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How do you journal?
Apple recently released a journal app in their latest iOS update. I used to journal when I was younger and thought it would be a good opportunity to get back into it. I usually use it as a reflection of my day, but some days nothing happens and I feel like there's probably a plethora of things I could be writing about.
So for those of you who journal what do you like to write in it?
I tried journaling earlier this year with Obsidian, taking the last 10 minutes every day to write something. The problem for me was that I think my life is kinda boring in a day to day capacity. It ended up most of the time I just took notes on work and gaming and going to the gym, and it kinda felt like it was just kinda a waste of time.
Honestly for me my biggest "journaling" device is Instagram Stories lol. Especially with highlights, it makes it super easy to figure out timelines and stuff like that. need to figure out a way to get all of it out but I use it anyways so it's pretty convenient.
I used to find this about journalling as well, but in my more recent attempts I found a lot of success in structuring the entry with some prompts. You can use prompts to subtly direct yourself into more novelty, if that is something you're after. For example I would have 3 questions:
The first question encourages you to think a little differently about the day, beyond just "what happened." Instead, you might think about how beautiful the sky was, or a good interaction with a coworker. The second question helps me to think more about what I'd like to eat or try to make tomorrow, and nudges me toward novelty. The third is a broader prompt that is less about storing the ideas that I've had, and more about getting me to think about the context of those ideas and thoughts. If I want to write about a brainwave I've had I try to give a bit of preamble around it, so if/when I come back to the entry I can recall the train of thought and better evaulate if the idea is a good one.
All great ideas! I actually did have a food log in my template (mostly because I'm on a massive weight cut anyways lol) but the other two I was thinking about but never actually implemented. I feel like for me journaling might be better as a note I can quickly jot down things in, but I have to think about that idea some more. Maybe I'll start again after the new year :)
The boringness of everyday lives is the main reason why I find myself disinterested in a lot of social media; combining the mundanity of most people's everyday lives with the performative aspects does not equal a good time for me.
Your comment made me reailze, though, that my photo gallery is essentially my journal. I've really been enjoying Apple's "memories" feature lately, especially now that I can use them as screensavers on my Apple TV. Taking a pee break during a movie and coming back to happy memories is a treat.
Yeah, even with the pain of trying to maintain privacy, sometimes it is kinda nice to be able to whip out a phone and take a picture of something that you want to remember.
Is there a letter-writing community one can join? Or do you write letters to people already in your life?
I highly suggest the app Slowly. You make penpals based on common interests and you can choose to write to people from different countries and cultures too. You'll never have to share your real picture. It's a secret media that somehow gets me more social than the superficial forms such as Insta. The time it takes for a letter to reach someone depends on how far they are -- giving it a nice touch of reality.
Who found it? Was it a family member when you were younger and they didn't like what you had written?
Something similar happened to me when I was younger, granted my journals weren't anything too exciting but it felt like a huge invasion of privacy. That was about 25-ish years ago and I still cringe about the interaction I had about the things I had written.
I live in Emacs, and use org-mode for most of my notes, which include my journal. I create a new file every day under
~/doc/journal/YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DDwith a function I bound to C-z j, and write anything I think I might want to keep a note of during the day, adding a new header with a timestamp every time I bring it up.I usually start with jotting down how I feel after waking up, if my sleep was OK, and if I remember any dreams. I use my journal to brainstorm what to do during the rest of the day, to note what I did and when I did it, the people I spoke with and what was said during our conversation, the minutes of any meetings I participate to, things I learned, what problems I encountered and what steps I took to fix them - together with their rationale - and often embed code snippets and execute them straight from org.
I pretty much always have my laptop on hand, so I throw everything in there throughout the day. Some of it gets pulled out to its own file - I maintain a personal wiki which tries to be better organized, and have more than a few agenda files I scrupulously maintain - but I usually rely on searching to find old notes.
It's nice to see a fellow Emacs user writing about their workflow.
Mine is quite similar, I wrote a very tiny, very simple package that follows a
YYYY/MM/DDscheme (YYYYandMMbeing directories of the corresponding year and month,DDbeing a Markdown file without the extension) with two main entry points:calendaris open (days with a diary entry are highlighted, too)I use the
consult-grepfunction from theconsultpackage to get real-time search capabilities.Always fun to see another emacs user out there. I wanted to comment on the part where you said you pull out something from your journal entry to a wiki that’s a little more organized. I found that using org-roam I could pull something out of my journal into a wiki then use org-roams linking capabilities to link the node I pulled out of my journal back to the original journal entry.
I find it’s only real value is novelty, but I enjoy when I stumble upon a link to a journal entry in my wiki. Gives me a quick excuse to go revisit a random day in my past.
I have the exact same workflow but I use Vim. Also I have UltiSnips which lets me type 'datetime' followed by a Tab press that expands to
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm. I type my thoughts below that each time. This helps me keep track of mood over the day.I made a little journaling app last year, which provides randomized writing prompts: https://tmthf.me
Keeping up a long form journal has always been difficult for me. Breaking it into little slices of life I can update during breaks in the day has helped me to capture more.
A markdown file segmented by year. I try to write daily at the end of the day. Most days I's either "everything is fine", "same as yesterday" or just a factual recollection of happenings in the day, but it keeps the habit in place for when I want to write more extensively.
Pen and paper.
On journalling specifically, this year I read Alan Rickman's published diaries which were beautiful and inspiring to write more prose. After a decade of technical work I tend to think in bullet points, but getting thoughts and emotion down on paper is very important to me. A diary that captured thoughts and feelings, and not just how you added value for shareholders, is enriching.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/12/madly-deeply-the-alan-rickman-diaries-review-inside-the-actors-world
I've settled on the https://www.leuchtturm1917.co.uk/notebooks/ notebooks, they're basically the higher quality version of the thing you thought you were buying when you first learned about notebooks and Moleskine. I feel like the pipeline of Moleskine --> Leuchtturm is a very strong gateway.
I follow the bullet journalling ideas but make them my own.
The concept of having a future log, monthly logs etc. is very helpful for me, I don't really follow the key/legend of different bullets signifying different things too rigidly.
The best pens I found are the Pentel Energel Rollerball Pens, they don't run or streak and handle highlighters and marker pens over the top of them pretty well. Other gel pens I tried took too long to dry and smudge and bleed into highlighters and markers.
I've followed this practice for about 5 years now fairly consistently.
TOPTIP 1: The best ROI is to do a future log at the front with each month divided up over a couple of pages
TOPTIP 2: Something I found worked well was to do all 12 monthly spreads at the back of your book and then work forwards from the the start with your daily logs/general journal.
That way you are never hunting through your Index or pages for where the monthly log is.
For work notes I use emacs and org-mode (most folding bullets style notetaking apps are just copying org-mode).
I tried Obsidian and other roam-like/zettlekasten ideas but I'm not disciplined enough to do the tagging.
Between Christmas and new year I will set up my next notebook for 2024!
edit:formatting
Do you do any kind of hybrid with org-mode and Bullet Journalling, or are you all-in on Bullet Journalling for personal and org-mode for work? Any advice for someone who uses org-mode for everything but would like to take a more hybrid approach?
I ask, because I bullet journalled for years before finding my home in org-mode for both work and personal. I've wanted to go back to bullet journalling for various reasons, but have just not been able to make it stick after switching to emacs (with Orgzly on my mobile device).
It's a good question.
I have a few semi-rigid heuristics for what goes in the bujo and what goes in org-mode.
Time boxing and planning / calendaring goes in the bujo so I can figure out how the day/week/month/year will look in a tactile way. (some replication in gcal/ical and outlook)
Personal events like a vacation or work trip get their own spread in the bujo, including things like packing lists, a day by day picture of the trip / itinerary etc. Helps to have this in the bujo to review on my desk/cafe/plane.
Sometimes when there's a deadline or countdown, I'll do day count spread on its own page, where each square is a day and countdown until the thing. Like "45 days until X" and then have 45 squares marked out with the days of the week and what I need to get done.
Annual (future log) and monthly log planning is always in the Bujo.
Daily items, TODO, meeting notes/minutes/next steps go into the org-mode more often.
Anything where it is a deadline goes into outlook and a bujo monthly item.
Less important TODO's go into the org-mode where I can pull up the org-agenda to find stuff I noted down.
Structured ideas are most often in the BUJO / plain paper / Figma.
I keep a lot of learning / reading notes in my org mode, since it's foldable and nestable I can put something like:
And have a bunch of thoughts in there, or copy paste bits of blog posts.
Some ideas that shaped my BUJO/Notetaking practices:
BUJO:
David Allen's Getting things done
https://www.youtube.com/@nathanieldrew/videos
I honestly enjoy the work Ryder does on the YT channel https://www.youtube.com/@bulletjournal/videos
This lady who lived in a Van I think at the time had some interesting spreads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRt8j7H1GvE
I don't love their content anymore but I did watch a bunch: https://www.youtube.com/@mattdavella
Andy's blog: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes
Cal Newport's tactics helped me get my mechanical engineering bachelors and masters degrees: https://calnewport.com/blog/
Scott Young was also instrumental to studying habits and tactics, he has some genuinely great stuff but he's gone a bit Tim Ferris / 4 hour work week with his sales stuff in the last few year: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/articles/
ORG MODE:
I think this was my canonical introduction to org-mode:
thoughtbot org-mode video
I went down the spacemacs rabbit hole, then wrote my own init.el file / have a very small number of packages to get org-bullets, evil mode, nord-theme.
Thanks, kind stranger! There are some good recommendations here. Funnily enough, based on your recommendations and some of the links you provided, it seems like we've tread similar paths in our adoption of various productivity methods. I'm familiar with most of your BUJO links above (and agree with your assessment of Scott Young), but there's still some good stuff you've provided that I hadn't seen before.
I'll have to take another look at time-boxing. I know it's a method Cal Newport thinks very highly of, but I have yet to implement it in a way that has resonated. It's like I'm missing a separate piece of the puzzle that I need to work through before I can get time-boxing to stick.
Hey, just to add a bit to OP's great answer: I use the Bullet Journal method for work exclusively because I'm a person who a) forgets everything, b) processes things better with pen and paper, and c) has a job where I have to be highly organised due to the amount of multi-tasking I do every day.
Honestly, I can't see myself using the bullet journal method for personal life, as I guess my life just isn't that busy. However, for work, it's been a life saver. I have a regular lined spiral notebook from the office cupboard, and I use it with the following tools/spreads:
This works for me because trying to plan anything on a screen makes my brain go full TV static, so if you're happy doing your journalling on a screen, you might be out of luck. But it really changed my work life for the better, because before, there was a bunch of small things that I just wasn't retaining and would straight up forget about despite generally writing down notes. While they still might not be getting done, at least these things are on my radar now.
Can you elaborate on what exactly is a future log? And why do you feel it's the best ROI?
A future log is just a way to quickly see a large time frame.
Ill try to explain but its hard without pictures, you should watch a few YouTube videos about bullet journaling to really see what I mean.
For me since I try to keep 1 notebook per year, my future logs are 2 double page spreads (3 months per page across 4 pages).
Add key dates for your year. Keep updating it as the year goes on.
If something important happens in a given month they you write it in 2 places, once in the future log for the year, under the correct month, and once again in the
Monthly log for that month( usually with more notes and detail).
So you can see it when looking at the whole year, and when looking at that particular month.
By ROI I meant more the way I do monthly logs.
Using the last 12 double page spreads of your notebook set up your monthly logs so December is last at the back of your book and work backwards until January.
In the past I would just put the monthly logs on the next available page working forwards so say I’m on page 20 in my notebook and its the end of February, I would to to the next double page spread and set up March’s log.
Which is unpredictable because the monthly spreads end up all scattered throughout your book. So if you want a month by month account you have to go rooting through your index.
With my method of putting them all at the back this is easier and you can do all 12 months ahead of time. I like to leave a bit of space on each monthly to get a little artistic (Pumpkins in November or whatever)
I have a very mundane schedule. Nonetheless, I still write a journal just to maintain the habit. I use the Diarium app, where I've created a template that I fill out and add additional details as needed.
Thank you for this! I'd been looking for a (non-subscription) journaling app to try out.
I've been journaling in various forms for over 20 years now. I have over 2000 pages written, which is kind of crazy when I think about it.
I keep it simple with a basic online document with date headings for each day, although I'm thinking of adding more tags in next years journal. I would like to eventually put this in a more wiki-like format but it's largely working for how I use it.
Mostly I write down things to process them. I notice when I have to "explain" things I'm thinking about in a way that makes sense when written, it really helps me understand the problem compared to just things bouncing around in my head. It's also cool to have a history to look back on and review occasionally to notice trends that I might have otherwise missed. For example a relationship that I was in had hints of it going bad for quite awhile, but I had ignored it a lot in the past in my journals and didn't notice that these concerns kept coming up until I read back through previous journals. Very helpful!
I use the Notes-app on Mac. It works across all my machines, is very basic and I don't run into any dependency issues in the future (hopefully...). I create a document for each month, and then every day I use the app, I start with the date and the city I'm in.
In terms of what I write about: I try to follow Ben Franklin's advice: "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." In practice, much of it is of course introspective, but it might also be about what happens around me. After all, having a journal has two goals in my view: 1) try to get more clarity in your thoughts by making them explicit, and 2) be able to trace back what kind of person you were in the past.
In terms of frequency: It fluctuates wildly, as life does sometimes. Occasionally I will write something everyday of a week, then nothing for another week.
I used to really struggle with the idea of journaling but I started doing a small journal where I have to write at least 3 bullet points of what I did that day. If I want to say more, totally fine, but the minimum is 3. It helps differentiate each day and feels less overwhelming for me than "just journaling".
What Went Well - simply writing down three things that went well that day. I read that this can be helpful for a mood boost at the end of a workday, but do it other times as well.
Accomplishments/Lessons/Hope - write down 1) one thing I was proud of that day, 2) one thing I learned, and 3) one thing I'm looking forward to. I like this one because it doesn't feel like toxic or empty positivity (as I sometimes can feel when I'm constantly just saying what I'm grateful for,) but also frames mistakes as learning opportunities.
Substance Use - When I was looking to drastically cut down on alcohol use last year, I learned a sobriety/semi-sobriety tactic from a random self help app, to use if you're looking to reduce a habit (specifically habits that are tied to emotions.) Whenever I got an urge to engage in the habit, I made a note of it, wrote down my emotions at the time, and observed my environment/recent events that may have triggered the feeling (bad day at work, saw family, etc.) After journaling, I would allow myself to give in to the habit if I still felt like it, but had to write down how much I consumed. After a few weeks of this I noticed that after doing the journaling, I started to decide I didn't need a drink that day. Classic mindfulness, really.
Friendships - sometimes if I'm feeling particularly grateful for a friend, I'll write a few words about what they mean to me in that moment, or activities we did lately. I re-read my journals a lot so it's nice to have the memories there. Sometimes I'll text a portion of the thoughts to the friend afterwards.
Annoyances/Anger - If I'm ever upset about a person or a situation, I always try to write a couple paragraphs of snarky thoughts to get them out of my system, until I cool down and start to write more reasonable "I statements" instead. I try to never continue speaking with someone I'm upset with until I'm ready to speak calmly and kindly, and writing things down helps me process while I get to that point.
With btrfs. 😏
Usually it's a statement, a clarification of stuff I've been mulling over. I dont keep to a schedule with journaling, I just do it when it seems like that would be good to do, when I'm having trouble reasoning things out. Can open the text editor, hammer out some thoughts, save, done. Not usually more than 15 or 20 minutes. It varies a lot, too. Sometimes it's about relationships, the world, specific people, whatever.
As an example, lately I've been having to grapple with one grandmother being in a really depressing state. I dont have a lot of history with her, and in facing what is truly a horrendous situation, she's regressing into those (few) memories and treating me like it's 30 years ago. I can't really begin to be honest about it, because she won't let me, and I can't be helpful in my usual way as a result. Can't really do anything if folks keep you out of what matters. So I took to journaling it, so I could at least have a simple, straightforward way of saying things if I ever did get the opportunity. Reasoned out both, how I felt and how I could tailor that to the way she tends to see things. Once that was done, saved and into the folder it goes, likely never to be seen again because the point lives with me now. The act of journaling was me gathering things together, piecing them together coherently, and then putting the refined, simple truth of it in my pocket for later, if that makes sense. That's probably the vast majority of what's in that folder, at different times, with different people.
I use jrnl.sh in addition to nvim, to make entries in a simple, encrypted, .txt file directly from the command line. This application let me tag my entries, and has plenty of filter arguments to retrieve old entries.
Usually, I write about some general insights regarding different topics (such as academics, gym, meditation...), with each entry properly tagged. Recently, however, I've adopted a approach to write a longer entry every sunday as a review of my week. This review is written under 4 main topics: habits (how consistent I've been with my habits in that week), routine (regarding productivity, finances, entertainment, etc), objectives (a report of how closer or further I am from some objectives that I've proposed to myself) and mood (how I've been feeling for the past week).
I've only started doing this recently, so I can't say that it will stick as a habit, but I sure hope it does, because it gives each week a 'identity' per se, and helps keeping me grounded in my core objectives.
I started a journal of sorts back in Jan 2020 since I had a bunch of notebooks I got for free from various things, but I always hated the idea of writing in them and "ruining" them. So to break that habit, I decided to keep a journal, but I was never really a fan of having a diary or anything like that. Instead, I got a small A6 size moleskin notebook that I could keep in my back pocket, kept my space pen along with it, and the goal was to just write any interesting thoughts I had in the notebook.
To divorce it from a diary or anything like that, I simply wrote the month and year on the first page of the notebook, each entry just separated by a small line and then having the year and month that I finish the notebook on the last page of the notebook. The entries are not supposed to be about what I did that day, although sometimes the thoughts I had were an analysis of things that happened, like my thoughts on a video game that I finished.
I also had to write at least one thought per day in the book, but I could write more than one if I wanted. If I couldn't think of anything to write that day, I decided that I would have to write down "I had no interesting thoughts today" which is a surprisingly good motivator for thinking about something and writing it down, as I never had to write that down (although there are definitely entries that are self-reflective about the threat of that phrase).
The other thing that makes it less like a diary is that even though the thoughts are sometimes somewhat personal, I don't mind if people read it. In fact it makes me happy when people read it and enjoy it, as I feel it gives a weird insight into myself that I maybe have a hard time showing when I'm just talking with someone. It's a weird mishmash of things I should maybe try at some point ("I should keep a dream journal"), fun dungeons and dragon ideas ("every time my character doesn't have an item that would've been useful, he then always carries it in the future, even if there's no chance of it being useful again"), song lyrics that were stuck in my head ("Hey hey, you you, I don't like your girlfriend" appears twice for some reason and is actually the only lyrics in there), or just random thoughts ("The word 'Judged' looks weird. Jud Ged"). And then peppered through are more in depth thoughts about larger topics (most recent favorite is thinking about how after playing with my toddler niece over Thanksgiving, realizing "games" are a language that we can communicate with them before they have full language, as they are similar in terms of having patterns and rules that everyone follows so that everyone understands one another).
I unfortunately fell off doing it once the pandemic hit full swing as I was working from home, but I ended up picking it back up a few weeks ago and now I'm excited to finish this book and start fresh on the next one. My entries now are definitely more thoughtful and on average much longer than before, but that is interesting in its own right. I've also found that when I take the time to give form to some of my thoughts and write them down, they form great topics to talk about with other people.
In the end, I'm left with something that is uniquely me, and makes me happy to look back on and share with others.
I used to use OhLife when it came out, but haven't really found anything comparable since that site shut down.
I personally use Obsidian, together with Obsidian Sync to be able to have access to notes on my phone. Each month gets a note with "YYYY-MM" title (for example, upcoming January would be "2024-01"). One of the things I have within each monthly note is a list of headings for each day of the month, under which I list things that happened on given day in bullet points. It's very simple, and really mostly meant to help me remember what happened when - my memory's not the best about things like that.
Recently, I also received a beautiful yellow notebook as a gift for my birthday. I'm thinking about using it for taking up more mental health-focused journalling as well. I hope it could become another way, on top of medication I'm currently taking, to help me deal with anxiety.
I am about it to finish the 5th year of a one line a day journal. It is organized by date, with 5 entries per day. So every year you can see what you were doing on that day over the years. It’s funny to see the patterns that life follows. Also to see how life has changed in five years. I do have a couple code words for illicit substance use, so I am keep track myself but if someone reads it later on they won’t know.
I journal every day with Daylio ever since a therapist recommended it. I just write a little about what I got up to each day.
Once a week, the app shows me past entries and photos from 3, 6, 12, and 24 months ago. It's a nice way to reminisce.
I also use it to track the activities I do each day, and the medications I take.
I have been using Day One for quite a while and have made it a habit to write something every day. Mostly it is just rather mundane stuff about the day, but I like to write for my future self. Day One has a On This Day feature showing all your entries from the same date in the past. That is fun to go back and see snippets of every day life years ago.
Some days I write more if something is my mind or there was a special occasion relating to the kids. I have tried doing the gratitude journal routine but it never really worked for me.
I use multiple books for different things. I have to write everything down, so using different books for different purposes helps me keep organized. I have a small pocket notebook for work, a larger book for meetings and a large notebook for my daily quad chart for prioritizing my day. For personal I keep composition notebooks through the years which has mostly been just a stream of thoughts after significant life events. However for the last 3 months I've been keeping another book focusing on development and mindful improvements in myself. It's helpful in staying on track but painful identifying character flaws. I haven't found a good digital medium I have been able to stick with yet.
With a trusty fountain pen, one work journal, one personal journal and an "everything else notebook".
For my personal journaling I write often, even if it's just a single line describing my mood. But sometimes I go days without writing anything.
Or if i'm really inspired I open a book called "for every day a philosophical question" (translation from Dutch) and write little bit about the question.
And that's it. I just make sure my journal has an easy visible spot and at a certain point the need to write just appears.
For a work/personal log, day planning, and getting stuff done, I use a bullet journal like approach, and have found that a physical notebook works best.
For actually journalling, which I see as a distinctly different exercise, I also use a notebook and pen, and use the following method:
https://gemini.tildeverse.org/?gemini://tilde.town/~dozens/gemlog/14.gmi
I've tried a ton of different versions. I had a diary as a kid (from age 7 or so) where at first I'd just record various mundane stuff (Dear diary, today we went to the store and I got a new toy, etc.), but then it slowly evolved into talking about my feelings and processing whatever was happening in my life. When blogging became popular, I was pretty prolific between ~2004 and 2008. I've tried those apps where you take a short video each day, but my life is not so exciting that I'd have something brand new to show every day. I tried gratitude journals, but I got sick of writing down the same things over and over again. I also wrote a bunch of letters (never sent) to a boyfriend when I was upset with him and just needed to vent, and also when we broke up and I had a lot of things to tell him that I couldn't say in real life. So basically, whatever I do, I keep returning to classic pen and paper journalling.
My current setup is:
A regular journal for 'what's going on in my life' kind of journalling that I use to talk to myself and process things. I use this one only a few times per year.
An 'ingratitude' journal that started off as something to balance the gratitude journal (which I wasn't a big fan of) and that has the following prompts:
I write into it before bed when I remember/have time (several times per month), and there's definitely overlap with the other journal, but this one is more focused on mental health and life goals. I also use it to explore my answers to the above prompts further - e.g., if I can't think of anything to look forward to, how can I change that? How can I deal with the things that stress me out? etc.
A small planner for keeping track of weekly events and to-do lists. I use it daily.
A bullet journal. This used to be my end-all, be-all notebook, but with Covid and me starting to work a 9-5 office job my life got more mundane and a tiny, pre-printed planner is now more practical for keeping track of everyday stuff. I'm pivoting more towards using it for long-term tracking/goals and for motivating myself, and I'm not yet sure how exactly this will look like. So far, my January section contains a monthly calendar spread, a tracker for sport activities, and a monthly to-do list.
For awhile, I used to do 750 words. But I ended up disliking the original site because of the mood and thought breakdown. But I find the breakdown was more distracting than anything, so now i do something similar on obsidian. The exercise works pretty well and helps to get my thoughts down.
My setup is consist of two journals. My hobonichi is more of a journal/planner. My main use is to record day to day activity along with writing inportant date down. I also keep track with movies, music, tv, book I have consumed in the back. The journal is a nice way to keep track what I did day to day.
Second one is optional, the journal is a daily log in obsidian with a template. This is just so i can write a more long form entries when I want to.
I like having a mix of digital and paper. Paper for the short quick jot, and digital for the long form entries.