Ask HN: Has journaling improved your life?

Could you elaborate on where exactly you save or store your entries to make them universally accessible? For instance, do you use a specific application or cloud storage service?

I hope you won't mind if I use the term "journaling" in its broadest sense as anything written about events of my life.

1. I write a training journal that consist of .fit files with extensive notes in .txt files - how I felt during and after the training (including things like "I discovered a new road next to a river, it was beautiful" or "I kept thinking about X and I was pissed), what I ate and how I slept that day, that I was observing swallows flying and that it made me feel good for some reason... writing a journal like this forces you to pay attention to little things. You notice patterns, maybe little signs of overtraining, signals that it is going well, connections that you might otherwise miss, like "I have elevated heart rate every time I eat poppy seed cookies"...

2. when I have something on my mind, I write it as an email for "someone close". This started during a difficult but interesting period in my life when I was actually sending emails to my close friend (we were on different continents and it was before Skype, mobile phones etc. - emails were the only connection we could have at the time). Nowadays I sometimes just write what is happening in my life without sending it to anyone but I usually still think about it as if I am writing to a friend. What is great about it is that this somehow re-frames heavy stuff into a funny story - it works even at the very moment when you are living through something tough; instead of just being depressed or scared you are already formulating in your head how you will write that email later and somehow your perspective changes into something a lot more positive - at least in my case it works like that.

Losing weight especially with that much scrutiny where you track everything can definitely make you neurotic about what you eat, and mess with how you perceive yourself (i.e. someone looks perfectly fine but their eyes just laser focus on a tiny bit of fat on their belly and they think they're obese because of how critical they were).

With stuff like that it helps a lot to journal but in a way where it's not hypercritical / nit picky / focused on every little detail but just slightly broader strokes in my experience to keep it healthy & sustainable (not messing up how you perceive yourself)

Not a doctor, I've had similar experiences in the past, overweight and poor concentration (despite being "gifted"). I tried journaling.

The accountability etc is almost magic in its effect but I had found it really hard to do. Then 12 weeks ago I started on Ozempic, almost no effort required - 30lbs lost. 3 years earlier I started taking 54mg methylphenidate and on the days I take it, concentration is not a problem.

I do this most nights just before bed.

I do this because I have really strong automatic negative thoughts, and always have. These can be really harmful to general flourishing, in particular by disrupting sleep and undermining self-confidence.

I don't really read these back. Rather, the writing itself is a kind of practice which aids processing of difficult emotions.

When I'm having difficult feelings, putting negative thoughts down in writing "gets them out of my head" which means I can let go of them, in turn easing the difficult feelings associated with them.

When I'm having positive feelings, putting a description of them down in writing forces me to notice them more than I would otherwise, which in turn inflates them.

Creating a balance of positive feelings to negative thoughts is one of the ways to take negative thoughts under control and manage them. What fires together wires together. Spiralling rumination is a seriously harmful thing to do to your own brain. Journalling is one way I manage this.