[hypertexthero]

Create a folder on your computer or get a sturdy box made of good cardboard with a lid. Name the folder “Process”. Write the word “Process” on the box.

While working, occasionally take photos or screenshots of what you are doing showing your workspace, the computer desktop, the desk with pencils and papers and cables everywhere, the wall or piece of string with notes. Show the messy process of creating something.

Type notes on text files and save them with a name like yyyy-mm-dd-note-title.txt. Write notes on bits of paper and notebooks and journals with pencils and pens that you keep all around the places you spend most of your time in, including within arms-reach of where you sleep.

Practice writing down notes on a piece of paper in the dark, so you can do so when waking up in the night, before daybreak, to jot down thoughts and ideas from dreams.

Record messages and melodies using your pocket computer and remember to save these in your Process folder, too. You are looking for your voice.

Put these digital and physical notes in the Process folder and in the Process box.

Thank yourself later, in years to come.

You are what you observed. Experiences, memories, stories to be told. Put your marker on the map in time, that others may find and learn from.

[logifail]

> Practice writing down notes on a piece of paper in the dark > Thank yourself later, in years to come

I only found out about this many decades after it happened, but on the occasion of my grandfather's 60th birthday, way back in 1980-ish, my mother presented with him a large bound empty notebook labelled with his name, and explained that the purpose of the gift was that he was to start making notes about his life.

It sounds incredible, but he started writing.

All kinds of (what must have seemed) completely inconsequential stuff, what he remembered about the home he grew up in, the schools he went to, the friends he'd had, the whole nine yards.

He died not that many years later.

Note to everyone who's read this far: grab the chance to do this - either as the one writing, or the one who gifts the notebook! - while you have the chance.

"Tempus fugit" and all that.

[hypertexthero]

Thank you for this idea.

I’ve given notebooks to my mom to encourage her to write, but don’t think I ever wrote her name on the cover. The next one will have it.

Also, consider recording a conversation between you and your loved one with the voice recorder on your phone. I have one brief recording of my dad’s voice in an old VHS tape that I burned to DVD and copied to the computer, and that’s it.

Memories.

Often the most powerful objects in films, to me, are photographs. Like the polaroids in Thelma and Louise and both Blade Runners.

Also old school VHS footage, like in Bassackwards by Kurt Vile — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOFWHty4XFQ — and What About That Day by Jenny O. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxCBnKu5jyk

[scarface_74]

My dad is 80 years old and he loves playing the piano and now the keyboard. He never learned how to read music and he plays by ear. He mostly plays and sings Motown classics. I’ve captured a few video clips of his playing and singing when I go back home.

I back up all of my videos and pictures to iCloud, OneDrive, Google Photos and Amazon Drive (pictures only).

As far as my own writing, my wife and I are what I call “hybrid digital nomads and snowbirders”. I have a blog over at micro.blog where I write about our journey.

[brnt]

Tried it with my parents, not unexpectedly did they not want to partake in such overly personal tomfoolery.

Not all people, perhaps not even most, enjoy creating.

[XorNot]

I've been trying to write a response to this in a couple of tries, and the best I've got is: but also don't feel beholden to this.

The past isn't always a fun place to go visit, even if it's not traumatic. Who you were and who you are are different people, and getting dragged back to that old self can feel suffocating rather then fun.

Strictly technical records? Great. Everything? Even if you want to keep it, you may find you don't like revisiting it. I have zip files which exist because I don't quite want to destroy old records entirely, but I certainly don't want to actually scroll into photos from 10 years ago.

[crucialfelix]

We should all realize that AI systems will be able to read and learn from journals and logs.

It could help me to get guidance on current projects (learn from past mistakes and ineffective work patterns).

It could help others when there are many archives like this, to learn from others success and failures.

We all become training data for the future

[dwaltrip]

What have you found to be most valuable / meaningful years later?

[cloths]

Yeah I also want to know this, I used to write diaries for years and cherish it, thought I would look back my life or extract something meaningful out of it, turns out I very rarely look at it.

Same goes to old project archives, emails, I have both HDD and S3 Glacier for them, but so far I have never looked at them at all, for 10 years, And I doubt I will look at them in another 10 years.

I am beginning to thinking Letting past go and You aren't gonna need it philosophy towards such things

[ryl00]

I'm 52 years old, and I have diaries stretching back to 1980 (when I was all of 9 years old!). Over the years I gradually worked on transcribing them from handwriting to comupter text, and that's made them much more accessible in the present day. E.g., when my father passed away in 2020, it was so easy to just search for "Dad" and revisit long-ago snippets from the past. (And to sadly realize that I'd taken his presence for granted over the years.)

I still regret my roughly ten-year diary hiatus from 1985-1995, losing the bulk of my formative high school/college years in the process. Because as I've grown older, and those memories become more and more distant, I've lost a lot of the day-to-day detail, trivial though it may have been, of my past.

[crucialfelix]

I've been planning to scan my old journals. Waiting for OCR to comprehend my messy writing. Now I think I will read them out loud, record it, speech to text.