I just moved to a new country for the first time, and I've been doing a micro journal every day. Basically, I write 3-5 sentences capturing the most meaningful moments of the day. I've been doing this for two months now, and I've already found some benefits--both in gaining equilibrium and dialing up key details in sequence when necessary (i.e., when exactly did I start that home renovation project?). I'm lucky to be…
My wife and I have been keeping a daily journal since our first child was born in 2014 - about 100 - 200 words a day. (And before that i’d been doing it just for myself since 2006.) Besides just having it to go back to and read, something I’m really excited about is llm context windows getting large enough that I can feed the whole thing in (it’s about 1.5 million words) and ask questions. grep only goes so far.
Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
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Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#42In 2016 I created a telegram bot to make it super easy for me to keep daily diary, and I still use it now: https://t.me/DaytobaseBot Similar to other folks in the thread, I sometimes go back to old entries and reflect on how my life has changed. I find that my memory constantly simplifies and idealizes the past, and getting to see how it really felt day to day is very helpful.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#43In 2016 I created a telegram bot to make it super easy for me to keep daily diary, and I still use it now: https://t.me/DaytobaseBot Similar to other folks in the thread, I sometimes go back to old entries and reflect on how my life has changed. I find that my memory constantly simplifies and idealizes the past, and getting to see how it really felt day to day is very helpful.
I narrate each day the following morning, and aslo store random pieces of information (story of a debugging session, opinions on books I read or movies I watch, etc.)
I have missed almost zero days since the beginning. One of the most useful feature of this system is to store things people that I meet rarely, tell me. When I meet them again, years later, I can pick up the conversation where it was. Other than that, I rarely go back to read old entries.
I sometimes wonder what use AI could make of this.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#44Alzheimer's has to be one of the worst. I do find euthanasia to be a slippery slope[0], but I'll make an exception for Alzheimer's. 0: picture an understaffed and underfunded hospital, with a single nurse walking around calmingly asking anyone if they want it to end
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#45It’s not clear to me how such a thing can be achieved. They talk about a “memory calendar” and “tags”. Is it like, every day, stop for a minute and “commit” a single word to that day? Then revise the previous ones hoping that they stuck in memory?
I set up a reminder everyday to record my mood, select the activities I'm tracking and write a few words. It takes less than a minute.
It gives me weekly, monthly and yearly reports that are fun to see and sometimes insightful as it shows correlations between activities and mood levels.
It also randomly shows me journal entries from 6 months, one year and 2 years ago. It's a reminder to reflect on where I was in my life and what I've achieve, or not achieved in that time.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We afford old people in their last days less compassion than a dog. I look forward to the day when we look back at this as a moral outrage. Maybe religious groups/political parties/lobbies etc; if they are against abortion, they will definitely be against ending grandma (who doesn't know who you or your grandpa are, but let's not mention that); religious people see it as suicide and murder, so off to hell with 2+ p…
Ironically, there's a large overlap between those people and people who support capital punishment.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#47> Yet, I can see no advantage. The great benefit of this process, even as I struggle with it, is it gives me a rounded view of my life.
Absolutely, 10000%. Spotting patterns (on a micro and macro scale, "outside" and "inside") is one of the most useful skills I'm getting out of this. I have 1-2 years of journals from the time I was 9-11 years old buried somewhere in a basement 3000km from where I live at the moment. I'm curious to see what I can learn from them after not having seen them for almost 25 years.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#48Alzheimer's has to be one of the worst. I do find euthanasia to be a slippery slope[0], but I'll make an exception for Alzheimer's. 0: picture an understaffed and underfunded hospital, with a single nurse walking around calmingly asking anyone if they want it to end
Making an exception for X might just indicate an ignorance of Y and Z and others.
Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#49Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, there's a large overlap between those people and people who support capital punishment.
I don't see it as ironic at all. One way anthropologists studying a society can gauge what that society values is to look at the punishments applied for various transgressions. There are severe consequences for transgressions against things that a society values highly. Thus if a society values each human life as the most precious component of their society, then it is not unreasonable if that society places the most…