Personal Journaling Practices

Write a diary every day. Serves as a compass. It's far more easy to write down a few lines of thoughts and it's fun to look back.

I keep a personal journal.I have yet to find looking back over it useful. I helpful in organising my thoughts when writing it down.I used to use Day One but now I use a simple web app running that I built to replace Day One and Evernote late last year.I'd build your own journal setup. Plain text files would likely work too. Make sure to back it up. It's a pain changing the system after you've written out 1000's of entries.I tend to write about what's going on

I’ve started journaling with Day One app few months ago. I am starting to use it more and more with every week and I am really enjoying it.Interesting side effect was that for a long time I wanted to have a comfortable note system that would allow to store ideas related to books I am reading, side project, work projects etc. And I could never keep a system because I always over complicated requirements for that notes system in my mind. Now I just started to use my journal for that, it’s fair

Whatever else you do, keep a journal. Cheap notebooks with a decent pen work well, but OhLife (YC S10) is pretty great. Keeping a public blog is not the same thing. Consistency is unimportant, but the habit is vital. "Keeping a journal" is something you can still be doing even if you haven't actually written much in it in weeks. A sentence here, a sentence there. It adds up.

I am closer to 50 and didn’t notice much decline yet, however to pre-empt it, I started journaling. I write down what I did per day, tech solutions, how I got to them, links to git repos, what I cooked with ingredients etc. It is fun to be able to say what I cooked Tuesday 3 September if someone asks ‘that Thai dish you made somewhere in December’ or ‘how did you fix that weird nodejs issue’? And it is inspiration for blog posts, tweets etc.For me it works wonders. Wish I started it when I wa

Thursday, June 23 1326, Hacker News I journal as well, and have for the past 15 years with varying frequency. I used for force long form entries and coherent prose. Now, I do somewhat what the author does: I just start writing. Timestamp, location, and what I'm doing currently. Then whatever pops to top of mind, then bullet point my past week/month/whatever. It may then turn into a to-do list for work or home. It may be dreams of things I want to do

I've been doing the same for the past 5 years. Here's how I do it and what I've learned: https://untested.sonnet.io/Stream+of+Consciousness+Morning+N...> Yet, I can see no advantage. The great benefit of this process, even as I struggle with it, is it gives me a rounded view of my life.Absolutely, 10000%. Spotting patterns (on a micro and macro scale

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 f

Keep a journal where you write out any ideas you have (about anything). It allows you too audit yourself in real time and makes it harder to hand wave.

Indeed I have been doing this for all my work for over ten years now and it is one of my favourite things.I use Day One as I also use it for my personal journal. Plain text is great but I do like being able to add rich content (screenshots for example).As you say being able to look back and know exactly what you were doing on a particular day is a powerful thing.I've found that over time I have become a lot better at succinctly explaining the problems I faced and how I made