Journaling Just Works

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A place to discuss anything related to keeping a journal, a diary, a planner, a bullet journal, art/junk journal. Productivity, self-help, mindfulness, memory-keeping, creativity, project management or any other purpose.

Paper and digital alike.

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Two different journals in one? (jlai.lu)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This year, I wanted to start keeping a reading journal.

That’s certainly not a revolutionary idea, but I still managed to get stuck on a simple technical consideration: should I use a dedicated journal? Or write them in my existing journal, next to my usual entries? But then, how would I be able to easily spot my reading entries and distinguish them from the journal entries?

In the end, I decided I would do everything in my existing journal but that I would write reading entries in a different color from standard journal entries. It’s simple enough while still making it very easy to instantly tell them apart.

What would you do?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Lists are a blessing when they’re accompanied by regular reviews.

I have also learnt the value in lists! I keep todo lists among other things, and find my time is quite a lot more productive than it used to be.

That’s one of the two jobs of my Zettelkasten (an index card system) in which I index every meaningful bit of info, including journal entries I consider potentially useful and now book review entries. Even if it’s 100% analog it’s a great system that works wonders, I would not want to change it, but I must say it’s still not as instant to find anything as using Ctrl/Cmd-F ;)

Yes that's great. The other thing I mentioned is it's always with me (via my phone), and another is that it's house-burned-down-proof. I know it's not the same as physical paper, but I'm quite a digital fellow. It's been over 5 years since I printed anything at work (I'm not even set up to use the printers), and I think it's been over 10 years since I had any habit of keeping anything I've printed. For personal things, my printer is used more for scanning than printing, and when printing it's usually to print something for the kids. I had terrible handwriting as a kid (still do, as did my dad, and his parents before him) and so I guess I've avoided writing with a pen most of my life (which of course hasn't helped the situation). I'm also a terrible typist but I have no excuse for that one.

I understand that, my approach is not as precise (no clear start/en date but I’m still able to rely on the dates in my journal) , I will have to see if it’s an issue and if I need more.

I kept the dates because I wanted to see how long it took me to read a book in addition to when I read it. It also created a bit of pressure, "I need to stop browsing Lemmy and go and read some of that book otherwise I'll have to write that it took me 6 months to finish it".