My Top Tip To Keeping A Journal
You’ll be surprised how simple it is
January 2021 (the 15th, to be exact) is when I started to keep a daily journal.
I’d been thinking about writing one but couldn’t quite get my head around it. Why would I write down what I’d done that day? I didn’t understand.
I’m not one for writing goals, and every day I’m thankful — for everything.
Then, I saw the light.
After reading about other people keeping journals to help them clear their minds, it seemed to me that was the perfect reason.
I’ve always ‘preached’ about getting stuff out of your head and into a task manager, so you don’t forget anything, but it never occurred to me that I could do the same thing, just to clear my head from the thoughts of the day.
So it was that I began.
If you’re interested, I started using the note-taking app Bear, my note-taking app of choice at the time, and I used the date as a title, with tags to help with the sorting.
That didn’t really do it for me, and in July, I discovered the Day One app.
This was a game-changer. I have been using Day One ever since and soon upgraded to get all the bells and whistles (of which I’m still not using them all)!
I also read a great article by Justin Cox on his personal blog about automating Day One using Siri Shortcuts.
I imported all of my previous journal entries, so they are now in Day One, and I can’t wait for the year to tick round, and I start to see reminders of what happened “on this day in history.”
At the time of writing this, with just a few days to go until the anniversary of starting my journal, I have:
- 682 entries:
- 180 media entries, of which there are:
- 163 photos,
- 11 videos,
- Five audio clips. I intend to make more use of audio this year. I think vox-pops are a great way to capture a moment.
Tweets
I have also started to capture tweets that I like, and when I post a tweet, it adds an entry too. I may need to rethink the benefit of this, as it’s filling up the timeline, but looking back might be interesting.
Health
To supplement my daily journal, I also created a secondary, Health journal. This is where I capture my blood glucose readings and record my weight each week. I started this when I began Intermittent Fasting, but I haven’t really written about that in the journal itself. It’s been more a record of weights and measures!
Keeping a journal has really helped me to get things off my chest. To air my thoughts and feelings that I might not want to share publicly.
When I get really annoyed about how someone has behaved, I write it down. I sometimes even try to justify their behaviour, but capturing it has certainly helped me.
Not to mention writing about all the great times too.
Days out, short breaks, family nights out; these are all times to treasure, and having them pop up in years to come will certainly put a smile on my face.
My Number One Tip
My number one tip to keeping a journal is to make time for yourself and shut off all distractions.
Of course, you can do this just by sitting quietly, but I’ve also set up a Focus mode on my iPhone so that when the Day One app is running, I don’t get any notifications.
Now I can just “be in the moment” and concentrate on what I want to write.
Bonus Tip
If you’ve ever thought about keeping a journal, then just do it.
Get started.
It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece to begin with. Just the act of doing will be enough.
Happy Journaling
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