Ask HN: How Do You Journal?
I've been going on and off with journaling and this time I want to go all in with it.
I was wondering about what tools are you using, and what is your flow?
I was wondering about what tools are you using, and what is your flow?
Current sections are: - Things to remember - List of 10 important quotes/mantras - What's on my mind - How am I feeling productivity/mood wise today - What do I most want to accomplish? - What would make today horrible? - Gratitude - Something Mundane, something that happened by chance, something I made happen
Staring at a blank file every morning isn’t interesting to me, but adding a little chunk of thought casually to my second brain is rewarding in itself.
I’m an Org Mode evangelist. I didn’t get it at first but now I don’t think I could get rid of it. I’ll probably be editing this file until my final days!
Anyhow, finding the right pen was very important. I discovered that i am a huge fan of gel pens and after trying dozens of them i landed on pentel energel. I found them to have the best glide and feel and the 0.7mm felt perfect to me. Though i found others with better pigment(black, of course, not blue!) the energel was just the best overall.
Also, finding the right diary was very hard. You need the right paper texture, thickness, size, number of pages. It is very personal thing and for me it was very hard to find what i was after.
Lastly, I got into fountain pens. Actually that might have been the initial reason to get into writing, and i found there is little difference between pens and tips and is mostly about the right ink.
After decades, i finally made up a proper signature, so that was great.
And yeah, i recommend it. Get into pens, paper, writing and whatnot. You can only gain from the experience.
Basically nothing works 100% but right now Logseq is the go to tool as the daily journal and tagging takes away the barrier to I just starting to write. I have an automation that opens the app whenever I unlock my phone, to as much as possible avoid distractions. The next best alternative is probably paper.
I was never into the journaling where you're prompted with a question or try to investigate your feelings and state of mind, so it works for me. Sometimes I'll dump what I'm thinking of my life and how my day went and sometimes I'll just post a random link I thought was really interesting.
The most fulfilling one is a dedicated A5 Physical Notebook that I started in 2019, with all writing addressed to my daughters. It is Open and readable by the family, and I have found myself reading my older writing pretty often.
I’ve gone through dozens of hardcover Moleskines and a couple Hobonichis, and countless other random notebooks. Because I write so much and don’t want to create waste, I use fountain pens which I fill with my favorite waterproof, UV-resistant, archival inks.
These days I typically use 3 physical journals daily:
- a pocket-sized softcover sketchbook which I keep in my wallet for thoughts/drawings about town
- a larger softcover Leuchtturm for more longform writing, which I bring along when I’m feeling thoughtful
- a Hobonichi “5 year journal” which I keep at home, every morning briefly logging the main events of the previous day
3 books is probably overkill for most people. I don’t set journaling goals/expectations for myself, rather I just write when I feel the need to work something out (which is pretty well all the time). My journals get filled with random doodles, writing in all directions, ticket stubs, etc. I’m quite informal about it but I’m never without some type of notebook. I follow the maxim “an artist is a person with a sketchbook attached,” believing that the same applies to writers and journals. I’m more consistent about carrying my notebooks than I am with carrying my phone.
I also use Obsidian heavily for general PKM, and sometimes journal-type essays wind up in there if my hand is tired.
I highly recommend the nonfiction book ‘The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper’ for those interested in the technology of notebooks/sketchbooks, how they have evolved over time, and how people use them for various applications that most people never think of.
If I were to recommend one: go with paper. But regardless of the tool: don’t treat it as “one precious journal that have to be perfect”. Missed a note? Don’t feel shame. Don feel like writing? Just note a one sentence.
Good luck!
I post a lot and on both desktop and phone/ipad, so the "no thinking needed" route is Apple Notes, and I just spent some time exploring how difficult it is to export these. But it works cross-Apple-device (mini-rant deleted)
Obsidian requires extra synchronization, or $$$.
I dumped Evernote when it was bought and the entire U.S. staff was fired.
[0] the semi-dated one that CVS sells.
For example, I try to journal by treating my work as “experiments” and tie those in turn to goals and challenges. And my experiments consist of a plan, prediction, the actual data, and the evaluation (of the data against the prediction). Finally, I constantly track the current state relevant towards the goal. If that sounds familiar to the Toyota Kata, that is because it is. And it should sound familiar to anyone trying to apply the scientific method.
I’d be curious to learn HOW others journal?
I used to do day-to-day journaling for cca 4 years (First started on OneNote then moved to Joplin). It helped me to ventilate frustration, to sit down and write down who did what, who pissed me off and what I would like to doing next.
However when I have been reading some old logs, I have found out that there is A LOT of stuff which could be easily used against me to blackmail me. So I have stopped doing day-to-day and deleted all this day-to-day stuff and keeping only notes as above.
lately i have been taking my daily notes and running them through a local LLM. i prompt it to “think like a therapist” and ask me follow up questions. this can dig up some interesting insights from time to time.
At work, I keep a markdown file open. I take notes from meetings, quick entries to describe what I'm working on a few times a day. It's a single file that goes back to my hire date with current employer. Super useful.
I store both in private git repo's along with shell scripts and config files.
I like the Leuchtturm journals because they have page numbers and they don't fall apart.
I record todos, appointments, significant events, and detailed notes on anything I'm studying or thinking about in detail. Each successive journal gets a number, so that so I can easily and unequivocally reference any page in any journal.
Knowledge-base-stuff goes in Obsidian.
This allowed me to have a physical reminder on my person and to also be spontaneous with journaling throughout the day. I didn't have any form or template. I just wrote things. I didn't care about grammar, punctuation, or even legibility to some degree, and I ultimately found that this made things much more impactful.
I should probably start doing that again.
My requirements are local only and fast.
Start with the simplest tool you have available and go from there. If it becomes a habit and you have certain pain points then you can always switch. But trying to find the PerfectTool_TM before you're even journaling feels like putting the cart before the horse.
I use journaling to reflect on my day more than a record of what happened. I do it right before bed and I follow the same format. I write a paragraph to a half page about my day. Specifically, how it made me feel. Then I write down what I ate and what kind of exercise I got that day because those are the two most important things I am working on right now. Then I finish with writing 3 things that I am grateful for that day.
I have found I sleep better and feel less stressed the next day because I took some time in the hectic day to slow down and examine the thoughts and feelings I had. My job and responsibilities require me to be a very rational person, but I also have a non-rational emotional side that needs nurturing as well. Having a journal focused on my feelings has helped me be a more balanced person.
And despite being slower, I'll often find that I've knocked out a couple pages pretty quickly once I get started. Getting started is the hard part.
Screens include your phone/tablet/laptop, TVs, and even your smartwatch - so if you want to listen to music while you journal, just start a playlist beforehand
There are great journaling tools on devices today, but your brain stays somewhat engaged with using the device and you don't get to that blissful peace of mind dumping and introspective journaling and teasing out ideas
2025q4w40thu
I find that the week number and day of the week is a more meaningful coordinate than the date itself to orient myself when browsing through the files.
Or, if you're not sure which a piece of writing is going to be when you start, you could tag the ones you want to save in your "proper journal" with a :JOURNAL: tag, and then refile those once in a while to a separate file.
I do a lot of captures which all go to refile.org, and then I go through that weekly or more often and refile items to other files where they belong. That makes it easy to jot down a thought down quickly, since I don't have to decide where it goes first.
Also +1 for paper and pen if that's viable. It's a lot easier to do diagrams, symbols, formulas, simple maps, and other visual media that way.
sometimes I feel like writing more, and I let myself
sometimes I have nothing left to write (rare lol) and I simply write down that I don't have anything else
For your daily entries, start by writing down a bulleted list of all the notable things you can remember happening that day. Then write about whatever you want - it can be a stream of consciousness, thoughts on the various events you just wrote down or it can be simply "nothing of note" if it was a boring day.
At the end of the week, create a weekly note with a heading for each day that has passed e.g 2025-01-01, 2025-01-02, 2025-01-03 etc and write down any thoughts or observations you have as you go back and read that day's entry. Then at the bottom of the page create the following headings:
### Summary of the week
### + (Positives)
### - (Negatives)
### * (Things to improve)
### ? (Open Questions)
### → (Most Important Tasks for next week)
### ! (The single most important task to focus on)
### 3 Things You're Grateful For
### . (Final thoughts)
Repeat this each week. Look back at the previous weekly entry and see if you now have the answers to resolve the open questions from before. If not, carry them over.
When you get to the end of the month, create a monthly note. For this note, write headings for each of the weeks that has passed e.g Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4. Now do the same again, reading through your weekly notes and writing down any observations you have, patterns you've observed etc in the weekly notes. Finish off with the same list of headings mentioned above, but now thinking on a monthly timeline rather than a weekly one. When you are reflecting think, of how your progress is fitting in to medium term picture of the projects and goals you are working on.
Repeat this each month.
After three months, create a quarterly note. As you have probably guessed, Month 1, Month 2, Month 3 and the headings above. As you are now at the three monthly review, you should now be reflecting and thinking on the larger term picture of how this quarter is fitting into your 1 - 3 year goals.
After a year, create a yearly note. Repeat the process with the quarterly notes, but also read and review anything else from the year that you want to reflect on. Think about how the year went and how it fits with your values and the type of life you want for yourself.
One caveat on the above: if you are going through a frustrating period where nothing is working out despite all your best efforts, sometimes an incessant feedback loop can just make things worse. If that is the case, you may want to stop journalling for a bit, focus on relaxing and enjoying life and come back to it when the storm has passed.