[satysin]

I started journaling in November 2019 using the Day One app on Mac. I haven’t missed a day. That’s 1273 days of consecutive journaling.

Has it changed me? Not really. It’s nice to look back and see what I wrote or pictures I took but that by itself isn't life changing.

Why do I still continue to do it then? Mostly as I developed the habit and it’s automatic now. Every morning I make a new entry for the day when I get on the computer then I finish every day writing in it, adding pictures etc.

It’s a nice way to clear out my brain at the end of the day. I guess in some way maybe it helps me organise my thoughts at the end of the day. Also planning the next day (or few days) is quite helpful to do in the evening vs in the morning for the day ahead.

Having said all that I started journaling at an amazing time. I captured the few months building up to the pandemic and reading back on my entries in the first half of 2020 is pretty wild. For a while I captured headlines and data on cases and deaths which are quite shocking to read with hindsight.

The lockdowns are quite interesting too. I can see when I started to struggle with different aspects of the pandemic and how I managed those depressive episodes.

So while it hasn’t changed my life I would probably say it does give me something to look at and learn from to hopefully be better in the future. I guess you could argue that is a change although not quite what people generally mean when talking about life changing habits.

My guess is you're asking if I feel journalling is worth it as you're interested in doing it? I would say yes. Don't do it expecting to change your life but it something I would suggest pretty much everyone do.

Looking back on happier or sadder times can be quite powerful in helping deal with any struggles of today. I have had a few health issues the past few years and being able to look back gives me a lot of positive mental energy when dealing with the next thing to come along. I can read and feel again how I felt during the harder times and track my progress even when things got harder for a while. This gives me the hope I often need when struggling in the present.

[rwl4]

Hey there, fellow journaler! The way you describe it, you could be me. I also use DayOne. I started about a month after you and am on day 1,236. TBH, I think the streak feature is very motivating.

I say the same exact things to others about my experience. I love that it captures a snapshot of my life a truly unique period in US history. It captures my adventures jogging through the center of NYC busy streets during the lockdown, and all sorts of other adventures. I can tell you in reasonable detail every single notable thing about my last holiday trip, or any other place I've been.

I've also become the de-facto historian in my household. When my wife remembers something and wants to know a detail about it, I'm usually able to give at least a general summary of the experience.

In order to get over any resistance, I made a deal with myself that I could put as little or as much in as I want, and that I wouldn't be too personal. I guess you could say it's somewhat of an everyday travelog. It's the first time in my life that I actually carried through with journalling.

I've also been able to pick out trends when I compare the data on my Whoop vs activities and meals on a certain day. I don't always capture my meals, but I do often enough that it provides help when I'm trying to find a trend.

Here's a really strange random trend I discovered: On nights where I eat burrito bowls from Chipotle, I get measurably more deep and REM sleep.

I could go on all day about the ways my journal has been useful. I'll leave it there.

Edit: Just for fun, I send a link to this thread to my wife. She mistook your post as being from me at first. LOL

[satysin]

Hello! I can relate and agree to everything you said. Especially the "Family historian". When my family all got together last summer for the first time since 2019 I lost track of the times I looked up things in my journal when the conversation went to "do you remember when ... happened?". I am originally from the UK so I also captured a lot of the Brexit stuff that happened from the start of 2020. Honestly it is crazy how much happened and that I captured so much of it.

Just like you this was the first time I stuck with journalling and to be honest I am not sure why it worked this time but not others. Perhaps maturity? :D Or perhaps it is the streak feature which is motivating like you said. I also went easy on myself not setting any hard-to-achieve goal of N words per day. While most days I write quite a detailed entry there are a few days where I only wrote two or three sentences as I wasn't feeling it for whatever reason.

You make an excellent point regarding trends that I totally forgot to mention when posting earlier. I too have found quite a few trends, almost all health (or wellbeing) related. Things like how much better I felt on the days I did intermittent fasting. Or that having my coffee black first thing was much easier on my stomach than with milk (although I'm not lactose intolerant it certainly upsets my stomach if I have it in the first hour or two after waking up for reasons unknown).

These trends have led me to making changes that one could argue have been life changing as they have given me more energy, mental clarity or resolved long standing annoyances that I couldn't pin point the origin of.

Sitting here thinking about journalling now I feel perhaps my initial call that it isn't really life changing is perhaps not quite true. At least not totally. There are certainly a few small changes I have made that have improved my quality of life quite a bit and this has prompted me to add a todo for tomorrow morning to do a bit of analysis to see if there are any other trends I may have missed.

A nice thing about Day One is the tags/hashtags support. I started adding a bunch to entries almost every day to track things so sorting my entries is reasonably efficient.

One last thing I wanted to mention is didn't bother with the template feature to begin with but I set some up a while back to prompt me to capture things like when I ate, how much exercise I did, how I felt that day, how well I slept, etc. It is amusing to look back and know exactly what I ate on some random day and especially helpful when you identify otherwise random things like your burrito bowl and quality of sleep!