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How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

michael.team

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Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#11

Post by npunt »

I've discovered so much about myself journaling. Journaling allows me to listen to myself in a way I cannot otherwise do; it separates me from my thoughts & feelings, which gives me the perspective I need to see myself a different way. I can't reliably get this meditating the way I can journaling.

If you're a curious person, the habit of journaling is a fantastic engine to drive your curiosity inward, and is often quite fun and something to look forward to. It's also a great way to get better as a writer - writing 500+ words a day, and really thinking about the words being written, over a long period of time really adds up. I'm so much faster at writing than I was when I started.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#12

Post by narrator »

codegangsta wrote: post #4

I’ve been journaling daily for the past few years and it’s been really fun to tick through each day around a year previous to observe my current state. Most of it seems trite or meaningless, but collated it feels like a meaningful picture of who I was back then — what my struggles were and how they split between the distant and close. TLDR; I highly recommend journaling daily. It forces you to slow down and plug into…

A practice I do that's related to this is a year end wrapup. I write it at the beginning of January where I take my whole year and write about what significant things happened each month and then the major themes of the year and a reflection on it at the end.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#13

Post by sircastor »

mgdlbp wrote: post #3

Why write on the phone when routinely journalling before and after bed? I always feel stifled by typing speed on a touch keyboard; in this case especially, it seems minimizing the friction of expressing a spontaneous thought would take priority. I don't see mention of dictation, unless it's a given with the app. Or is that particular workflow feature so beneficial as to offset this?

> I always feel stifled by typing speed on a touch keyboard

My typing speed on a laptop keyboard was the thing that finally made journaling work for me. I could never write fast enough by hand to capture my thoughts.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#14

Post by DantesKite »

I always compare journaling to trying to solve a math problem with paper and pen. Of course you can do math problems in your head, but it's so much easier when you can express thoughts as symbols.

But the problems you're trying to solve aren't mathematical. They're emotional and perhaps even spiritual ones; petty ones and unexamined ones.

It's a great tool more people should use, not out of obligation, but because once you become aware of it, you'll automatically want to.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#15

Post by zaplin »

An interesting twist about the gratitude practice:

It turns out that it does not work they way we think it works. At least that's what the scientists say. To get the desired results the practice needs to be inverted.

"The key elements of highly effective gratitude practices are [...] the essential need for story (narrative), receiving or perceiving gratitude rather than giving it, and the role that theory of mind plays in this context" []

[] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVjfFN89qvQ

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#16

Post by sdze »

wenc wrote: post #6

Journaling is actually a great way of promoting mental and emotional health. I don't journal daily because I don't have enough to say every day, but I do something similar called "writing therapy", especially when I'm feeling emotionally stuck. I find bad emotions to only be bothersome because they are inside and unprocessed. Externalizing emotions onto a physical page (not digital!) helps me process them. The physic…

Forgetting is as good as journaling.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#17

Post by wenc »

sdze wrote: post #16
wenc wrote: post #6

Journaling is actually a great way of promoting mental and emotional health. I don't journal daily because I don't have enough to say every day, but I do something similar called "writing therapy", especially when I'm feeling emotionally stuck. I find bad emotions to only be bothersome because they are inside and unprocessed. Externalizing emotions onto a physical page (not digital!) helps me process them. The physic…

Forgetting is as good as journaling.

Ah, if only my brain would let me selectively forget!

Journaling is actually a way to forget as long as one throws out what one writes and never revisit (which I never do). It works like an accelerated Ebbinghaus curve.

That said, I suspect forgetful people are often less emotionally burdened.

Similar to how heavy sleepers tend not to be grumpy people because nothing prevents them from having a good night's sleep.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#19

Post by spoonjim »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #18
spoonjim wrote: post #8

Find a lot of people I know living what I tend to consider an overexamined life.

What are the effects, in your opinion, of an overexamined life?

Anxiety, dissatisfaction, relentless comparison of oneself with others, etc.

Re: How I finally get daily journaling done with a workflow on my iPhone

#20

Post by jl6 »

spoonjim wrote: post #8

Find a lot of people I know living what I tend to consider an overexamined life.

There’s certainly a public form of journaling that happens on social media that seems to start with good intentions but then descends into self-diagnosis.

In terms of private journaling - well, it’s private, so hard to draw any general conclusions, but I tend to think that if you’re spending more than half an hour each day writing about yourself then you might have a problem.

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