Procrastination is a common source of academic struggles among college students. Prior research suggests that procrastination tendencies are amenable to change, but the mechanisms behind successful interventions are not fully understood. In a small-scale intervention study, college students who self-identified as procrastinators maintained biweekly journals and participated in a one-on-one, semi-structured interview about their experiences. The journaling tool built upon principles of self-monitoring and reflective writing to bring greater awareness to students' behaviours. With the raw journal entries and verbatim interview transcripts as data sources, inductive thematic analysis was used to understand how the journaling experience influenced students' procrastination tendencies. Findings indicated that journaling spurred four pivotal processes: understanding procrastination, making changes in the moment, motivating action, and finding direction for change. The findings shed light on student-directed change and can inform practices aimed at reducing college students' procrastination.