I tried to for many years with paper and pen. It never worked for me until I started using DayOne [0] on iOS and Mac. Simply superb design and one of my favorite pieces of software to use because it does (almost) exactly what I want it to .

When I type, I'm able to render my thoughts directly into text, whereas when I write with a pen I have to think about the physical process of writing. I imagine I'm not the only one here who feels this way.

A valid criticism of DayOne is that they don't currently support strong encryption, and their (optional) sync service stores your entries on their server. Their blog said that they are working on a good client side encryption implementation [1], however the last update was some time around the middle of last year [2].

[0] http://dayoneapp.com/

[1] http://dayoneapp.com/2016/05/end-to-end-encryption-for-day-o...

[2] http://dayoneapp.com/2016/08/encryption-update/

What in particular do you think DayOne offers that can't be offered by Notes on iOS or macOS?

One can try this - a full screen writer app like WriteRoom or CleanWriter (my favourite - just love the type writer sound) or iA Writer and write in simple text files and save in an encrypted folder and sync it with the service of your choice self hosted or otherwise.

It's not necessary. But, it's nice.

The other was "Alarms" which was discontinued even on Mac.

I struggle with this personally because while I know that typing is a faster way to get things down, I really really like the "analog" method of physically writing something down. It offers me some amount of tangible pleasure, but like you said, by the time I get the idea down much of that initial mental spark is fading so it becomes a race against the pen.

Perhaps there's some combination I could practice. Anyhow, this app looks quite neat and I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the link.

It is still the reverse for me. For me, writing involves less cognitive load than typing:

While writing, my mind wanders into thinking more (probably since it still has a capacity to, perhaps just because writing is slower than typing) which helps further.

While typing, I still make a lot of mistakes, which take attention away. I hate touch-screen keyboards as my error rate with them continues to be an order of magnitude higher than the same with physical keyboards even after several years of use.

Yes.

If yes, do you find it useful?

Yes

What tools would you recommend?

A well-crafted acid-free paper notebook, comfortable pens.

Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

Yes.

When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

I keep a system of journals. One series for personal thoughts, current life events, moods, reflections. One series for my mathematical explorations. Another for ruminating on the literature and polemic I consume. One for musical notes and development.

Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

Develop a process. A habit. Have a plan. Journalling for me is about making my thoughts concrete and objectifying my beliefs, opinions, and self. Writing is thinking.

Thanks for the answers!

Hope that helps.

Also, do you revisit your journals?

To answer both at once: the methodology used is specific to my goals. They're specified by me and probably only work with how I approach each topic.

For example, my mathematical journals are rather structured. I move between branches over time but I tend to stay focused in a single area for quite some time working on problems, derivations, and occasionally formulating simple proofs from theorems I've built up as I ask questions. Often re-inventing much of what has been discovered but the purpose of the journals is to learn the process and to make maths a habit as much as it is to document the journey.

My personal journals are much more free-form. I just write stream-of-consciousness what I'm thinking as I look at the page.

Also, do you revisit your journals?

Often. The point of objectifying myself is to examine why I think the way I do, how opinions and habits entered my life, etc. The result of such examinations is that I can choose to change these qualities over time.

The unexamined life is not worth living. The significance came to me late in life but began as child when my mortality and that of those I loved came to me in the night. Life is a horizon of filth, gore, tears, laughter... surviving. On the shores of death I do not wish to go without leaving some evidence of my journey. The pursuit of wisdom, to me, is the joy of being human.

I strongly recommend this attitude. A tool off the shelf rarely fits the hand well; when the tool in question serves to help investigate the self, a prepackaged methodology poses the risk of shaping oneself to fit the tool, rather than the other way around.

On the other hand, my personal journal is very freeform, and my work log is mainly a list of tasks and actions taken toward them, so I'm not sure how well that generalizes. Perhaps a useful recommendation for someone struggling to start might be this:

- Spend a few minutes thinking about what you want to accomplish by journaling.

- Spend a few minutes more laying out minimal structure that might help you work toward that goal. If you're working in a text or org-mode file, for example, perhaps put togther a few lines of boilerplate that you can copy and paste to start an entry.

- Spend a few days working with that structure, and see how well it suits your purpose. Where it does this well, preserve and perhaps expand; where it fails, rework it.

...and iterate from there.

1) Five minute journal. Used to keep track of mental state and review day mostly.

https://www.amazon.ca/Five-Minute-Journal-Happier-Minutes/dp...

2) Way of Life app for iPhone

http://wayoflifeapp.com/

I track about 40 things from floss, to running, to meditation, etc. It's a very easy way to, in under a minute, run through and check off the things you did, or didn't do if the task is something like "eat fast food".

It's great for reviewing over time like a month or quarter to see how you are making out.

I really think these guys have nailed simple task tracking.

Google image search shows a lot of great examples.

I write down all things in my mind, things I tried out, things that did not work, etc. Every time I get new results or evaluate something, I also try to include a table or graph with intermediate results.

The journal helps me to see my progress over time. I can grep through it and see if I already tried something. I can go back and see how my results get better over time or whether I hit a dead end somewhere.

I also write a small summary directly after meetings and talks and note feedback from supervisors.

I use org-mode (emacs) for this and can recommend it. All my entries are sorted by year and week number, so I try to write a summary at least once a week. As I use Emacs for all my programming related tasks, the org-mode file is open all day anyhow, so I usually add things more often than that.

Yes. I mostly do it to unwind/relax. I think it's a good way to get your brain to slow down and collect your thoughts.

What tools would you recommend?

I use pen and paper. I stare at a computer all day and it's nice to take a break. Obviously, there are a ton of upsides to doing things digitally but for my particular use case I wouldn't benefit.

Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

I used to keep several notebooks for various purposes. I found it to be a burden. I'm way less organized now but it's easier to just put everything in one notebook.

When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

A lot of what I write about are problems I'm working on. I also write a lot of reviews, movies, restaurants, things I drank, etc. If I can't think of anything I'll usually write a short story from some writing prompts. I have no aspirations of being a writer, it's just fun sometimes.

Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

Try to do it everyday. My life isn't exactly full of excitement so sometimes it's hard to get motivated to write about it but there's always something I could be writing.

For people who have the same issue, I came up with https://www.60secondseveryday.com

It's the fastest way of daily journaling - you make a 60 second phone call every night to answer the question "What do you want to remember about today?". From there, it gets transcribed, archived, and it's all searchable as well.

Disclaimer: I came up with the service after having a need for it myself

But I wouldn't use it on principle because a journal is private, and having it handled by a third-party doesn't sound like a good idea at all. Especially when you explicitly state that it is transcribed, archived, and searchable.

I realize that privacy is an important concern which is why I've taken it extremely seriously. So rest assured, this journal is private.

Perhaps I've misunderstood how your service works, and these concerns have no basis in fact. If so, it would be awesome to know that! Such information might make a very good fit for a privacy policy, which I'm having a very hard time finding any mention of on your site. (Yes, I saw the brief, breezy dismissal of such concerns in the FAQ section of your pricing page. That doesn't count. And, no, I haven't tried it. I shouldn't need to try it to get some idea of what you actually do to mitigate these risks.)

I hate to seem overly harsh on this point, but these are uncertain times, and your service is one which invites people to trust it with the sort of deeply personal information which, in the wrong hands, could be misused to ends from embarrassment to social and professional annihilation. Perhaps you have given this hazard the degree of concern it merits, and engineered your service to minimize it to the maximum possible extent. If so, you might do well to present the appearance of having done so, too.

Goal setting, Mood Tracking, Habit Tracking, Reflection Etc. is hard to lump into one system, but I have seen it done by a few people.

I personally (and know hundreds of others) spent years writing in a blank notebook with a structure that I created for myself.

Something that would allow me to write my goals, map out my day, write what I'm grateful for, track my important tasks, etc.

I saw this as a problem, asked some friends if they had the same issue, and decided to create something that would have everything above.

You can check it out here: https://bestself.co/products/self-journal

This is not a "plug"

You can download the PDF on this page and check it out first.

I believe in it that much that I want everyone to have access to this.

Cheers!

-Allen Co-Founder | BestSelf Co.

It's intended for my eyes only. I record my moods, personal battles, health and weight information, self-development. I record snippets from good books, attempts to implement changes in my life, what happened and why.

It's a real eye-opener to look back over the years and see myself hitting the same problems over and over, such as overeating and procrastination.

Occasionally I distill all the positive, uplifting and useful bits into a "Highlights" document, which is really good to dip into when I need self-motivation. Whilst reading books and articles by others can be useful, there's nothing like reading your own advice from years ago, and re-living your victories, to get yourself back on track.

I recommend it, making it private, and being totally honest in what you write.

Good luck.

[0]: http://bulletjournal.com/

Basically, every day, write down anything that comes to mind that you should do on that day (possibly by fetching it from a page of a less granular time period, like a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly list of tasks/events), as well as anything that you discover you need to do in the future (put the date of the event, or a rough time period you want it done next to the item, so it's clear you don't have to do it today). Don't feel the need to schedule it on some other page - just write it onto the current day and defer that scheduling work to later.

As you do the things in your list, mark them as completed. At the end of the day, make a place to write down stuff for tomorrow. Move all the stuff you wanted to do today that you didn't to the next day. Move all the stuff you marked for the future to a place where you store tasks for the future - this is called a "future log", and there are all sorts of variations. I'd start with a page for all tasks you want to do in the future, and "migrate" to a new page with those tasks monthly.

Generally you want a book with two (or three) bookmarks - one will be on a "future log" or "monthly spread" page where tasks you want to do soon, but not necessarily right now, in case you want to pull additional stuff to do today, and the other will be on the page with the current day where you'll do almost all your reading and writing.

In order to save migration to a weekly process, I use a layout where I put all days of one week on a single spread - https://www.instagram.com/p/BPUIKR1Am3o/

Then I can put stuff for later in the week onto that specific day, and I only need to migrate to future log, or rewrite the weekly-level tasks every week. And I don't need to do any per-day setup work, just draw the page leisurely on a Sunday night and do the migration work.

There are a ton of youtube examples of people doing planning, and a few tutorials on how the system works. Don't be put off by some of the more complex/artful/&c. stuff - you can do it in a minimalist fashion too.

* Bullet Journal 101 series by Boho Berry - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeTUR5GAuQfupOv-_l16G...

* Engineer Dude's Simple, Minimalist Bullet Journal - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1HerzvUph3FtUsXqsGL9...

There is also a really active set of bullet journalists (as they like to call themselves) on Pinterest and Instagram - just search for "#bulletjournal" and "#bujo" for example future logs, "spreads", trackers, collections, and so forth.

Remember - all you _really_ need is the tasks/goals/planning part. You don't need daily/weekly/... water/exercise/mood/... trackers, weather icons, calligraphy, colours, and so forth. And it's your system, so adjust as you find it works for you. I started off trying to do morning/afternoon/evening mood tracking, but that didn't work out. I also tried a daily timeline thing, and that didn't work out. So they were gone after three weeks.

As far as tools. A pen and paper, that's it. If you want to get fancy flip a notebook over and write from the backside in for a simple two topic book. Earmark pages. No methodolgy. I prefer to keep it messy, then I don't have to deal with constraints. Learning cursive helps

To get the most out of it I keep a extra notebook and pen folded in my breastpocket of my jacket. When I'm commuting, need a quick scratch, out for a dart it's right there. I prefer loose stream of consciousness writing to just codify the damn ideas.

For me using paper for note taking is relaxing and more natural then trying to fill a text box or fighting software to make a graph. I refuse to use some service for this on the same grounds that I refuse to work with digital painting programs. Physicality matters

I use it primarily as a todo-list.

Each morning I write down what I plan to do today.

I also try to plan each task in terms of time, so for example:

---

9am - 10am: work on task A

10am - 11am: look into task B

...

---

Then as the day progresses I mark down things as [DONE] when I finish them.

What's cool is at the end of the day you're left with a journal of:

1. What you intended to do 2. What you actually did 3. What you didn't do

I started to aid my sleep, putting all the racing thoughts in my head down on paper and closing the book on them was very calming, I can then forget them for a while.

I also love the act of translating your nebulous thoughts into (semi) clear language of written words, to me it's a focusing lens on your life, and allows associations, perspective and ideas that may not come about otherwise. Even if just because it forces you to reflect for more than some fleeting seconds.

I never see myself changing the primary method of writing these down freeform. But every time I finish a journal I do read back through and write up in google docs some bullet point style wisdoms and take-aways to remember for the future .

Glad to know there's others that get benefit from journaling too.

I've given it a shot several times but have failed in the past, but what has made it easy to keep up as a routine this time around is a finite duration to write within + the requirement of continuously typing w/o breaks; to achieve those two things (shameless plug), I built http://write.surge.sh: it basically allows you to set a duration within which you journal, and if you stop typing for more than a few seconds within that duration, your current session is completely reset.

It's also open source at http://github.com/krrishd/write for those who are interested in how I built it :)

Yes. Org-Mode+Org-Capture

If yes, do you find it useful?

Yes. There are many advantages to keeping a personal journal. It allows you to have better recollections about what actually happened in the past, which is important taking into account that memory is constructive and prone to distortion. Many ideas and insights are forgotten, recording them is a way to fight that.

What tools would you recommend?

Emacs and Org-Mode. Git. Markdown and any other editor is a good option also.

Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

I use some ideas from GTD. Explaining my whole methodology would take more time than I have right now.

When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

Both.

Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

Make it an habit. Put a time or word limit and just let the words flow. Make it seamless, for me capturing an entry is pressing 3 keys.

- I use the Drafts app [1], which has a incredibly powerful feature that lets you create custom commands that include a series of steps, such as "Append to /refile.org file in Dropbox", which I have setup as a "Save to Journal" command

- I have a TextExpander snippet that includes the proper Org-Mode format for an entry, complete with a the date and tags and even a default entry title all filled in. All I do is type "Jjj" inside Drafts and I'm ready to start typing my journal entry.

To write a journal entry from my mobile device:

- I launch Drafts, type my TextExpander abbreviation ("Jjj") to fill in the Org-Mode template, then just start typing my journal entry.

- When I'm done writing my journal entry, I hit the "Save to Journal" action in Drafts, which appends that entry to my refile.org file on Dropbox.

- Once a week or so I open the refile.org inside Emacs and for each entry I run a custom function [2] that refiles that entry into my main journal-2017.org file. The function properly files the entry into the right spot in the datetree. Processing my refile.org file literally takes a few seconds, as I have that function bound to a key that I just run with the cursor over each entry.

I've been using this process for a few years now and it's incredibly easy and reliable, not to mention completely free of any proprietary data formats, which is exactly what I wanted for journaling. I'm using a similar process (Drafts app + TextExpander + Dropbox) to make Ledger CLI [3] entries from my iPhone very easy, so that I can keep my financial ledger up-to-date when I'm out.

[1] http://agiletortoise.com/drafts/

[2] https://github.com/raamdev/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs.d/conf...

[3] http://www.ledger-cli.org/

Funny you should post this now - the solution that is working for now - is a google form for which I have a shortcut on my phone.

I did as much as a could to minimize typing - lots of multiple choice, linear scales, checkboxes, etc. Then one open text field at the end for notes.

I've actually been sticking with this - before I go to sleep I open the shortcut and fill out the form. If I feel up to it I elaborate on the notes, but at the very least I fill out everything else.

Been working so far - quick, easy, and the fact that it's in a spreadsheet makes it useful.

https://ifttt.com/applets/14412595d-quick-ohlife-replacement... (I have no idea why we now can't share recipe on IFTTT, that's sucks...but it's basically, every day at 8pm, send me a mail with the title "How did your day go? #ohlife")

Over time, you notice patterns about what really energizes you. For me, this is the high-order bit, more important than any specific time or life hack.

(Examples and analysis here: https://betterexplained.com/articles/life-lessons-10-years/ )

Last November I started keeping a physical Design Diary, though, and I've managed to keep it up since. I come up with tons of ideas for games, stories, websites, etc, and I tend to lose the ones I don't actively pursue over time, so now I just write it in there. It's nice because with pen and paper I can actually draw the designs of things too, although it's still mostly text. I also put notes from lectures on design I listen to in there also. I also just record whenever I work on those projects and some of the decisions I made while doing so.

I also put some personal things in there as well to provide some context and help aid my memory of when things happen (I have a terrible memory), but I do write this with the idea that somebody might read it or I might want to share it someday, so I try to fully explain the ideas as well as I can.

In fact, I don't just take notes in there or anything. I take notes on scrap paper first, since my natural notetaking style is pretty messy and filled with gaps, and then I sit down later and take those scraps and expand on them in the diary, sometimes days later.

It's already become one of my favorite physical artifacts (that's not an actual game I've made), and I'm trying to start a second one that retroactively goes back to previous games and stuff I've worked on.

The only structure I have in there is I keep things segregated by the day it happened on, more or less. Sometimes I have lecture takeaways put in there weeks after I actually watched it though.

I don't use any computer tools at this time. I use a Black and Red notebook, because I didn't like the ratios of paper quality, sizes, or lining of others that I tried. Writing on the computer doesn't seem to have the same effect (and this is confirmed by various studies, from the looks of it).

There's no particular methodology. I try to write often, but don't find it necessary to write every day. If I don't feel like writing, I don't, usually, I do. I put the date down, and that's it.

Pretty much anything goes there. Events that happened, predictions and outcomes, personal concerns, dark thoughts, quotes, prayers, litany, ideas for projects, mini-stories about fictional worlds, notes about topics, insights, poems, math problems, diagrams, doodles.

But seriously, I've thought about doing journaling for a long time and have never really done it in earnest. I keep copious work notes on a combination of a pen and paper notebook and a digital notebook. I've developed my own system for tracking tasks and notes over the years that works for me. Its not too unlike Bullet Journal except I don't do all of the monthly tracking stuff.

I started a personal notes journal on my PC, but I only put goals and important ideas that I have in it. I haven't made a good habit of writing daily. I believe that a honest journal would consist of daily freewriting and recalling/reflecting on the events of the day.

For my digital journals I wrote a couple of scripts for automatically entering in the dates. Used to use Evernote, but I dropped it after I started realizing it was a kind of shitty walled garden and it would be hard to get some of my notes out of it down the road. Plus they began restricting the amount of device for the free tier.

I have over 100,000+ words sprawled across 15 years of plain text notes and it works wonderfully.

I've already filled up one notebook in a month's time, and it has served as a very low-stress way to keep my stream of thinking clean and unburdened from previous thoughts. I know that they're safe on paper, and I can move on from them. When it's time to pull all my thoughts together (for example, I just finished a lengthy proposal) all I have to do is refer to my notes, which were put down when they occurred naturally, and not in a "forced" deadline environment.

The paper/pen comes in most useful at night – at bedtime – when my mind throws up two or three ideas that I'd like to keep. (But not get out of bed or stare at a screen.) After I jot down my two or three intrusive thoughts, I sleep more soundly.

Some other differentiating factors - you could password protect your journal with a DayOne. DayOne makes it really easy to find and add photos (Activity feed), and it shows thumbnails of the photos when you edit your journal, which makes it easier to edit the text. In notes, photos are displayed in full size all the time. One very useful feature of DayOne is that you could add a photo and quickly set the location and date of the journal to the photo's.

I have been using Awesome Notes to journal for about 3 years. Only until recently I started using DayOne. Awesome Notes is great, but DayOne is so much better.

Usually when I think a thought of note, or I'm experiencing a particularly strong emotional response, or just general dilemma running through my mind I'll write down what it is I'm experiencing or thinking.

Some days are quite long with multiple entries, some times I go a few days without writing a thing. I've thought about littering my entries with "tags" for easier searching, but I haven't done it yet. I don't really review what I've written very often. Plus the entries don't take long to review whenever I'm in the mood.

I use it more as a therapeutic tool, a way to discuss my thoughts with myself.

As for an application, I use Writely pro. But any text editor for Android that can open/save text files to a folder will work for what I do. Plain text synchronized across all my devices is the main thing. Future proof, plus it's my data.

Since 1999, I've been using DailyDiary [1] to journal and track specific topics such as my personal day-to-day activities, weight, exercise, health issues, kid's day-to-day, specific projects, etc. The key for me is to be consistent, and the email nature of DailyDiary tries to reduce that friction as much as possible.

Having so much (searchable) written history has proven immensely helpful on occasion. And it's fun to reminisce when reminded of an event in the past. The kids get a kick out of hearing stories of their past too.

[1] https://www.dailydiary.com/

Disclosure: I'm the founder.

I tried a bunch of different programs, but I ultimately ended up writing a python script that creates a new .txt file with the datetime as the name("2017-01-20-22-02-50.txt"), launches vim, appends the day, date, and time to the top of the file ("Friday, January 20, 2017, 22:02 PM"), and then I just write my thoughts down inside vim.

I'm fairly disciplined about writing an entry everyday, but if I weren't, I'd just have it run as a daily cron job.

Having each entry as its own file is nice since you can just grep a term and find all the dates + times that the term was mentioned.

It's been incredibly useful - just this week I realized that my daily headache started when I began taking a new supplement, so I cut it out and sure enough, no more headaches.

I use plain text files where I just prefix every entry with a timestamp. Whenever some major topic starts reoccurring I create a separate file for that topic. For example I have separate files for various project ideas, a file with a list of things I want to teach my children, a file with a list of things to consider when choosing a residence country.

I'm storing four types of content:

- J, journal entries, one file per day with a summary of what I've done that day. Already proving useful, I forget what I did three days ago.

- N, notes, working notes on a topic. I treat this like a half neat half messy notebook. I write things in topic files while working through a problem.

- T, thoughts, similar to notes but much neater. Often longer form and drafted and rewritten a few times these are small 'articles' on my thoughts on a particular topic. One or two may get converted into blog posts.

- Q, quotes, if I find a quote in a book or online I find interesting it gets a file in here.

The output is a linear weblog style currently.

I've only had this running for a few weeks and it's rather cumbersome at the moment. What I hope to improve on:

- Improve onboarding, hugo has a nice tool which sets up new documents and opens the editor: `hugo new n/topic.md`. I want to build on top of this to reduce friction when writing.

- Away from PC. This system works very well when I'm in front of a computer. When I'm not I have read-only view on mobile. I take notes on paper, the best of these get transcribed into the system. I'd like a way to write on mobile and have that automagically get added into the system. The backend would probably be an AWS lambda function, frontend, perhaps a web app?

- Frontend, I want search and better browsing, tagging &c. But this will come later, when I have more content.

I'm trying to stay detached from any 'app' and maintain control of my data. The 'solution' I'm building will hopefully serve me for a long long time.

for the moment I use drupal's book module to take notes, it's hard to "extract" them and the support for markdown is not the best I expected.

I wish there is a CMS that can render flat markdown files ..

Though if you really want a web ui have a look at Jekyll's new admin ui (google summer of code project). Caddy (a golang web server) has a Hugo add-on that has a web ui. Lastly github and prose.io is pretty good.

Last year though, I made a significant improvement that changed the way I keep my journal: I added a bit of magic that moves all journal entries marked as "todo" from the previous day to the current day when a new daily file is created. This allows me to keep a persistent to-do list that I slowly work through, where finished steps end up in the journal.

I had tried journaling before but a full, blank page was too much in terms of time commitment and stress I put on myself around it. This format gives 6 lines per day and feels easily doable.

Each page has 5 entries on it so you can read what you were doing on that day in previous years. Its nice to have a direct comparison to remember what you were doing last year and see how you have improved, fallen short, or stayed the same as well as remembering what you were doing then. More than once I have been reminded of a friend's wedding anniversary through this.

Totally recommend it, but keep it short and don't judge yourself if you miss a day.

[1] http://a.co/d3j0Pcj

I wrote a simple script 14 years ago to automate the organization for me.

http://pastebin.com/pnWQemAf

I just alias a simple one letter command to "jour.py work" or "jour.py blog" and running it will open a file with a date-based name in my editor of choice. Re-running it on the same day gets me the same file.

This method has the advantage of a very organized, timeless format. The disadvantage is that it's on my local machine. Of course, a cloud based file store could be used, but there is no default encryption and there is no mobile option.

I have one file per year, I write one entry per day, mostly what happened during the day, in the "journal" part, and make notes in the "notes" section, notes can be writeups, code snippets etc. Each new year, I condense the best of the notes section into the next years new note section.

I do this in org-mode, using Spacemacs, its a bit of learning curve involved with Emacs/Org-mode but Spacemacs sets it up for you very neatly.

I store the files on dropbox.

Since its my journal, that I want to make sure that my kids still can read when the times come, this UTF8 text file format that Org-Mode is, is absolutely essential.

> Do you keep a personal journal?

For the last two years I've written a journal entry almost every day. Some days I didn't write, like during travels, but I added information about these days afterwards. Sometimes those entries were pages long and contained conversations or dreams, sometimes it was just: "1. Dezember - 3. Dezember: much work, travelled to Budapest"

I stopped writing about three weeks ago.

> If yes, do you find it useful? > When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

My purpose of the journal was to keep track of my motivation and good mood, so I put mostly positively worded events in there, like "* Went to training, despite mismotivation of the last days". I also recorded things that I never / seldom do.

It served that purpose well. I don't need it anymore, that's why I stopped, but I'll probably pick it up again someday.

> What tools would you recommend?

Plaintext Files. Or MacOS Notes. It doesn't matter really. Finding the perfect journal is procrastination to prevent having to write a journal.

> Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

Write an entry for every single day, no matter when, no matter how short it is (but make it at least one grammatically correct sentence). If you forget, just write the entry for yesterday. Mark the entry with date and time.

> Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

After doing it for a while, you will develop a feeling about whether and how it benefits you. Follow that feeling.

Apart from that: Keeping a journal will always enable you to reconstruct and remember details of your life 10 years from now. One key sentence is often enough to help you remember the day.

That is why I'm going to pick it up again.

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 and what's coming up as well as what I'm thinking / worrying about.

Advice would be to just write it for yourself - assume it'll only ever be read by you. I find that helps me get things down without fussing.

so what I do is this. Date at the top, I write out what I am greatful for in as many lines as I need, typically 2 or 3. I put down a big goal, and I put out my tasks for the day and mark them off as i go.

It serves as a scratch pad, its not holy, I rip pages out, or whatever.

I use the moleskine volant because it is rugged, but not stiff, I can roll it up and sort of stick it in my pocket if I have to. I try to take it everywhere.

I keep an unstructured, personal journal, and half of what's in there are thoughts I have, going to bed or waking up in the morning. There are some good pieces of writing that've come out of it and just yesterday, a former coworker and friend thanked me for some observations I had about the company we once worked at. Sometimes the things we reflect on can be a big deal.

I have been writing in it for the past year and it has really improved my life in many ways. I have written about it detail here :

https://medium.com/@NikitaVoloboev/day-evaluations-5706f31c9...

The feeling of knowing that not a single day has went unwritten about is amazing. I know what I did on every single one of these days and it feels really empowering to see yourself evolve with time.

I tried Day One, but I got mad that they switched away from dropbox. They honestly could have solved the problems, but I can't fault them entirely for taking the easier route here to make supporting it much easier.

I'm not sure what I would journal if I did keep one for real.

Very much. But my useful is mostly about personal stuff and once in a while revisit. Looking at things in retrospect. Sometimes I get something to learn, sometimes it's just fun or once in a while it makes me sad too.

I have been doing it on notebooks (paper journals; and not the fancy and famous ultra costly ones). Really. It's very recently that I started to put some entries on Android Journey app which are kinda too personal to leave in my daily diary which I don't lock in a box. So, I will recommend a paper notebook and pen. I am from India and I am always in the hunt for good and affordable notebooks and fountain pens - we don't have many in the former category. Anyone looking for something good here try Brahma Series (or Brahma Forces) notebooks - they sell Moleskine like notebooks (honestly paper quality is actually a lot better) minus Moleskine's marketing cost in its price. (disclaimer: nothing against Moleskine)

Not really. Some days I just write about something that happened. Or something I thought or just anything. Some days I skip. Somedays I just pen a poem or so (or something that I kinda thing are poems). A short story. Or a sketch (yeah, I make sure the notebook I get have good pages and works well with pencils, ballpoint pen and fountain pens - the latter being my favourite), a caricature, a schedule, sometimes card game score when I am travelling with my friends and we had a game, travel itinerary. I have found some pages where there's some math of splitting trip expenses among friends. Something from a book I am reading, or a film I watched, or something about it. I travel/backpack a lot and that's when my diary gets maximum attention. But these things don't happen very frequently and it's mostly the typical diary entries. So, it's my personal diary and I wrote it just because I like it. It it helps me in my development in some way then it's entirely coincidental and it wasn't the intention at all.

Yes, as explained above. It can just be anything.

Well, I don't think you could get something useful from my kind of journaling (I believe you are looking for journaling that is done from the productivity point of view and similar expectation; I maybe wrong though). Keep writing is all I would say. I have been writing since I was in class 6 - pretty much 20 years now. Yeah, frequency has gone down a lot since school. No doubt about it.

I'd either just remember it or decide it's not worth remembering.

Beyond that, for me personally it's about liberty. If I don't want to do something, sure I won't do it. But if I do want to do something then I wouldn't let fear get the best of me. Thus not keeping a journal because its contents might be used in a court of law is just a sad state of affairs. Something which I would actively work against, and indeed it's what motivated me to comment here in the first place. It's not even that I think keeping a journal is the best thing ever, but not doing it due to chilling effects is quite horrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

If you record in your journal anything that can be perceived to place you near a crime, whether or not you're guilty or the association is a stretch of the imagination, then your words can be used against you without your right to invoke the 5th amendment. If the journal was seized in the execution of a search warrant, you lose the 4th amendment protections too.

The winning move is to not play.

I use Evernote.

I only do regular tracking of two data points: books I've read (a simple list in Evernote) by year, and board games I've played against a human opponent (on BoardGameGeek).

Whenever I have an idea or thought I want to remember and expand on, I post it as a note to Evernote. Then as my interest in it continues, I revisit, expand, or revise each post. Some of these have grown to thousands of words or whole notebooks unto themselves.

Again, I don't do this (though I want to) but I'll follow this discussion with interest!

The idea is having a mobile application for tracking to a self-hosted api and a web-client for having a feed (like facebook about myself).

This will be released open source once it's somewhat presentable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM&t=1271s

- It is useful to process my thoughts, capture high and low moments in life, braindump when feeling overwhelmed.

- I use VIM + markdown, with a new file per entry. I find it very effective. I journal whenever I feel like I need to or should.

- I don't track aspects, I just write about whatever I feel like writing about.

Like most things in life, the answer is just do it!

the switch from analogue to digital has been interesting. my content is now organized by topic, rather than being a chaotic mess of thoughts and feelings; tags make things searchable, but i don't sketch as much as i used to, which i miss. i'm slowly getting used to having a stylus rather than a pen, but i don't know how long it will take for it to feel natural.

Reviewing them really helped me evaluate and improve my software architecture patterns.

> mutt -s "Today is `date "+%A, %B %d"` - How did your day go?" myemail@gmail.com < /home/phreeza/dailymessage.txt

where dailymessage.txt is just some prompt.

Time distorts self-awareness, and having a written record would help.

Here's an example empty page for a week - https://www.instagram.com/p/BPUIKR1Am3o/

I track some things daily:

* quality things

-- mood

-- energy levels

-- activity level

-- productivity

* tick-box things

-- did I wake up before 8am?

-- did I get to work before 10am?

-- did I hit my step goal?

-- did I do any additional exercise like a really long or strenuous walk?

-- did I do some work on a personal project? (taking photos, working on my game, looking at houses, whatever...)

-- did I record my weight and blood pressure?

-- did I follow my morning/evening routine? (pack/empty dishwasher, did I remember to take my pills, ...)

On a weekly basis, I tally up a few things from my activity trackers - how many days did I hit my sleep goal of 8 hours, what was my average weight/blood pressure, how many total steps did I do, and so forth. I also convert the daily quality things into the number of "good" days and "bad" days in that week on that scale - so maybe one very good mood day and two bad mood days (and the rest acceptable).

I then write down any non-technical-work tasks (we have a task tracker already at work for technical things, after all) I want to get done (either in the future, or on a particular day), or events that I need to remember, generally in the bullet journal style. These are things like:

* Collect building badge

* Write talk submission for conference

* Develop the iPhone photos from the weekend

* Remember that the new X book is out (today, on day X) and I should read it next

* On the 30th of January, remember to send out the invite to the event

Then every Sunday I make a new weekly page, migrate all the unfinished entries forward into the next week, and start again. I'll cross out things I realise that I don't care about any more, and move things that are further in the future than the upcoming week into the "future log". Pick two to three main things to keep in mind, schedule some work onto particular days, if appropriate, and the rest into a general weekly tasks list.

I also move things like vacation or camera gear or game idea one-liners onto a dedicated page - either a full page for the idea, or a page that has a list of those one-liners.

Yes, I find it very useful.

> What tools would you recommend? Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

Sure, here is my current framework:

https://pastebin.com/djyFiZkz

I keep all text files in a journal folder with subfolders for each year. At the end of each week I review the last week's journal entries for information which is applicable to future projects or needs, and move that information into systems of frameworks, which are also described in text files in a different location.

> When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

Both.

I track my mood, as you can see by the DaySCOR item (this rating system is a work in progress and has an alternate look when I use it on paper; it's more of a multidimensional graph on paper).

I've learned that most days are around a 3/5 _no matter how much I accomplish_ unless I make a conscious effort to enjoy the day and just be a happy person. That has been a lesson I didn't expect. I thought that getting more done would make me a happier person, but upon reviewing my numbers, that hasn't been the case at all. Productivity is something of a psychological fake-out, but I haven't gone too deep into why just yet. Psychologically, it seems that a person is much more than just their accomplishments. Also at HN many of us tend to project a very strong productive aspect, which could compound this issue. (That would indicate that we repress an inner lazy person, for one...lack of time off, time out, time away, inability to give the finger to work and just waste a day...the boundary there is not an easy one to navigate for productive people)

I also open a new file for each client project and keep those separate. It's helpful to be able to open my last client project file when working on a new file. I also try not to let information build up in email threads and immediately move project information out of emails and into text files. This is in part because GMail search is so slow and long threads are a pain to search.

> Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

Build your own journaling framework to improve your journaling system. Watch for leverage points that work for you, write them down, and change/refine your framework. This will keep the practice enjoyable and effective for you.

Through two years of journaling I went from obese to healthy weight and only did it by addressing the subject of my weight directly. If you feel like you cannot address tough subjects directly, you may need to change your journaling technology or system or it may fail in its role as a problem-solver. In order to address difficult subject in my paper journals, I leared the simple Ford Shorthand technique at fordshorthand.com and am worry-free when it comes to others possibly prying through my journals. I keep one on the mantle in my home, in fact. Being able to address difficult topics at a time of your liking is crucial.

Something that's really been helping me score high each day lately ( I only do a qualitative scoring entry each day and a quantitative score each week of the accumulated 'feeling' ) is writing down my 'most important tasks' but phrasing it to appeal to my reflective self, along the lines of 'What, if done, would make today a good day? / I'll be pleased with the day if...?' Writing those down first thing gives a great reference point to measure back against.

> I've learned that most days are around a 3/5 _no matter how much I accomplish...

Definitely agree that general mood and fulfillment is more than just productive accomplishment and I try and factor that in, that said, a day without learning something new / practicing something / achieving something and I'll start to feel anxious that I'm not doing enough. Though with a good enough perspective and will and mental tools you could retrospectively mold the outcome of most days to fit those points.