Tell me how you use DayOne please

I have flirted with canceling my sub to DayOne for a year now. I am not a “journaler” but the way DayOne is a repository for “collecting daily things” has always intrigued me. I have most recently started using it as repository for handwritten ideas, brainstorming from GoodNotes exported pdfs.

If you journal with DayOne, tell me about your workflow. If not, how do you use DayOne?

Thanks!

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Day One is my go to journal-ing app for one reason: “On This Day”.

I haven’t found any other piece of software that works as well as this does for me (and works well with media files). I could hack something together in Obsidian, or what not, but it doesn’t offer the flexibility of entry, and media management that Day One does.

How do I use it?

  1. I copy any thoughts I have down into it. I carry Field Notes around, and will write in them pretty regularly. Any thoughts I have in there, I type into Day One.
  2. Every Friday I go through Apple Photos and look for anything memorable that we did. If I feel like there is a memory in there that I want to remember, I will throw the photo/videos into Day One and write a bit about it.
  3. Every month I write an evaluation of how I spent my time. I capture any gratitude, wins, failures, media consumption, books read, overall habit progress, time tracked from Timing, etc… It all goes into here.
  4. I have an encouragement journal that I use to capture any nice note or card that I receive from people.
  5. I have a “Twitter” journal where I post any reaction I have to things online. I don’t use social media really anymore, so this serves as a cathartic outlet for me.

Then the nice part about this is that I can look periodically at “On This Day” and be reminded about all kinds of regular things that happened throughout the past years. :blush:

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I am not a journaler in the verbative sense but do (auto) import a calendar dump, (meeting) notes, itineraries, locations, favs, short restaurant reviews, key events, people I have met, and various (back) links, and other things memorable into Day One.

A lot of it starts its life in Drafts, Email, Fantastical, Cardhop, LinkedIn, Tripadvisor, Brave, Readwise, Instapaper, Tripit, Photos or my ScanSnap scanner

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I have 2 journals. Daily for interstitial journalling to record what I’m doing and how it’s going. I record stuff whenever I switch tasks and find it really helpful to properly close open loops in my head.

I have a normal journal where I record thoughts from the day and again to close open loops in my thinking.

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DayOne is my diary. I put my unfiltered thoughts in there and review them at least once a week if not more often. I have 2 types of entries, 1 is just a text entry with my thoughts. The other is a photo with my description of what was going on and how I felt about it. Since I’ve been doing this pretty regularly now for over 10 years, it is an amazing tool to see how much has changed and how different I think and feel.

I think the key is to have a tool that makes it easy to capture your thoughts and also keep it safe. DayOne is good at both of those things.

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I use the widget and respond to the daily prompts.
I note memories and significant thoughts that I want to pass on to my sons. I have been particularly reflective since the passing of several family members and felt loss of family knowledge.
I note compliments.
I note reminders to myself.
I will sometimes add recordings and transcripts from Just Press Record.
I like that Day One has had to option to print into a book.

Day One is my where I journal my life. Often the writing is not directly in the Day One app but it does store my memories like an archive.

The ‘One This Day’ feature makes it super seamless to add entires related to meetings or pictures and videos taken that day,

Also, I use Craft for all my note-taking and at the end of a day of interstitial journaling, the entry seamlessly can be exported into Day One with 1 click in Craft. This ensures the archiving process is complete.