As the year winds down and we all start thinking of quarterly plans etc. how are you journaling and keeping track of things? I’ve been using a mix of Day one, morning pages, theme system journal and obsidian daily notes and it’s too many things - I’m thinking I’ll lock down on Theme System as analog unwinding, and Day One for pictures and weekly review/summaries.
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Obsidian daily notes work for me with my simple needs. It is very flexible and can be moded into my specific needs (which are many text based as I rarely insert photos or other type of media into my daily journal)
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I want to love daily notes in Obsidian (or elsewhere) because it seems like all the cool kids are doing it, but it has never stuck for me. The appeal of paper and pen is just too strong.
On the other hand, paper and pen are really bad for portability and searching, though I love the act of flipping back through and reading random pages. I always re-discover some new idea or thought I want to explore, and digital journaling just doesn’t have that same feeling.
What I’ve settled on for 2023 (at least for now) is a kind of hybrid model, where I’ll do daily journaling and notes in a bullet-journal-ish format, then transfer ideas and tasks into a digital notes app or to-do list where it’s applicable. Extra work maybe, but I think it will have some benefits for me, and it fits my opposing personality quirks as well as anything can be expected to.
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Combination of Day One for a permanent archive, and Obsidian daily notes for ephemera.
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Keep It v2 journal folder. Weekly appointments and ephemeral into Jibun Techo Biz paper planner.
I’ve been keeping basically daily long form text notes since 2021. Someday I’ll transcribe my Franklin planner pdf’s I’ve kept for 2019 and Jan-July 2020. Aug-Dec 2020 already done.
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paper notebooks…I can’t let them go. Then I scan them in an archive, and when I feel like it type them in Obsidian for tagging and linking. I know it seems like more work that way…but my notebooks are the main vehicle for my artwork and thoughts.
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I finally bought into Day One. I want to love paper journaling, but I usually don’t use my office later into the evening when I want to write out more. The rest of the house is a whirlwind of kids that I’ve given up on ever having a flat surface to write on.
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I’ve settled on Apple Notes for my journaling needs after trying all sorts of various medium over the years. I’ve truly covered all the bases: paper, then over to Evernote, then iPad with a Pencil in Good notes and forwarding my handwritten notes to Evernote, then I tried out Day One, then went back to typing them in Evernote, ha ha. Now it’s been Apple Notes for the last few weeks and so far it’s been a nice experience.
One thing that hasn’t changed in a decade: I’ve obsessively carried a Field Notes pocket notebook and a pen every day of that decade and I’ve used them to write all sorts of bullet point-style observations as I go about my day. I’ve got drawerfuls of used notebooks. I needed 3 moving boxes (16”× 12” x 12”) to gather them all up when I moved last year!
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For me it’s an evolution of the system I’ve had in place for a couple years:
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A Shortcut asks a few prompts, the first one being longer (and therefore sometimes I trigger the action from Drafts, after typing it);
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The text and numbers I input in the previous steps are combined with a few data points from Streaks;
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Everything is saved into Day One and in AirTable, which for me is good for seeing trends.
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I use Obsidian daily notes for work stuff. Day One for my personal journal. I have over 10 years of journal entries in Day One and I still think it is the best tool for my personal journal.
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I plan to continue using Obsidian. In the last few months I have transitioned from writing in GoodNotes and converting to text to save in Obsidian, to typing directly into Obsidian. Most of my journaling is my thoughts and working out problems, I keep a separate day log where I record what I do each day. Austin Kleon has some pretty good suggestions about journaling and log books
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For several years I was using Scrivener exclusively but started looking for other ways after it seemed like scrivener was languishing a bit development wise.
So I ran across Obsidian and moved all my Scrivener journal entries over to it pretty easily as most were just plain-text. I converted them to markup. But eventually ran across IA Writer which I have bought into and really like. It’s still mark-up based editing which is fine for my own personal needs…
Both Obsidian and IA Writer are really quite good for journaling and so forth. Both of them I had setup using GitHub as my storage back-end for anything I wrote. With the iPad being my primary platform for this (but also using a Mac periodically), I have to use Working Copy on the IPad because of the architecture for files there (not needed on the Mac in the same way - but I do use a Git client there to make things easy).
IA Writer is a well polished app for either Mac or iPad in my opinion.
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Does GitHub offer a reasonable assurance of privacy?
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This may also qualify as a contrary MPU opinion but I’m likely long to land on … OneNote! (gasp! horror!)
I have to use Windows at work and I don’t want to keep switching between apps and I can segregate Work from Personal with OneNote.
It has a mobile version that is okay for my simple needs.
Plus, having one place to go for everything is comforting.
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Gang,
These are all good options. Reading Chris Bailey’s book inspired me to try paper-journaling only for a few weeks and it failed miserably. I love Day One so much. If you use anything digital, look for end-to-end encryption if you can.
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This may also qualify as a contrary MPU opinion but I’m likely long to land on … OneNote! (gasp! horror!)
Easy fella.
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Devonthink, creating a daily note.
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I’ll be using Day One for unstructured journaling, and the Cortex Theme Journal for long-term, “going in the right direction” tracking.
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Bear. Love this app. Put everything in there.
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I use Day One for journaling but honestly i haven’t found a great way to “review” my entries, or build insights from my previous entries
Kim
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