[ChuckMcM]

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (which are not 'the new thing').

My favorite example is for this is Evernote, which I know a lot of people tried and never got anywhere with. If you don't have the habit of just sticking stuff in Evernote, stuff won't be there when you are looking for it, and your habit of using it will never develop because there is no "reward" for using it. And few people have the stamina to force themselves to use something long enough for the habit to kick in.

That is why businesses, apps, and others need to have some mechanism that helps remind you for at least a month to repeatedly use the product, in order to train your subconscious in its availability. And it is why customer acquisition is so hard.

[WA]

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it.

Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed.

So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out of the system and the urge fades. And there's clearly no expectation for my thoughts to go anywhere. It's written for an audience of one.

[zer0th]

Some years ago I came up with a system which I still use extensively. I added these lines to my .bashrc file:

  log(){
  pushd ~/logs;
  echo >> $*;
  date >> $*;
  cat >> $*;
  } 

So whenever I have a piece of information that I'd like to keep - a thought on a project, a word from a foreign language I am learning, ideas for christmas gifts, some bash-fu and so on... - I fire up a terminal (mod+return, in my case) and enter

  log filename

Now I can type down that piece of information right away. File names could be "english" (for vocab) or "xmas" (for gifts) or the name of a project. So either the file already exists and I thus add to it or a new file is created instantly.

It is super quick and non-distracting (i.e. I don't 'accidentally' get carried away by looking at previous thoughts or tweaking the config of a journal application etc.) What's more I find it very convenient that the function automatically adds the current date to each entry.

Btw, I've got another function called "show" which I can call whenever I feel like just briefly skimming through a file

  show(){
  cat ~/logs/$*;
  }

For my daily todo list I enjoy abusing markdown syntax. I do this because syntax highlighting makes it easier to quickly scan through the files. (I use gedit with the monokai theme)

So at the beginning the list looks something likes this:

Task 1

Task 2

<!-- some details on task 2 -->

Task3

Task4

<!-- some details on task 4 -->

(comments turn gray so that actual tasks stand out)

Whenever I begin a task I place a "-" in front of its line. Now I see this red minus and thus know that I have started a task that needs to be completed. When I've finished the task I replace the - with a # and now the whole line turns blue. I've line numbers enabled in gedit so when I want to change the status of an item I simply hit ctrl+i and enter the corresponding line number. Some tasks occur daily, at least for a while. In that case I revisit a task's line again at the end of the day and remove the "#". Similarly, when I want to delete an unnecessary task I go to its line and hit ctrl+d and thus delete it. It is super primitive but I like it. ;)

[melvinmt]

> So either the file already exists and I thus add to it or a new file is created instantly.

If you want the same thing but want to do it in an app instead of manually in the terminal you should check out Notational Velocity (http://notational.net).

[tiatia]

Looks interesting.

But only MacOS? No Linux?

Encrypted database? I once tried a password keeper. I think it was called xpassword or something like that. After having a corrupted database twice within days, I pass.

I you want privacy your HDD should be encrypted anyway.

[ikurei]

nvpy is a functional but admitedly very ugly linux clone. Both can use Simplenote, which works similarly if you're fine with a webapp.

For the windows crowd there is the also ugly-but-functional ResophNotes.

[melvinmt]

Encryption is optional. Online syncing (w/ Simplenote) is optional.

[subatomic]

In the same vein, I have various org-mode files that I can switch buffer to whenever a thought needs to be noted. org-twbs outputs a nice html rendering with a couple of keystrokes.

[anon4]

You can replace cat in show() with tail -n +0 which will also output each file's name as a heading.

[Marcus316]

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it.

I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed is planted.

I almost didn't post this reply, either.

[soylentcola]

Fellow comment discarder here. You wouldn't guess by some of the long-winded replies I've made across various sites but that's a big part of it I think. I often write comments as if I'm having a conversation in my head so there's not a clear structure like you'd find in an essay or "proper" written piece. Then I start thinking of all the ways someone could miss the point and end up rambling.

See? Almost doing it now.

[scruple]

Yeah. I find that I usually don't submit my comments (despite writing them out and over-editing them, typically in a JOURNAL.TXT style file, as well) because I start thinking about how they'll be perceived or interpreted, how they'll be judged. Which is also essentially why I've been 'shy' my entire life around strangers. That and I genuinely feel like 90% of the time I'm not adding much substance to the topics (which is exacerbated on HN).

[scholia]

As Clive James once said, "No amount of careful writing can overcome careless reading" ;-)

[CaptSpify]

You might enjoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859383

[WA]

I'm glad you posted :) I also use it as a devlog. If I want to remember some commands for example. Sometimes, I even plan entire days in my JOURNAL.TXT. For longer thoughts, I use a journaling app.

But the nice thing about a textfile is: You can search in it very easily, you can make backups, and there's never any regret for having written something in it.

[mercer]

I can strongly recommend Notation Velocity for these use cases (or rather, nvALT[1]). It's perfect for creating massive amounts of short snippets, stores them as plain text files, has a pretty novel full-text search and navigation interface (using basic vim bindings even!), and a whole bunch of other features that doesn't clutter things up (markdown, for one, as well as basic wiki-like linking between notes).

My current NV 'library' contains more than 1600 files, ranging from command snippets to journal entries to on-the-go wifi passwords to project meeting notes and lists and whatnot. On top of that I have two separate libraries that contain more sensitive data.

Oh, and using Dropbox or the like, you can sync the notes between computers, and with SimpleNote (as well as some other apps) you can access all of it on your mobile device.

[1]: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

[Terr_]

I'm more of the "edit it 30 times in the next 15 minutes" persuasion. Not because I post quickly, but because there's always something else I think I need to tweak.

[Raphmedia]

Start a blog! It's so easy those days. Most even have mobile apps so you can write blog posts on the go!

[WA]

I'm actually about to do this. I have a bunch of first posts so far. But with a blog, the expectation is very similar: If I put in the effort to write (elaborate) blog posts, I expect some kind of return (views, maybe even comments).

I don't want to put private thoughts in my blog. And not all thoughts are thought through.

I want to use this blog as a recycling container for comments and ideas I post in communities. But it's far less personal than my journal.

[Tyr42]

I dunno, I have a blog, but I have no stats and no comment box, and I'm pretty sure my most frequent reader is myself.

But it really does help to write down all the things, even if the only audience is future-you.

[WA]

future-you, I like this. I recently stumbled upon futureme.org It's a service you can use to send yourself an email in, say, 5 years. Around christmas, I wrote myself an email* to read in 10 years. There's something quite intriguing about making a bunch of predictions.

[*]: That email actually only contains a sentence: "Hey, here's something you need to read today. Search your journal for $RANDOM_UNIQUE_STRING and you'll find an entry written 10 years ago for you by your former self."

Do you put in any effort to make it readable for others? I imagine this is a significant part of blogging.

[stevesearer]

My personal blog gets very little traffic but I love going back and reading my old posts from 10 years ago. To me it is a very similar behavior to looking back at old photos I have taken.

Posts don't have to be well-written to mean something in the future in the same way that mediocre photos can carry quite a bit of feeling and emotion when you look at them after some years.

[Raphmedia]

Some systems allow you to have user groups and to limit your posts to those groups.

Make a group "private thoughts" and only put yourself and your mom/wife/cats in it.

[SeeDave]

Twitter is an interesting product. Many "users" of Twitter consume tweets second-hand via the news, rather than their website or app.

Hope your JOURNAL.TXT serves you well. I actually have a private sub-reddit that I use for similar purposes :)

[slavik81]

> Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed.

That's funny. I chose Twitter for that purpose specifically because I had no followers.

[shostack]

There's also the carrot vs. stick approach for the games industry.

I'm proud to say that I appear to have kicked my Clash of Clans habit (which I realized I'd logged into at least 1-2x daily for a couple years straight). However the notion that I'd lose a ton of progress in my ranking, all my saved up resources, etc. was a huge barrier while I still had it in my mind that I'd continue playing it.

When I crossed the threshold of internalizing that worrying about making up that progress in the future was futile since I wouldn't pick it up again, things got a lot easier

[mmatants]

Feels like for institutional tools (where end users are mandated to just use that one system) it's not even the retention that is the problem.

I would generalize it (perhaps ad absurdum) instead as: do not underestimate costs of user onboarding (in whichever shape or form).

I wonder if developing a competitive replacement app actually involves replicating legacy UI. As wasteful as that may seem. And only after that hurdle is nullified, there will be a chance to gradually wean users towards a new experience pattern.