The Danger of Journaling Is Introspection

I have been journaling for 9 years now. Actually closer to 12 but we'll discount the first 3 years because it was done haphazardly handwritten in notebooks in fits and bursts. Repeatedly throughout the journals I wrote about how circular it felt whenever I was examining the deeper self. It felt like I had written this or that before and then I came to the realisation that the deepest sense of self or sense of consciousness never really changes throughout life. You are who you are. What surprised me was the regularity that predictions or goals written in the past would come true in the future. Seemingly impossible (within a realm of reason) things would always come true given enough time, enough persistence and enough continuous progression. And if it hasn't come true yet, have you moved along the scale of making it happen?

That's where journaling becomes powerful. It lets you hold yourself accountable, lets you measure your current self against your past self. It lets you document those little life victories, those turning points to judge whether a past decision was good or not. Life is a combinatorially explosive decision tree (borrowed from John Vervaeke), journaling helps you to better guess the best future path and keep you on it.

I have been journaling for 2 years on and off. In the beginning it had extremely positive effects on my development as a person.

After a while the sense of effectiveness that came from writing constantly started to fizzle out and I'd feel like going in circles in my writing.For a while, I wouldn't write and I'd feel guilt and would attribute negative aspects of my life to my lack of writing, which led me back to daily writing. This was a recurring thing in my life.

After a while I just concluded that the valuable thing journaling teaches you is the importance of exploring your ideas and thoughts. Doing it religiously or with harsh constraints is no good. There must be time to explore and to just do things for a bit - that until some sort of critical mass is reached or some idea shows up that you want to discuss.

I think what confuses a lot of people is what one means with "journaling". If it's just writing about your day, I don't see that much utility in it. Effective journaling ends up being an alternative name for writing and reflecting without objective in my experience.

I started journaling 4 years ago. I have not missed one day in 4 years (except for a couple of days after a mild bicycle accident where I was sleeping in bed). I built myself a system that sends me an email every day, and the replies get stored in an sqlite db. The system accepts answers up to five days after the date (meaning, if the replies is sent more than five days after the initial email was sent, it's not filed). I did this to force myself to never reply too late.

The funny thing is, five days is waaay too long a time to remember what you have done. When I describe my day at the end of it, or the morning after, I usually remember incredible little details and thoughts. But after a day, only a rough outline remains. After two days, I usually remember nothing (save for exceptional circumstances).

That's why I started journaling: to be able to tell what happened in the past. Not just the big milestones, but all the little steps.

I'm left wondering if this was a disappointment for you or you were expecting something else..

I started writing about 10 years ago, whenever I felt the need, coming to around 10-15 entries per year. Looking back through the entries, I can't say I'm a different person from the one I was 10 years ago, more like the opposite. The external circumstances have changed ofc, I've reached some goals, etc, but how I feel about myself and my reactions to life seem to have mostly stayed the same. Regardless of the apparent lack of progress, I am still writing occasionally, whenever I feel like it.

Just never read the past, problem solved. That shit also takes way too long, 400 words per day = 146k words = 300ish pages

The value of writing to me is to refine thoughts and then take action upon them. That is the here and now rather than introspection.

Few days ago I found a very interesting, short blog about journaling (I've just posted it seperately [0]). It's very interesting for me as it combines themes of journaling per se and self-dialogue.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32237190

Since it appears that everyone is sharing their experiences.

I have been journaling daily for close to 20 years, with the exception of a few breaks and skipping journaling in really busy days.

From my personal anecdotal perspective I feel that overall it's a positive experience. I've tried multiple mediums, Evernote, Workflowy, Pen & Paper, Google Docs, and countless of journaling apps. I find pen and paper the best, probably because I can parse my thoughts better when I write them down over typing them. Even though typing is much faster. There is something magical about making a moment for yourself with a fresh cup of coffee, some music, a pen and a journal.

I've also experimented with the type of content I want to journal. It feels like the standard is to write about your day. I find that the least fun way to journal. Albeit at times my personal day to day life bleeds into my journaling, I prefer writing about my thoughts, what I'm struggling with, debating to do, what I'm trying to improve.

Essentially for me, journaling serves as part self-therapy, part life strategy writing, part goal planning and blocker removal strategies. I can analyze my actions and their side-effects. Do it long enough and you start seeing patterns in your way of thinking, or you will catch yourself writing about the same thing yet again. I strongly suggest you don't just write when you journal, create flowcharts, make bullet lists, underline things that you think are important. It's a very undervalued thinking tool.

Usually when I talk to friends about journaling the common deflection is "I don't have that kind of time". Here is the thing, it's ok to write just one paragraph. Sometimes even a single sentence. I have journal entries that just say something like "I have nothing to talk about". The thing is you are building a habit. Most of my journal entries are about 2-3 paragraphs, about 10 minutes of writing. Occasionally if I feel overwhelmed, or troubled by something I might write for an hour. Other times I might write a short journal entry and 12 hours later make an update with new thoughts.

I hope this helps someone thinking about journaling.

To echo the linked article, what's interesting is reading past entries and realizing how you are often wrong, but tenacious, stubborn, a dreamer, someone that doesn't give up...because you are still doing it...you are still here, fighting.

I like the compassionate ending. No mud, no Lotus. It's all good; be with yourself in relationship with the phenomenal or noumenal world.

Continue to strive out the mud. Continue day in and day out to climb this unforgiving fucking cliff [..]

I know you've done your best.

There's proof.

I now started to maintain a little bliki or digital garden, part journaling, part personal wiki, research and creative expression. I can look at it from a timeline angle or tag angle, tagged collections of rational thoughts and emotional expressions.

Struggle, fear, anger, uncertainty, doubt, jealousy. If only I remember briefly, that I am more. and know deep down I can connect to that which is beyond my own little troubles. Connect to that which inspires me, art, people, peots, my mentors, my friends, current, lost or deceased My "future", ¨"past" or "higher" self or selves They are there, always, in unconditional love, as fans cheering me on.

My wife set up an app that shows us a carousel of kid pics all day. It's sitting on top of my microwave. This is my journal.

maybe the danger of reading your old journal entries is to get stuck in the past.

the purpose of introspection is to learn about yourself and understand yourself.

at one point i had the opportunity to digitally scan a set of negatives that i have collected from my photography work over a decade prior. this forced me to review all my work at once, and only then i realized that most of my better photos were portraits.

reviewing my journal might allow me to make similar discoveries.

the point of introspection is to make those discoveries. to find things that i can learn about myself that were not obvious before.

i am generally aware which current goals i am not achieving. in my journal i might find some goals that i dropped, but those don't matter anymore. i dropped them. maybe i can analyze if there is a pattern in how i set goals and drop them, and maybe there is something to learn.

In a way, introspection has held me back. It has made me viscerally aware of my shortcomings in the financial, professional, romantic, and physical realms. Introspection has reminded me of dropped promises, awkward encounters, unfounded concerns. It reminds me of just how naked and vulnerable in the cold of space and time I really am.

i don't believe introspection is the problem here. being aware of my shortcomings always helped me to better deal with them, to find a way to work around them instead of letting them control me.

the conclusion the author makes seems rather a sign of not enough introspection. i would dig deeper, trying to understand where these are coming from, how to overcome them...

I often wonder if too much introspection via therapy or yourself is a bad thing. When you are young you are filled with ideas and drive and confidence. After introspection you realize you aren't special, you aren't as good as you think you are and most people are indifferent to you or often dont really like you.

I built an app for micro journaling but then mostly stopped maintaining it because I was very afraid of the danger of other people hacking into it, especially if it became mainstream and high-value state targets used it.

For those of you who keep journals, how much do you worry someone will gain access to it?

for me, journaling should should be balanced by new input--usually from a combo of experience and reading. when i write, i only do so because i want to see how my inputs have changed me--the output reflects this.