Benefits of Journaling
Instead of repeating the benefits of Journaling, I'm just going to start by pointing you to some better resources and focus on the tools I use to Journal:
Initial setup
Ordinarily I prefer tags/labels to notebooks because it enables multi-dimensional relationships, instead of the traditional linear 1:1 relationships of paper and notebook paradigm. However I feel that my Journal is important enough to have an entire Evernote notebook devoted to it. I do however still use tags to separate between the themes - Baby, Home and Work
To help with reviewing my journal at a later date I limit my posts to roughly a tweet in length. This keeps it concise and to the point.
Frictionless Journaling
Writing a diary/journal is one of those things you always start off with the best intentions but ultimately fail. Doing nothing is the path of least resistance. So I have been using custom Drafts actions, to save my "state" directly to the right place in Evernote, as close to the moment and with as little resistance as possible. These "states" could consist of:
- Insights you identify about myself.
- Feelings in the moment which require revisiting.
- Memories of things which you do not want to forget.
- My achievements and milestone.
- Etc
To supplement my entries I have set up automatic triggers using IFTTT to duplicate Facebook and Twitter posts to my Journal.
To help with reviewing my journal at a later date I limit my posts to roughly a tweet in length. This keeps it concise and to the point.
Reflection
The real value is in reflection of these entries, without all the feeling and pressures of the situation you journaled about. I have a monthly reminder to review the previous months entries using saved searches in evernote for each of my themes/contexts I want to review.
Want to know more about Why I use Evernote
Want to know more about Why I use Evernote
