Tip: Keep a Journal

[britchard]

It's got to be on paper. I started, like you, this year. So I'm only on my third day, and I'm using a hardback diary (as it already has the dates for each day written in) that has 2 days per A5 size page, and then I just cram as much in as I can.

For example, yesterday I wrote down some notes related to an eBook I'm reading, and then just added a general summary of how I thought the day went (it was fairly unremarkable). However on New Year's Day, I had something on my mind so I just wrote and wrote my thoughts on to the paper.

I'll be using only paper, nothing digital. I feel like if it is digital, then I'm more likely to give up the habit and forget about it. If there a photos I want to include, I'll print them off and stick 'em in the diary.

 

[LeoneVolpe]

I've tried keeping a journal a few times. I'll do a good job of writing in it for a while, but eventually I'll stop updating it. I've let two things, primarily, keep me from doing better about keeping one:

1.) Fear of others reading it

Any journal worth keeping is one in which you're writing about some highly personal shit. While it wasn't a journal per se, I once had a girl find a list I'd written (and hid in my glovebox along with insurance documents) of girls I'd fucked. Thankfully I hadn't added her to the list yet, so I was able to deny it being what it actually was. She knew better though, but as Alonzo Harris famously stated in "Training Day" -- it's not what you know, it's what you can prove.

2.) Looking back versus moving forward

Reflection is no doubt important, but writing takes a long time -- well, at least to write well. I found the time I spent looking back took away from the time I could spend working to better myself in the present whilst keeping an eye toward the future.

Of course now I wish I had kept journals, but hindsight is 20/20 -- and who knows? Perhaps if I'd spent more time writing, I'd have spent less time doing and had fewer adventures worth writing about in the first place.

 

[polar]

I tried starting a journal a while back but got too in-depth and abandoned what turned into an excessive time commitment.

I like the idea of something like this as it keeps time investment low while still having room for key points - one page per day, split into three lines or so per year. Best part is when you get to the end and start over again and you get flashbacks.

https://www.amazon.com/One-Line-Day-Five-Year-Memory/dp/0811870197

 

[Jack Of All Trades]

Writing things down physically on paper actually makes me memorize things much more easily as I can have muscle memory to attach to a thought. I don't actually go back to re read much of my written stuff, because I can take a quick peek and know what I wrote way back.

As for people who say it's a huge time commitment, you can just pen something down every day or once a week as long as you write something down it's good to know what happened.