I find journaling indispensable
jborichevskiy.com
jborichevskiy.com
Posting it here in case it's helpful for anyone who wants some structure around the journaling:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AW0xjWJKcxiqXkn72nYIe3pH...
How do you do it? How to you get past the self-editing to suppress embarrassing thoughts? You are getting naked in front of everyone!
I do something similar in the evening to relax before sleep, albeit more freestyle and I write it down on paper, but doing it at the start of day sounds like a great way to set the mood, going to adopt it.
My template is more focused on being a daily questionnaire rather than a journal, but it can do both. I've done 2 analyses so far, one qualitative (about what made me most relaxed) and one quantitative (my energy levels currently correlate for 0.66 with my happiness and my stress doesn't correlate with either of them).
However, now that I've read this blog post, I think that I should create a seperate place somewhere to write journal articles (probably just TiddlyWiki as well).
My template: https://imgur.com/a/mJ8nkio
I always tried to use fields, but for some things I used a scratchpad tiddler called StoreDailyQuestionaireData. If I would use the same in those case, then I'd get rendering issues.
! My happiness levels are
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="1"> abysmal low</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="2"> very low</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="3"> low</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="4"> medium</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="5"> high</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="6"> very high</$radio>
<$radio field="q-happiness-levels" value="7"> extremely high</$radio>
! I slept
<p class="sleep-time-interval">Time Interval: <$view field=sleep-time-interval_value/> <$edit-text tiddler="StoreDailyQuestionnaireData" field="sleep-time-interval_value"/> <$button><$action-setfield $field=sleep-time-interval_value $value={{StoreDailyQuestionnaireData!!sleep-time-interval_value}} /><$action-setfield $tiddler="StoreDailyQuestionnaireData" $field="sleep-time-interval_value" $value="" /> change sleep-time-interval</$button> <span class="subtitle"> (E.g. format: 23:49 - 03:57, 06:37 - 10:47)</span></p>
! How many cups coffee did you drink?
<$range field="coffee-amount" min="0" max="10" default="0" increment="1"/> <$transclude field="coffee-amount" />Every day I sat to write down another entry, and when looking at a few previous notes (or at “this day 1 year/2 years ago”, which is a feature of many journaling apps), the bad days seemed “normal”, because, well, there weren’t many good days. I believe this somehow helped me stay in a depressed state, helped perpetuate the feeling of normality of something that should be considered abnormal.
I am feeling better nowadays and consider getting back into journaling, but I am wary of this unwanted normalization possibility. It’d be great to have some sort of a basis to compare days to. Or maybe this is a bad idea.
Journaling is supposed to make you more self reflective, to increase meta attention. It definitely does that, but it’s harder for some people.
I also believe that, just like memories change when you recall them, writing down your thoughts will change them. That change isn't necessarily positive when you're depressed. Every thought will be inevitably filtered through the lens of apathy.
My comment was one sided in a sense that journaling also helped me notice this condition in a long term. Eventually, at least. Also, I think those records might become valuable in the future.
Your “lens of apathy” statement really hit home for me. I do feel this strongly when reading journal entries from years ago. It all seems so... unimportant, so mundane, even thought I might’ve had very strong feelings at the moment. Not sure if you meant this type of thing.
It would be good to be able to capture emotions better. Maybe my writing is just not as good. Maybe I should try writing poetry :-)
I've been writing poetry similarly to the way journals are discussed here. Your first post resonated with me -- I'd use poems to converse with my conflicted self; give the emotions a free hand to write things that may be painful to read later; get it out of my head -- and I'd encourage you to return to writing (or poetry!) because distance brings freshness.
"When the soul wanes the form appears." - Charles Bukowski
Reading your comment also made me think about how it's harder to write when things are good. Someone else commented about the possibility of writing your thoughts down having an affect on them; I think there's merit to that tied with the power of our thoughts and the reinforcement/feedback that you observed while feeling the opposite.
A reminder to myself, even; consistent writing is as hard as consistent anything else.
I'm curious, and I hope that's okay to ask, but could you share an example of your journal-ish poetry?
Maybe just acting like a child and try to have fun is a better solution.
I destroyed that journal entirely. I can never get it back, and I can not see how I felt 8 years ago on this date, or 16 years ago on new years. It does not matter how I was then. The continuity of it prevented me from feeling I could break with the past.
Woah! That's one hell of a buddhist exercise. Reminds me of those monks that spend days diligently painting complex pictures with colored sand [1] to later destroy it completely.
I hope your break from the past was successful.
I’ve gotten into journaling (though I call it “logging”) as a tool to help me overcome these kinds of issues. Depression is a vicious cycle where you feel like crap, brood on how you feel like crap, do nothing that’s meaningful to you, and then feel like crap because you did nothing that was meaningful for you.
If your journal is just an outlet for this cycle of brooding, it’s part of the problem. If you use it to log information that you can use to “debug yourself”, it can be part of the solution. If I had a paper journal, I would get one with the cover embossed, “NO BROODING”.
I think it led me to discover destructive behaviors in myself, and constructive alternatives to them. I remember a lot of it was about how to talk to strangers, which I find pretty easy now.
It was my favorite thing to do for years. Then I stopped. shrug
Using narrative you can put yourself in a thought loop that prevents you from implementing changes that could improve your depressive condition.
I also remember reading about particular journaling techniques to battle certain mental conditions.
[1] https://medium.com/better-humans/cognitive-journaling-a-syst...
I still have the file, and have continued writing in it just once every few months. I love it. It's basically my life story.
Maybe I should write more. Glad to hear from this post that I'm not the only one who likes it.
I only write in there when I remember, which is usually 1-3 times a year, usually after an important life event - so it's really fun reading back through it...
This got me thinking that people were next. Then I thought: what if it already had happened? What if I've already been planted false memories?
The only time frame in which I can be sure I am who I am is from the time I regain consciousness (wake up) until I lose consciousness (fall asleep). I liked this concept because it freed me from my past and future selves. I am not them.
So, I created a journaling app that uses versions of you instead of dates. This morning, it greeted me with "Good morning, Alexander №10821". I can browse and see what other versions of Alexander (like №9851) were up to. I also understand that tomorrow it's Alexander №10822 who will wake up and not me, so I got to live this day however I like (though as I like the future Alexanders, I'm gonna also contribute to their well-being).
I will make this app public, so if this type of thinking resonates with you, leave your email in the google form I just created. [1] The app will have end-to-end encryption and cost $3/month.
[0] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/meet-two-scientist...
Why does the app need a network connection? Why not just store everything locally?
E.g the simulation argument is another solution. So would cloning be. Or simulation of just an individual. Or we might just fundamentally not understand what gives rise to consciousness - for what we know consciousness may only arise for brief moments punctuated by long periods where we're just acting as automata. Or we might fundamentally not understand the passage of time.
It makes sense for us to act as if consciousness is an ongoing consistent process, because we can't really tell if it is not. The same way as the classical materialist (in the philosophical sense) response to philosophical idealism is to point out that whether or not idealists are right (that we can not trust our senses and our physical reality could just be an illusion) doesn't matter - if we have no practical way to detect it or influence it, we just have to live with it.
Point being that drawing a line between asleep vs not sleep is totally arbitrary, because we can't tell.
I don't see what's privileged about continuity. All of us are pretty different in the evening from in the morning. And in theory you could have been created at noon with a memory of the morning. You might not even exist yet.
pass edit journal/$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
pass git push origin
But I never thought of combining the two to get encrypted files. Very neat.
There is also gopass[1] who is compatible with pass and has a few more nice features like the git auto-sync and templates. `gopass template create journal`
I use the simple Redis data structures to store the data and with a common interface I am able to populate all sorts of different tools for indexing and search.
Then from there I use the following tools...
elasticsearch
https://github.com/blevesearch/bleve
Recently I have been experimenting with...
https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliDB
By maintaining Redis as my interface engine, I can experiment with all sorts of different tools in different programming languages...
Over time I have grown to love Redis as my data store...
Of course I have a simple way of getting the common text files that I write my daily journal in into Redis.
And then from there its just a matter of the common interface into the different indexing / search technologies.
I also keep a paper journal, which has longer term themes and thoughts and planning. This usually ends up being a brain dump of all of the crap that goes around and around, just like in the original article. I take things from here and try to expand on them in the day notes. For the paper journal I use a Cross fountain pen, like the one that Obama had, or often cheap Fountain Pentel pens which Ive used for decades now. The fountain pen I fill with archival quality ink, the stuff that registrars use.
My procedure of late is:
- keyboard shortcut + a snippet of Emacs Lisp to create today's journal entry (e.g. 2019-09-01.org) in a "journal" subdirectory;
- YASnippet to fill out a daily journal template with two-column LaTeX export styling the way I want;
- Write down any dreams I remember in the morning;
- Write down a simple to-do list in an Org table, moving items up and down; rather than TODO states, I put a space between items already done and those remaining; if I don't get everything done, I can strikethrough the item to indicate that;
- Find and copy or type in a quote or a poem for the day (usually at the end of the day);
- Occasionally, paste in a small snippet of code that I wrote or saw that I liked;
- Any interesting things that happened or felt noteworthy that day.
Finally, and this is perhaps one of the more important steps:
- export as LaTeX to PDF, then print, three-hole punch, and stick it in a binder on my desk.
The format and what I put in changes daily and it's kind of neat to see that unfold in the printouts. I find that having the printed journal makes the older entries (each a single page so far) a pleasure to look over and gives me a sense of what my time has been like recently. If it was just on the computer I probably wouldn't ever look at it again, and I wanted something that gave me easy access to the feelings of the recent days that otherwise seem to disappear completely.
https://github.com/synchrony/smsn
(I'm a minor author of the project. It's kind of in a state of disrepair; Josh and I are both working on replacements for it. But it works!)
pass edit journal/$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
pass git push origin
Free editor is quite clean and simple.
[1]: https://medium.com/better-humans/draft-how-to-hack-your-brai...
They key to journalling for me has been 1) consistency and 2) reviewing what was written. The oh-so-obvious secret to consistency is to reduce friction between the thought ('I should write this') and the act. I got rid of my friction by using a separate email account and a dedicated email app with just this account configured on it. And keeping the inbox small is a good incentive to keep reviewing what I write. I take my git repo seriously. I keep reviewing it anytime I get a chance or when I need to refresh my thoughts and memories.
This simple method has worked wonderfully well for more than a year.
I mean, anything that's well formed and won't clash with typical project names is going to work.
Or rely on the file system. `journal/` as the root non-project folder and then `journal/project/sub1/`.
There is something like that in Org though as I just found out.[1]
A key benefit of using a date journal is that many tools (incl. Day One and Dabble.me) have a "remember this day" feature that surfaces entries from the past. While the simple act of writing does clarify one's thinking, I find further benefit from the regular review and opportunity for reflection this sort of feature provides. And while I do sometimes deliberately seek out a particular entry, 90%+ of my review comes automatically from this sort of feature.
For some reason, this all changed when I entered the work world. Perhaps I simply didn't have the time or energy to do it anymore; for some reason, as hectic as college seemed, I sure did have a lot more time and energy than I do now. Some of this must be age, but some of it seems to be me having fallen off the horse and lost the mental muscles. I noticed the same thing in physical form when I fell off the wagon exercise wise a year ago.
Has anyone experienced something similar?
As I've gotten older, I have found that I can do the same work faster just in my head. I've spoken with others who feel along similar lines. I don't feel that I've fallen off a horse, or atrophied any mental muscle. I simply think that journaling served its purpose at the appropriate time, and I have since moved on to other techniques.
I still find that this is not always true with new things that I learn. In contrast to when I was younger, the learning new things part happens less and less frequently, to my chagrin.
What’s the most uncomfortable thing you encountered today?
What’s the most uncomfortable truth you said out loud today?
What did you think about most today?
What did you mentally push aside today instead of thinking it through and openly saying your conclusions?
If there isn’t a tension, a resistant, a sorrow, you didn’t make a break through.
Sounds masochistic. How can you determine whether this is helping or hurting? If you are regularly searching for things to make you sad and tense, you could be conditioning your mind to seek and find those things.
If you’re resisting then it’s counterproductive. Borderline trauma.
But if you’re ready to face it.. that’s therapy.
However, journaling as therapy is not very structured, and there is no compelling reason to continue when the going gets though. I wouldn't recommend it just yet instead of seeing a real, capable therapist.
For some people maybe this works. For others like me this is a sure fire formula to make me drop the habit sooner than later, no matter how motivated I go into it.
If there is resistance, over time my mind will consider if what I'm doing is actually necessary, what are the consequences of fuck this, etc. That's its natural automatic process, which I believe is the healthy state (for myself). I know how to push through, just make it come up with more reasons to continue than to stop, but experience has taught me that when I do that I'm actually slowly hurting myself. I know I can over-exert myself, badly. Because it does not, in fact, get easier (for myself), and my life is not about setting up myself for failure :)
On the other hand, if I formulate the questions as a positive thing, I find I can keep it up for stretches of weeks or months. Even just a simple single thing like "write down 3 things you are grateful about". And I found it has great positive consequences. Evidenced by the fact that I started having to dig my mind to come up with 3 (I try to write genuine non-obvious things--I'm grateful having my limbs but I'm not writing that down each day), and after a while had to stop myself from not writing down 8+ every day. So achievement: more positive thoughts, unlocked :)
I use the hobonichi Techo which is a cool Japanese journal: https://unsharpen.com/paper/hobonichi-techo-cousin/ . The notebook has nice features and some structure to it to keep you interested in the journal. Their 2020 models are dropping soon.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/211.full https://www.additudemag.com/benefits-of-journal-writing-for-...
This has been quite extraordinary, and doesn't take too long. Sadly I'm not motivated enough to write regularly but having at least one day a year when I think about things, is wonderful.
Anecdotally:
A mom of someone with cystic fibrosis traced her child's lung bleeds to exposure to chemicals used in a dark room to develop photographs. They were then able to prevent further bleeds, at least from that source. (IIRC, her child was a teen or young adult taking a class or pursuing a hobby.)
A woman who works at the CDC was undergoing cancer treatment. Her husband took photographs regularly of her arms, I think. Photographic evidence convinced them her symptoms were getting clearly worse. They used this to convince her doctor to change her chemo drug sooner rather than later.
My primary care doc took a big interest in seeing my daily numbers when I mentioned that I'd (systematically) tracked a recent change to my health into a table of readings. If you create a graphical plot of a relevant metric, I bet that'd be of even greater interest to any competent health professional.
IMO, if your doc isn't interested in such data, get another doc.
A simply example: Back in 2008, another era of the Web, I wrote "How Much Do Websites Cost?" For years, this was the most popular thing I had written. It is interesting for me to look back and see which parts of it have gone obsolete. The types of websites being built has changed dramatically, and the focus has shifted to phone apps, but the stuff at the end of the essay, about how to build a startup, and what kind of leadership is needed, remains true.
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/how-much-do-websites-co...
Anyone know what app the author uses, or have any recommendations?
I've been using Joplin a lot lately, but not the encryption feature. I've also been getting back into org-mode and thought about using it for journaling, but I don't think I could access encrypted org notes on my android phone.
I had been using it for several years on my iPhone and Macs, and it’s pretty great.
https://medium.com/hackernoon/the-manager-stew-dd59cd653728
I am still trying to figure out proper structure, right now it's still time based. I have found patterns forming in journaling:
1. Always write it out. Typing is good, however with writing I remember better and it sticks longer. Having a large stack of pocket moleskins has weight I cannot seem to fully describe.
2. The more I write, the more I realize that threads/channels of thought are working on different things continuously.
3. TODO's naturally form. Write them down as they come has serious potential for getting things done. Keep checkmarks and reflect back after some time. Watch for patterns.
4. Rating myself on how I feel personally and professionally daily has lead to some deep discoveries.
5. Letting people know exactly how many days you've been at your job (yes, writing down the number of days since starting on each entry) has interesting side effects in conversations.
My template is writing what happened during my day, event by event, before I go to sleep. More of a narrative than anything
If I feel esoteric that day I write it backwards, recounting events from end of day to start of day
As for permanence, I figure Wordpress will be there long after me. I’ll definitely die before Wordpress does, of that im sure
This hit it home for me.
I started keeping a very factual journal each day.
Every hour or so, I write down where I was and what I did—subjective impressions are optional.
It’s been really helpful in jogging my memory and seeing where my mind was at a few months prior.
I just do it in a note program on my phone, so I can fill it in while walking, in the bathroom, etc.
I tried emotional/confessional journaling for a good few years but I really didn't find it helpful or insightful.
The things that work for me include exploring my surroundings, almost any kind of creative work, napping, and talking to friends/partner.
Uses a plain text file.
I also built a journaling system that works via email and sms to lower the barrier to writing https://somewordsfor.me
Any recommendations for a tool that'll let me heavily tag my entries, and then visualise them as #occurrences vs. time?
Second best would be a good search and JSON or whatever output from it, so that I can do the graphing myself.
My only other 'requirement' would be that it's not some proprietary system, seems silly to trust something like this to someone else's format and disk exclusively.
Still a long way to go, so would appreciate feedback on what direction to go
Chatting with my future self, allows me to assume that most of my worries are lame and realize how those are compromising my behavior.
Also, I do now understand that people around me do speak out their own troubles in the conversations that bored me in the past...
They publicly describe a habit that they claim is useful. To me that implies that they're suggesting others invest time into the habit.
But I've never been compelled by the arguments. I haven't seen someone try to make (even qualitatively) refutable claims. If you don't make refutable claims, how can I experiment in order to see whether the habit makes sense for me?
you need to compare your own self-awareness before and after the experiment. only that matters. you can do a study where you let a number of people start a journal and then measure if they report increased self-awareness. but depending on how self-aware they were before, the change may vary from a lot to no change at all without proving or refuting anything.
I prefer handwritten systems for more long-term goals, daily reflection, and projects. You get a lot more stability and emotional connection to your tasks and thoughts when you write them down in my experience. That's what I want when I'm really planning and thinking about my life. Digital doesn't seem to have the same effect. It's too easy to delete and edit yourself.
If you're really interested, this is what my system looks like. It's a mishmash of the following:
• Pile of Index Cards - I use it as the "single source of truth" for tasks and projects. I don't use the stuff about thoughts and discoveries, but I like having discrete cards I can move around and prioritize for todos.
• GTD (Getting Things Done) - I mainly use the idea that each task should have a clearly defined "next action" or a specific trigger if you're waiting on something. Ensures I'm not subconsciously avoiding a task because it has some undefined prerequisite.
• Bullet Journal - once per week, I populate pages of the days for the week ahead with tasks I expect to do from my index cards. I use that page to notice when I'm pushing tasks back and also to reflect and write down notable events from the day.
• iPhone Notes - I duplicate the task list for the day, and I move one into a "WIP" (work-in-progress) slot. This is the first thing I plan to do. It ensures I'm not trying to multi-task and do too many things at once. Over the course of the day I will peek at that list and move items around or push them back into an "Inbox," which then circles back to the Index Cards at the end of the week. New tasks go in there too. At the end of the week I re-prioritize and throw away any index cards I realize are not necessary or I no longer care about.
It sounds like a lot, but it's actually a reasonably fluid system and I'm fairly happy with it. I refine the bumpy parts when I find they aren't working.
... what do you mean?
It’s just journaling. Try it. Don’t try it.
1. If you journal daily for a year about your short (today-this week), medium (this month-this year), and long (next 10 years-life) term goals, you will a) notice ways in which you could be working toward your goals, b) notice behaviors which are counterproductive to your goals, and c) notice how you feel about the goals you've consciously or unconsciously set for yourself, which will result in adding, removing, or re-prioritizing some goals.
2. If you journal daily for a month about what you're grateful for and something beautiful you experience each day, you'll notice what a rich life you have and experience a slight subjective improvement in your overall mood.
3. If you journal daily for a year about the problems you're facing in your life, and spend some time every month reading all the journal entries from the previous month, you'll identify recurring problems you didn't notice before so you can start to address them.
Try any of those claims out and see what happens! I've personally tried all three (though never as consistently as "every day") and seen each of the results for myself. But again I'm not claiming you will see the same results, only hypothesizing.
I think part of why you're not hearing many refutable claims is that most people who journal are aware that there are a lot of reasons to journal and ways to journal, so it wouldn't be wise to make universal claims. I think you can come up with what you want to get out of journaling and come up with a journal plan that might achieve that goal, and just try it, but what you want is going to be personal to you.
Someone once gave me a little hand-made note book that said "Each day I write down 3 things I am grateful for'. So I started doing that.
I didn't want to write down obvious things like being grateful for having limbs, eyesight or such, mainly because you can write down the same every day. So at first I found it kind of hard to come up with three genuine novel things to be grateful about. But after a while (3 weeks or so?) I found that I had to stop myself from writing down more than eight things :-) (that is eight new things each day)
I mean, it's not a full journal, and the effect is relatively small (or is it?). But it's also something very easy to pick up, and you can actually evaluate its effectiveness somewhat by paying attention to the effect I described above. Which is what you asked about :) All in all, I suppose refutable claim is that if you do this simple exercise you will find it becomes easier to have positive thoughts and be more grateful about life.
one of my friends shares his journal with a few close friends. i don't know if that is his only journal. he might have another one. he does write semi-regularely, but shares some of his most deepest thoughts and troubles, to the point that when he would write for a few months i'd start wondering if he was ok.
another friend for a while seemed to live out their private life on twitter, and i had to cringe how much intimate and private stuff they were revealing there.
On the contrary, I feel writing notes on paper with my fountain pen really different from typing on a computer. Only the former give me the feeling of work well done and some relaxed mind.
I find really interesting to see years later that event X and Y happened on the same day while they are disjunct in memory.
> I feel writing notes on paper with my fountain pen really different from typing on a computer.
> Only the former give me the feeling of work well done and some relaxed mind.
On a serious note, this reminds me of my school-days. At my school, a "Hero-pen" was all the rage; All the "cool" kids had one.
Recently found out (i think from some random HN comment!) that the prized-possession of my childhood - The "Hero pen" was "inspired" by the Parker 51!
Not able to find the HN comment, but here are some links from my browser history for some fountain-pen nostalgia :-) :-)
https://frankunderwater.com/2017/02/20/remaking-parker-45-a-...
https://thefrugalfountainpen.blogspot.com/2014/03/hero-616-d...
Let the Fountain Pens Flow (nytimes.com)
130 points by CaliforniaKarl | 8 months ago | 114 comments
Actually I'm not a fountain pen nerd. I use a €10 supermarket-sold Waterman for the last ten years. This pen in indestructible and really lightweight; best money spend in my life. In comparison I got a classy Parker as a Christmas gift but almost never use it because of its heaviness and the price of the proprietary ink cartridges.
If not, you could make your own machine learning algo. as a side project and teach it to recognize your handwriting. I suppose that's a lot of work though :P
[1]. E.g. See the section "Hybrid Tools" at this link: https://zapier.com/blog/digital-and-paper-note-taking-system...
As for digitization, there are likely ways you could go about doing that, but I'm not sure I want my journaling to be digitized to be honest. To me, there's something about keeping it in pen-and-paper that's appealing, even though it does lead to lots of things to keep up with.
- Neither needs backups. In fact, a text file is much easier to back up if you want to.
- Neither is particularly likely to be corrupted these days, but a notebook can just as easily grow moldy as a text file can be corrupted by a disk error.
- A thief can just as well break into your house and steal your notebook as a hacker can break into your computer and steal your text file.
- A pretty large chunk of computing is done on devices with a battery these days. Depending on the time of day, a notebook may not actually work well at all during a power outage.
For you. But for your children or some future historian it may not be.
I really need to get back into the habit of that (and penmanship practice), but my life is kinda boring since I've come back and got back to work (I teach for 8 hours, and have an hour commute each way).