| Some observations I'd like to share based on my experience journalling for the last 5 years. * Brevity is important. With journalling, it is very tempting to go off on a rant. Feels good at the time but its usefulness declines rapidly with time. Short notes that encompass your state of mind or emotions or feelings with some context and timestamps go up in personal value with passage of time. I keep details and rants in my separate running log files. * Summarize regularly. Every once a few months when you have down time, summarize your notes and make observations. My favorite bit is to find an old note with a sidenote/annotation and see how I look at the same things differently or still have the same mindset. * Use timestamps. I have settled for a yyyymmdd-topic-title.txt for filenames. Contents in each file are stamped [yyyy-mm-dd] with optional time of the day. I have under 50 such files and they seem to encompass all facets of my life that I journal. * Use plain text. Everything else will go away. I now use notational velocity/nvAlt with simplenotes sync for my topic wise notes (I also check in these files into a separate git repo folder for backup). I keep Deep insights and running lists in that git repo's wiki. I've recently also started keeping and checking in monthly yyyy-MMM.md files for a running log of thoughts. Helps maintaining a timeline to find recurring patterns. If some topic becomes worthy enough for sharing via a blog post, it gets its own markdown file that I can edit and customize for publishing. * Reduce friction. I think this was the big one to overcome. By the time I would get to writing, I'd lose perspective or details to write. I now use a throwaway app (google keep) to write down my reaction, emotions or interesting facts as close to encountering them as possible. Then I can expand on them or discard them when I get time. |
I feel that this runs counter to what a journal is. Wouldn't the value of the journal be to record what you felt at that moment of time?