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Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#82Yes. I tried to for many years with paper and pen. It never worked for me until I started using DayOne [0] on iOS and Mac. Simply superb design and one of my favorite pieces of software to use because it does (almost) exactly what I want it to . When I type, I'm able to render my thoughts directly into text, whereas when I write with a pen I have to think about the physical process of writing. I imagine I'm not the o…
>> When I type, I'm able to render my thoughts directly into text, whereas when I write with a pen I have to think about the physical process of writing. I imagine I'm not the only one here who feels this way.
It is still the reverse for me. For me, writing involves less cognitive load than typing:
While writing, my mind wanders into thinking more (probably since it still has a capacity to, perhaps just because writing is slower than typing) which helps further.
While typing, I still make a lot of mistakes, which take attention away. I hate touch-screen keyboards as my error rate with them continues to be an order of magnitude higher than the same with physical keyboards even after several years of use.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the methodology used is specific to my goals I strongly recommend this attitude. A tool off the shelf rarely fits the hand well; when the tool in question serves to help investigate the self, a prepackaged methodology poses the risk of shaping oneself to fit the tool, rather than the other way around.
You are right, of course, but it's easier said than done. The blank page is intimidating and frustrating, so structure is often the best way to get going. It brings to mind fitness trackers, actually.
True, but you don't necessarily need a whole lot of structure to get started. Or at least I don't; in my personal journal, I just use a headline and a timestamp, generated by means of snippet expansion, and come back later to add a proper title. My work log uses dated headlines.
On the other hand, my personal journal is very freeform, and my work log is mainly a list of tasks and actions taken toward them, so I'm not sure how well that generalizes. Perhaps a useful recommendation for someone struggling to start might be this:
- Spend a few minutes thinking about what you want to accomplish by journaling.
- Spend a few minutes more laying out minimal structure that might help you work toward that goal. If you're working in a text or org-mode file, for example, perhaps put togther a few lines of boilerplate that you can copy and paste to start an entry.
- Spend a few days working with that structure, and see how well it suits your purpose. Where it does this well, preserve and perhaps expand; where it fails, rework it.
...and iterate from there.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#84For years I've tried to keep something like a journal, but I've never quite found an app that ticked all my requirements. Funny you should post this now - the solution that is working for now - is a google form for which I have a shortcut on my phone. I did as much as a could to minimize typing - lots of multiple choice, linear scales, checkboxes, etc. Then one open text field at the end for notes. I've actually been…
Same! I've been trying to journal since middle school and never stuck with it. Now I also use a google form to record life experiences, track certain goals like weight, exercise, learning goals, etc. and this is finally working for me. At some point I want to upgrade to something where I can add photos, location, etc. Each evening I get a calendar reminder to fill out the form, and I have a "quarterly review" style assessment to see if my goals should be modified, or my lifestyle changed to accomplish what I set out to.
This method motivates me to accomplish much more over the course of the day than before I started journaling.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#85I've just recently within the past couple of weeks started bullet journaling[0]. I have already noticed huge benefits in my productivity and organization. I was never that good of a note-taker so having this "method" to follow gave me the boost that I think I needed. [0]: http://bulletjournal.com/
I've been bullet journaling for a while and I found it particularly useful for handling school, work, family, friends and general life throughout college. Now, as a working person, I've found my bullet journal change with me, which has honestly been really nice.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#86I do keep a journal.
I do find it useful, it is some reflection and my to do list.
I looked online at bullet journal, and I purchased a nice one called Self Journal. I just couldnt get with those, but they all have nice features.
so what I do is this. Date at the top, I write out what I am greatful for in as many lines as I need, typically 2 or 3. I put down a big goal, and I put out my tasks for the day and mark them off as i go.
It serves as a scratch pad, its not holy, I rip pages out, or whatever.
I use the moleskine volant because it is rugged, but not stiff, I can roll it up and sort of stick it in my pocket if I have to. I try to take it everywhere.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#87Surprised https://standardnotes.org/ hasn't been mentioned. It popped up on HN a week or so ago and I've been using it ever since. Very simple, elegant solution with a focus on longevity. It's exactly what I was looking for.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#88I've been keeping a simple text-file journal since 2010: one file per day, simple file naming conventions and directory structure (~/Journal/2017/2017-01-26.txt and such). I use it to track food intolerances and health issues mostly, though also record the names of books as I finish reading them, movies I see, and significant life events. I've got a handful of scripts to help me do things like grep through ranges of dates, and search for items with simple tags so I can, for instance, easily find when I last ate a particular food. It is simple and works for me, so I have never invested the time or effort to make something more structured, though I might write a few more tools to help with the structure I do have,at some point.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing same thing here, all notes are in markdown and stored in a git, then I use mkdocs to generate them for html view. the pros is that mkdocs can generate htmls without any special requirements(just run it on all your markdown files recursively, unlike jekyll hugo etc requires you set something first), however mkdocs has some issues on its theme, still looking for the best and simplest way to present a markdown clu…
What features from a CMS would you want? Web editor: Github edit button, prose.io?
basically a drupal book module like function with user authentication, markdown first, flat-file(no database) support. that way I can import/export markdown files easily and can render them into browsers for viewing on the web with CMS-like protection, no such thing exist anywhere as far as I know.
Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?
#90No, but I'm starting to think I should.
Time distorts self-awareness, and having a written record would help.