Always Be Journaling (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Always Be Journaling (2018)

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156 pointsaxiomdata31674 comments

I did that for a good 3 years, writing every day. Started out as a few sentences, and then turned in to bigger depending on how I was feeling that day. I absolutely love(d) being able to look back and read what I wrote and what happened on those days.

It did get difficult at times to force myself to write. Many times I hated having to open up the computer and use that to type. On the other hand, typing was much better than writing because of the amount of words I was able to get down.

In the article, it says to write about work and side projects, and I get that the article is career based, but really, skip that, don't write daily about work and side projects. If you're journaling, write about personal life. That's what's important to have logged.

Something happened that caused me to stop, which sucks because it almost feels like I've lost the last 3 years of my life because I don't have anything written.

> I absolutely love(d) being able to look back and read what I wrote and what happened on those days.

Did you actually look back or just liked the idea that you could? If you did what sorts of things prompted you to do so? I am asking because I have journaled on an off but never had the impulse to go back and read what I wrote.

I did read back and look more than a few times. One was what I wrote when a person, wondering what I said then. Other times trying to see the first mention of an experience.

I definitely didn't go back and read sequentially though, because mostly I didn't do anything interesting day to day. But I've found that sometimes things stick out that I didn't realize when I was writing it. By the end of that stretch when I did write daily, I got very in depth because I was curious what would be of interest later.

I’ve used DayOne for journaling for 6+ years, with varying degrees of consistency. One of the things I like about that is a) the ability to attach photos, and b) when I open the app it shows me all of the entries from the current day, over the years. Lots of little memories that I’d have forgotten if I didn’t have that ongoing reminder.

I keep separate «diary» for personal stuff and «devlog» for work-related notes. Different files in different languages, so it’s never mixed. I almost never reread any of those. At times the devlog is a handy reference though. It’s also amusing to be able to peek at some day in the past and see what you thought back then. Sadly, it’s more like an ability that incites me, not any real use that it can be for therapeutic reasons.

I can relate to the feeling of «lost time». Sometimes I’ve missed to write a day and it felt that it never happened at all, why did I even bothered living through that day? Sometimes I’ve lost entries due to software malfunction and it felt like that app maliciously killed my experiences. Learned the lesson the hard way and keep text files since.

The latter part of this article presents a much more structured regime than I think is necessary. The crux is, write shit down. I carry a moleskine notebook and scribble my thoughts. I don’t doubt that the more rigorous approach suits the author.

On reading the title, I thought “oh jolly good this will be a solid discussion of log structured filesystems, RDBMS transaction streaming, and double entry book-keeping etc” so I am twice nonplussed.

After evaluating tools and stuff, finally settled with Dropbox synced plain markdown files. I have a generic file per week (making one per day was too much hassle), also separate files for specific projects.

I also recommend G.M.Weinberg's the Fieldstone Method on Writing.

I would have titled this article something about keeping a diary for this reason.

There's a nice command line tool for keeping a journal that some people might find useful. https://jrnl.sh/

You just type in jrnl followed by your entry, that's it.

Just set this up. Thanks!

This is so helpful, thanks!

I've been journaling to varying degrees for many years. My digital notebook goes back to late 2002 with the launch of OneNote. Millions upon millinso of words about side projects, work, life, career, things I am reading or watching. My physical notebooks/sketchbooks go back decades, one a year, crammed full of sketches, ideas and small notes about stuff that I couldn't even tell you what I was thinking at the time.

My Wordpress blog which started as a plain text based website in 1993, and has slowly accumulated, intermittently, written notes (the ones that make sense) from my notebooks that go back all the way to the 1980s and earlier.

Journaling has helped think through projects, career trajectory, travel plans, working through depression, personal loss and even what coffee I like.

Journaling (not a diary) isn't for everyone, but it is something that works for me.

Has anyone here ever refrained from being too honest in your journaling, out of fear someone read it some day?

Definitely. Though less and less as time goes on. Journalling, as with any art form, is part of a process of pealing off layers of yourself until only your truth remains.

Each time you journal you'll reveal a little bit more, and when you accept the words you write about yourself, you won't mind as much if others don't accept them.

No, since I strive to journal on a factual based tone. Barely do I jot down any emotions or opinions about people.

Phrasing a situation down into facts helps to change perspective away from the ego pov and to dissolve any anger or other negative emotions.

Emotions _are_ facts.

By not reporting your emotions around a subject, you're omitting the facts of the situation.

I'm not a very outwardly emotional person, which sometimes causes tension in my social life. I've been trying recently to regard my emotions more as a more primitive version of thinking, rather than some other kind-of-thing. They're automatic thoughts coming from my brain that manifest as "feeling" something rather than something I can articulate into facts. It's been somewhat helpful in trying to accept my emotions rather than hide or obscure them.

I dislike the current culture that we have that demonizes emotions. The stance that being emotionless is superior to having emotions.

Emotions, like everything else, can either both drag people down....or be used to amplify their strengths. The problem is that society seems to only consider the former and disregard the latter.

"Emotions _are_ facts."

No, they are not. They are your emotions. Not saying that they are less real or that they should be dismissed, but a threat is a fact, your fear is your emotional reaction to it. There is a difference.

The difference is that you have control over your thoughts, reactions and emotions. If you do not differentiate between the outside world of facts and the inside world of thoughts and emotions, you mush them together into a mess.

I can learn to master my emotions and for example dissolve my fear. That will not remove the threat. If I learn to assess the threat regardless of my emotional reaction to it, I get a better grasp on the severity of the threat and can react accordingly.

That is not to say that emotions should be ignored. I'd recommend against that. Listen to yourself. If you feel the desire to journal them, by all means, do it. But for journaling _I_ prefer to differentiate and try to keep my emotions out of the narrative. You are free to do otherwise.

Yes, although less so with age.

That is why all of my personal files are encrypted. When I die, they die with me.

I mean, I question the value of keeping track of what porn you looked at that day, but as years go by the level of damns given about what other people think about you and your opinions goes down.

I also think the level of security available these days is far superior to what you had growing up (e.g. the 50c padlock your sister could pick with a goddamn bobby pin), so the odds your immediate family is going to find out things you'd rather they not know has gone down a bit.

It's prevented me from keeping one at all. Years ago, my mother broke into my then 12-year-old sister's diary for no better reason than to find out what was going on when she wasn't home, which was often. I later wrote some really shitty teen-angst poetry and buried it under a stack of books and papers in a corner of my bedroom closet, and she found that. Decades later, I still feel like I can't write something emotionally honest because it will be exposed and used against me somehow.

I have two sections in my digital notebook that are off limits, encrypted and password protected (with passwords I never share and 2FA) that contain "Dark Thoughts" and "Bad Thoughts About People." Dark Thoughts section is where I journal about some internalized toxic negativity, usually fabricated by some mild background depression, running through my brain. Dark Thoughts section lets me compartmentalize and objectively examine those thoughts. Bad Thoughts About People are where I put all those notes I might think about a person in my life that you don't necessarily want to voice, but you need to get the thought out of your head so you aren't dwelling on it.

Is your journal on your laptop? What if you are asked to decrypt at the airport?

I can happily decrypt the laptop the airport. Doesn't mean all the data in the laptop is decrypted. It's way too much data for a non-forensic team to sift through without concerted effort. My house has multiple doors with multiple locks. Just because you made it past the front gate ("please unlock your laptop") doesn't mean you got in to the fire safe inside the locked office inside the locked house. And so you opened the very obvious fire safe where we keep a little cash and some spare keeys and you looked inside. Congratulations, there's four other safes in the house that aren't in plain sight with different combinations, not including all the other stuff that is locked up securely. Just because I entered in an easily recalled and easily typed password that gives you access to 4TB of data, it doesn't mean you can easily access all of that 4TB with the same set of keys. It'd take you "quite some time" to fish through to even find the encrypted data.

I would be more upset if they confiscated the physical hardware for analysis than the encrypted data that is on it.

The idea of journaling was filling the need to talk to someone about something, but another person could never be trusted. Anne Frank would be mortified that people read her most private thoughts and fantasies.

It's rooted in psychological well being, much like therapy. It's why I was most offended by the judge mocking Ross Ulbricht for committing his private observations, including criminal ones, to his diary. Modern life asks that we be strangers, even unto ourselves, understood only by our digital merchants.

I believe most versions of Anne Frank's diaries, at least those versions that appear in school curricula, are edited and censored in places. That is fair, because the historic value of the overall ideas shared doesn't justify violating a deceased person's privacy 100%.

On my I3 window manager I start emacs in a hidden floating window that I can bring to front with a one handed hotkey (Super-< is very convenient in my keyboard layout).

Then I use org-modes org-capture to either capture into journal.org multiple times daily or notes.org when having interesting ideas.

I use org-rifle to search through the journal and notes.

The files are synced between devices via owncloud.

Can you explain more about your setup?

What if you're in a different workspace? Does the floating hidden emacs window follow you across workspaces?

Yes, the floating hidden window always pops up on whatever workspace I am currently working on.

I thought about automatically hiding it, when switching to another workspace, but have not yet come around doing this.

I use a simple script to start emacs in case I accidentally close it:

  i3-msg 'exec emacs -name emacs-server' 
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] move scratchpad;
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] floating enable;
  sleep 1
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] scratchpad show;
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] move position 450px 0px;
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] resize set 950 100 ppt
  i3-msg  \[instance=\"emacs-server\"\] scratchpad show;

The i3 config portion additionally has the key binding:

  bindsym $mod+less [instance="emacs-server"] scratchpad show

Is the hidden floating window better than having emacs in a permanent workspace ? What are your thoughts ?

I love writing. As I write a bit every day, it gets very easy to write, and to express my thoughts, or what's in my mind. One great benefit is that when I am emotional or tired it is not too difficult to write that down somewhere because I already have the habit, and it does get easier with practice. Afterwards when I'm at a better or more aware mood I come back to read what I had written, this helps to see what sort of things affect me in different states of mind. This has resulted in many revelations towards understanding myself and also others. It also produced some interesting creative results too.

> This has resulted in many revelations towards understanding myself and also others

Same here, and I find the perspective of "discovering yourself" fascinating; I always thought I knew myself but it wasn't until I started journaling that I realized how much I didn't know.

There's just so much going on behind the surface. I highly recommend taking up journaling as a habit!

I kept rigorous journals from 1999 until about 2017.

I stopped because I felt it was necessary to make a break with my past self. I don't know if journaling was useful for my personal growth or not. I do know that reading old entries resulted in a cringe more often than not, which I took to be a good sign. If the old-you isn't a little embarrassing, are you growing?

There are a few books left, but I destroyed about 95% of them. It's a habit that is perhaps good for growth and reflection, but bad for revolution.

It's been three years since I last made an entry, and I miss it just like I miss my old friends who I also no longer talk to. These days I just make lengthy comments on websites but it's a poor substitute.

If you like journaling, but want to make a break from the past, then why not journal but then periodically destroy the journals?

It's a good idea. I get attached to the artifact, though. I think I'd need to make it an annual or bi-annual _event_. Build a fire, smoke a cigar, burn the past. Sounds nice.

I do it from time to time, it is cathartic. You live near SF? You can come over and we can burn our things together.

lol

nah, on the east coast for better & for worse

As much as I love making this my habit, the biggest obstacle for me is syncing. I want to jot something down in so many different places: not just in front of a PC, but also in a train, car, shower room, restaurant, grocery, and bed. I use a mixed environment (Unix, Mac and Windows). Some of the machines are separated by firewalls. So I tend to scatter a journal-like file in many places. It's hard to combine them all in one place. And no, I don't want to give my journal to some third-party cloud solution. I wonder if anyone handles cases like this.

Simplenote, text files on Syncthing ...

Honestly just email yourself with an autotag... If your email is foo@bar.com, try foo+journal@bar.com. It should still land in your inbox, but sorted under that folder.

You can even text from your phone to email addresses nowadays. I do this all the time to collect notes, and email clients are robust, emails have metadata like dates, and everything is easily searchable, etc.

Yeah, gee! Great idea, if all your private thoughts are just so squeaky clean.

If you carry even the slightest amount of negativity in your heart, do not ever put pen to paper in a way that seems to reveal your inner self.

Kind advice from a person who has experienced at least one horrendous debacle from a regrettably misplaced notebook.

Also, my parent's 25+ year marriage was undone by a similarly stunning incident. A dropped love note in the driveway, not a diary.

You can be sarcastic all you want about journaling. But your examples don't warrant that sarcasm.

It should warrant humility, and self reflection. What is it that you could not be bothered to protect other people from your private thoughts?

I do believe in extreme ownership.

I wonder if anyone has advice for someone like me who thinks writing a journal is probably a good idea, but I rarely write because I can hardly bear to read what I've written. I always want to edit it for clarity or just throw it out because I don't like it. I've been able to overcome my perfectionism in a few areas of life, but not this one. I like to read other people's words, but rarely my own.

I have similar tendencies. What changed for me was using journaling to understand and cope with my emotions during a very difficult time in life. By writing out my thoughts they were more complete and I could better asses them so it helped calm racing thoughts and patterns of rumination.

Ive come to enjoy the process materializing my thoughts into something concrete, as a thought isn't really fully formed until you write, speak, or type ot. I continue the practice as part of my morning routine and when I read at night.

I don't review what I've written or share it or have any plans to make a blog or something. I just use journaling to enjoyably process my thoughts.

I've struggled with wanting to write for the past couple of years. The biggest aspect that allowed me to get started was realizing I don't need to write for an audience. After that realization, I soon discovered:

1. I like to write because it's therapeutic, and 2. I don't do it for others to read, only myself

To touch on the second point, rarely do I go back and read my own work. I don't think it's necessary outside the initial editing/revising for grammar mistakes. Personally, I'm just happy to be able to create something as opposed to always consuming other media.

Then don't read what you write, keep turning to the next page. It's fine also to throw away what you write, until you think something is good enough to keep.

One reason for not throwing them away is: once you get a little bit better you can see the past as the past and see how much you have improved in contrast rather than identifying what you think is bad with "yourself". If you think you are not good enough, say this: you are not good enough "yet". The yet is very important. Know that you will improve. It's fine to improve. To be able to improve you need to accept that you are imperfect.

This exercise is a wonderful opportunity to not get so attached to impermanent things.

Eventually your writing will get good enough.

You don't have to read your journals if you don't want to - the act of writing is the most important part.

You never have to read your own journal. The important thing, now and since journaling began, is to make sure no one ELSE can read your journal.

I kept a journal for a few years before I started reading what I had written. The reason I didn't read what I was writing was the same as yours. I did eventually start forcing myself to read what I was writing, though, and even though it can feel uncomfortable or embarrassing, I think it has had a profound effect.

I actually identified certain behavior patterns in my life by reading my journal, that I was not explicitly aware of when I was writing those entries. Depending on the length of your entries, you could read months or weeks of entries in one go, and have a bird's eye view of your own time that you would never get otherwise. You might also get some insight into your own perception of time; one thing I noticed is that events that happened around 2-3 days ago feel like they "just happened", to me, while events ~4-5 days ago feel much further in the past, and I am more likely not to have the experiences of those days at the front of my mind.

tl;dr: If you power through the discomfort and read your own writing, the result might be interesting enough to offset the discomfort.

Here's a Vim alias I used when I first started writing, to automatically start me off on an empty page so I didn't have to read my stupid words from last time (or trigger associations that drove out what I wanted to write this time).

    alias j='vim -c 'normal G' -c 'r !date' -c 'normal zto' -c startinsert journal.txt'

I link this all the time, but my system is almost the same!

https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog

One command `log`, keeps files with YYYY-MM-DD.md and helps sync to github. I often edit my day's words, but don't much go back. When I do want to go back, I can just use `log 3/4/19` or `log yesterday`

Some observations I'd like to share based on my experience journalling for the last 5 years.

* Brevity is important. With journalling, it is very tempting to go off on a rant. Feels good at the time but its usefulness declines rapidly with time. Short notes that encompass your state of mind or emotions or feelings with some context and timestamps go up in personal value with passage of time. I keep details and rants in my separate running log files.

* Summarize regularly. Every once a few months when you have down time, summarize your notes and make observations. My favorite bit is to find an old note with a sidenote/annotation and see how I look at the same things differently or still have the same mindset.

* Use timestamps. I have settled for a yyyymmdd-topic-title.txt for filenames. Contents in each file are stamped [yyyy-mm-dd] with optional time of the day. I have under 50 such files and they seem to encompass all facets of my life that I journal.

* Use plain text. Everything else will go away. I now use notational velocity/nvAlt with simplenotes sync for my topic wise notes (I also check in these files into a separate git repo folder for backup). I keep Deep insights and running lists in that git repo's wiki. I've recently also started keeping and checking in monthly yyyy-MMM.md files for a running log of thoughts. Helps maintaining a timeline to find recurring patterns. If some topic becomes worthy enough for sharing via a blog post, it gets its own markdown file that I can edit and customize for publishing.

* Reduce friction. I think this was the big one to overcome. By the time I would get to writing, I'd lose perspective or details to write. I now use a throwaway app (google keep) to write down my reaction, emotions or interesting facts as close to encountering them as possible. Then I can expand on them or discard them when I get time.

> * Summarize regularly. Every once a few months when you have down time, summarize your notes and make observations. My favorite bit is to find an old note with a sidenote/annotation and see how I look at the same things differently or still have the same mindset.

I feel that this runs counter to what a journal is. Wouldn't the value of the journal be to record what you felt at that moment of time?

Although its a preference, I don't seem to share your concern.

A half yearly summary of distilled main themes, decisions and learnings has been crucial for me to continue my journalling process.

When I want to know what I was doing late 2017, I go through my summary. Any detail I want to re-visit is available in my running log.

Here's a simple way to get into the journaling habit. Add to your bashrc the alias:

alias today="vim $PATH/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").txt"

Substitute vim with your editor of choice. Will automatically generate a new text file for each day. Then just write. Anything.

Dear diary,

why? I have nothing to say.

I've tried on & off to keep a diary (journalling sounds so hip) and never found a thing to talk about.

I've found my great-grandfathers diary. As a farmer he noted things like weather temperatures, precipitation, etc. How the crops were doing, and what broke on the farm. It was interesting, but dry and factual.

So I tried and never found anything substantial to write. What was the weather on the first day of school in 1992? I don't care. I have the internet for that now.

Personal things? Feelings? I hate myself and hate my life. Yupp same entry for the last 35 years.

Journalling can be useful even if you never go back and read your journal. (In which case it doesn't matter that entries are repetitive.)

"Journalling for mental health", URMC Health Encyclopedia: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...

"How Writing in a Journal Helps Manage Depression" https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/writing-your-way-o...

Been there, still can go there. I remember in 8th grade we had to do journaling in class and I might have been ok with it had it been a different teacher or just that no one would have read it.

Years later I learn that it actually helps your brain make sense of the day. Look at your day and the emotions that form, and look for cause and effect. Look to change the causes, or how you interpret them. You have a lot of life left and a head start on me age wise. Shit didn’t start coming together for me until 40, and it’s still an uphill battle, but worth it.

Try using the weather as a writing prompt to get the juices flowing.

A journal is just a tool - like a shovel or hammer. Perhaps you can use a journal to expand on creative ideas and ambitions, instead of reflecting on deep hurtful feelings. I hope you can find a way to love yourself and your life. Maybe consider a radical change in your current lifestyle/location to give yourself a fresh reset on life.

Ive been writing almost every day for many years. My secret was to use Bash and write a few scripts to make it very easy to jot down thoughts.

I also added a vim command to push it to github while editing. These just remove barriers to opening and syncing the file, but the concept is the same.

You can see the result here: https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog

The result is a treasure trove of greppable data. Someday I was to apply some sentiment analysis ...

I work as a scientist/programmer - my coworkers with a science background write journals, and those from a programming background put the info into issue trackers, git commit messages and wikis/communal documentation.

I think the programmer tools scale much better for larger, distributed teams. Personal journals are ok, but if you ever think someone else might benefit from knowing some information there, put it somewhere else.

To those of you who like the idea of themselves journaling but don’t do it currently or consistently: What’s stopping you?

Being too tired in the evenings and too little time in the mornings.

Same for me! The last thing I want to do after work is get back on the computer and type more.

The last thing I want to do in the morning is get out of bed to get on the computer!

Bad handwriting.

Yup, that's me too.

But I like how writing feels and I really like the ability to refer back to past ideas and build on them. To recall things I learned in detail.

So in my latest attempt at journaling I added deliberate handwriting practice. First I did adult handwriting practice sheets everyday. Now I copy down the alphabet if I don't know what else to write. Sometimes I just write down a song that's stuck in my head. Then I write whatever ideas I need to get out of the way before work. It's a very meditative way to start the day. And my mind feels fresh and ready to engage afterwards.

Perpetual exhaustion from a three year deathmarch at work.

Same reason I haven't had the energy to start job hunting despite a three year deathmarch at work.

I tend to go through long periods of writer's block

I have a lot of perfectionist tendency where I tend to be highly critical of early work

I have it in my mind as being a high effort endeavor

honestly, laziness

-----

looking at that list, none of those reasons seem very good, I should start (thanks for the prompt)

I don't know where my notes will be in 5 years.

I don't like what comes out because it invariably becomes a litany of complaints.

Unexpected events and inconsistent energy levels means that I cannot consistently write journals every day.

I started journalling daily when I was 35. If I could change one thing about my life I wish that I had started journalling 20 years earlier.

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