The Art Of Not Asking Why

When I was on a vacation in Disney with my family, I did what every uncle would probably do: take photos and write impressions of our time together. And, like many others, I used my phone. I wanted to reflect on the practice of journalling itself: how to start? What works? What have I learned? I quickly made a couple of notes for a future post in my journal for that, so here it is.

First off, many folks prefer analog journaling: writing with pen and paper. It definitely has its benefits. I tried it myself a couple of times, but it never stuck for too long. I even regret switching in a way now because there’s a big chunk of important journal notes that are sitting in a notebook that I can’s search or link to - but I’m coming around to that.

If you want to start journaling, my advice is to start with your phone. It’s the same advice I’d give to someone who wants to start taking photos. The reason is simple: your phone is always there, and you know how to use it. Once you have a routine going, you could try mixing it up a bit. A notebook is great and can be superior to a digital journal, but it requires that you have it with you at all times, along with a pen. I find that it’s also harder to take notes this way. You can’t really write when you’re on the go (which is when I take many of my notes), or it can be too dark, or it can get wet, and it’s slow, and if your handwriting is as terrible as mine, it means you won’t be able to understand what you write half the time.

One of the main reasons journaling works for me today is because it’s fast. I often dictate what I want to write down, and it only takes a few seconds to create a quick paragraph. This is key. Once that little text is there, I can return to it later - just like I’m doing now, writing this post.

To make digital journaling work, there are a few more requirements I consider essential. The tool of choice for me is Journelly, and I wrote about it a few times, as you can see. But what I’m going to note here is not about this app specifically.

First, it needs to be minimal. For me, I want to start with a blank page with a few distractions. Journelly has a clean interface that adds the location and the weather automatically in two lines, and that’s it. You could do the same thing with many other apps as well. The only exception here is a dedicated photo button or a video recording button, perhaps, because a picture is not just worth a thousand words, it also gives me a quick visual of what I was talking about, and often, where and with whom. By the way, if you didn’t know: the data you capture with photos on a phone will automatically tell you where you’ve been, among a lot more information. This way, you can open a map app later, zoom in, and figure out the name of the place you visited and forgot to write down. This brings me to the second point

Second, it needs to sync and save somewhere that you have access to when you’re not on the phone. Certain things are quicker and better to do on a desktop computer. For me, this is true when it’s time to work on some of my photos or edit some of my writing (dictation is not perfect, especially with my slight accent). As you get more comfortable taking notes, things can get messy. You want to clean up your journal and organize it; some things will be cleaned up, while others will be enhanced with photos and personal reflections a little later. This is an organic process of reflection that makes journaling important: capture and reflect, rinse and repeat.

By the way, if you want to keep handwritten notes, I believe this is the time to do it, when you review your quick notes from the day. Write down in a notebook what you want to save and remember long-term.

Third, you want to be able to search your notes. This can quickly become a topic on its own. The rule of thumb is that the more you write down, the less a simple search will be helpful to you as you go. As time passes, more and more results will show up, and you need to find a way to organize your stuff better or use a better form of search. For example, I can search by keywords (hashtags) in Journelly, but I can also search for whole sentences and drill down by context using fancy grep commands availble withing Emacs and Denote that I won’t get into here, but to give a quick example: I can search for a “resturant” which will bring up many notes, but then I can preform a search on those results which contains “spaghetti” and “Frank” because I remember the dish I had with my good friend Frank, for exmaple.

Fourth, don’t use proprietary apps if possible. I keep private and essential notes, and storing them on the cloud (be it Google, Apple, or whatever) is not an option. I don’t trust these companies to always keep my account open, and I don’t want to be locked out of my own stuff one day (which did happen to me before. I learned this the hard way). There are plenty of ways to achieve this, but unfortunately, most of them fall into the more tech-savvy realm. I promise, though, it’s not that hard. If you’re reading this post and you feel you need help in that regard, write me back, and I’ll gladly help.

I will say this, however: if I have to choose between having my notes saved in a safe place and keeping them private, I will choose the former. I could always find a creative way to make private things more private.

For me, journaling has extended to how I keep notes. Since my journalling system is convenient and reliable (for the most part), I opted to use the same app to keep meeting notes, quick pictures of issues at work with comments, recipes, ideas for posts, etc. Some folks won’t call this journaling, and I can understand that. As I mentioned, the more “journal-like” part happens when I go over my notes later. For me, the main thing is to write down everything first so I can figure out where it goes (if at all) later. I can always edit/extend/move/delete entries I don’t need, but I don’t want to get stuck thinking about which app I need to use for what; I need to have the ability to just do it.

Journaling has become so integrated in my life today that I honestly don’t know how my life would look without it. I always note something down one way or another.