of self-improvement. My Instagram feed is flooded with videos of thin women with smooth shiny foreheads and gleaming white teeth, extolling the virtues of 5 am workouts, lengthy skincare rituals, and gratitude journals. We seek out ‘hacks’ that will enable us to be ever-more efficient, and to extract the most value possible from our time and possessions.

This all feels very modern, and – we might sensibly assume – inextricably linked to the death throes of late capitalism, where time is money and consumption is king. Yet this culture of self-quantification in the pursuit of self-improvement long predates social media, algorithms and targeted advertising. In fact, we can trace its roots back into the daily lives and preoccupations of the Victorian middle classes.

‘The world is too much with us,’ complained William Wordsworth in 1807. Almost 30 years later, Alfred, Lord Tennyson struck a more triumphant note:

The Victorian era was an epoch defined above all by an obsession with progress. The Victorians were great innovators, and they were also utopians, envisioning a perpetual process of improvement: not only of the self, but of society, of all mankind. Royal commissioners and philanthropists descended in droves upon the slums of London to investigate poverty and sanitary conditions. Wealthy industrialists funded libraries, town halls, public works and sewers. Prince Albert wrote reports on housing. The middle classes enthusiastically consumed scientific knowledge circulated in periodicals and treatises in the pursuit of ‘rational amusement’. The totalising representation – the text or image that would reveal all – was an implicit goal of Victorian culture, from Wordsworth and Charles Dickens to the panorama and the camera. There was a frenzy of measurement and map-making. Data would lead to understanding, and understanding would enable mastery.

Samuel Smiles by Leslie Ward (‘Spy’), published in Vanity Fair in 1882. Courtesy the NPG London

The 19th-century obsession with self-improvement and self-discipline is perhaps best exemplified by Samuel Smiles’s book Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), which championed hard work, good habits and perseverance. It sold 20,000 copies in the first year of publication. Above all, the key was to be active in the pursuit of progress: the greatest Victorian sin was idleness. As the 15-year-old Victoria, heir presumptive to the throne, virtuously wrote in her diary on the 27 January 1835: ‘I love to be employed; I hate to be idle.’ Just as they sought to measure and quantify the progress of Western civilisation, so the Victorians sought to measure progress and improve the self through the simple practice of keeping a diary.

A printed diary held out the promise of total control over time, place and the self

Indeed, the great Victorian innovation in diary-keeping was the switch from the use of the diary solely as a means of reflecting on past actions to the use of pre-printed diaries to plan the future. Diaries were no longer just a record of experience; they were an organisational tool. A mania for progress, industry and commerce had seized the nation, trade was flourishing in the bustling capital, and these new times generated new commodities. Tasks, appointments, memoranda – all could be jotted down in a neatly structured pocket diary that would help you use your time as productively as possible.

Industrialisation, imperialism and rising bureaucracy fuelled demand for desk and pocket diaries to record meetings, appointments and financial transactions. Printed diaries with dated pages became a popular stationery product, with an unprecedented variety and number of these commercial diaries sold to purchasers who sought to organise their lives in the pursuit of productivity. Alongside pages for the writer’s notes and accounts, the diaries included pages of printed information: train timetables, tide times, public holidays, weights and measures, etc. In this way, the new printed diary drew on the tradition of the long-established family almanac, combining the functions of almanac, calendar and diary in one multifunctional book.

Early diaries sold by John Letts in London. Courtesy and © LettsGroup 2025

A printed diary held out the promise of total control over time, place and the self. In 1812, the stationer John Letts began selling a yearly printed diary at his shop in the Royal Exchange in London. The diary was a huge success, and by 1862 Letts offered 55 different versions targeted at specific social groups, with prices ranging from sixpence to 14 shillings (or £1.50 to £42 in today’s money). By 1900, Letts was selling almost a quarter of a million diaries a year, and the printed diary was established as an essential feature of commercial life. No longer merely a space to reflect on what had been achieved, the diary was also a place to plan what was yet to be accomplished.

Then, as now, the writing of a diary required time, light, materials and literacy. Studies of surviving British diaries show that, prior to the 19th........

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