

Great Men Keep Journals - robjama
http://artofmanliness.com/2009/06/07/30-days-to-a-better-man-day-8-start-a-journal/

======
dabent
I used to journal for years and stopped. Then I messed with OhLife (a YC
startup) and kept going with it. I'm not connected with them other than being
a user, but if you're online anyway, it's a pretty handy tool to keep a
journal. <http://ohlife.com/>

It's also a good example of a clean design and user experience.

~~~
sleight42
Interesting. Somewhat off-topic but what on earth is their business model?
Journals are private. There are no advertisements. The service is free.

YCombinator hopes to make money from this how?

Don't get me wrong: it's a simple and clever idea. Just... it's not
philanthropy, is it?

~~~
alanfalcon
They send you an e-mail daily... one that you presumably actually look forward
to getting. Surely they could add an advertisement to this e-mail if they
wanted?

~~~
sleight42
Probably.

And don't call me "Shirley".

I'm so sorry. I just couldn't resist....

(If you don't get it, watch this movie soon:
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/>)

~~~
idoh
Never explain jokes! You can dissect a joke, but it dies in the process.

~~~
dhimes
But it's ok to point to a reference for the joke. It helps to educate people.

------
dstorrs
This is obvious selection bias, on several axes. Here are two of them:

\- There is more/richer information available on people who keep journals, so
it's easier to make the case for their greatness.

\- If someone does great things but no record is kept, they are not
acknowledged.

I enjoyed the stories of his grandfather, but the flawed reasoning in the
argument annoyed me.

~~~
Periodic
It's a case of inverted causality. The author thinks that because a lot of
great people _he knows about_ wrote journals that writing journals helps make
a great man. It may in fact be that great men that write journals are the ones
he knows about.

It does not address the (likely many many) people who keep journals but will
not be considered great.

It is a valid point that keeping a journal does increase your legacy as it
becomes easier to write memoirs for your grandchildren. Even if no one else
will read it, they will have a vivid portrait.

------
Andrew_Quentin
I have written a journal almost constantly since I was perhaps 15.

I love it. I can express on it all of my emotions, but still secrets are kept.
I can write on it all of my thoughts.

It is, I must say, because of the journals I have kept that I have overcome so
much adversity and it is journals which help me to push myslef further, and
become better, every singl day. More often I do not know it, but the simple
act of sitting in front of my computer and writing my thoughts down helps
tremendously towards taking me further to what I want.

The problem I think is that, all the journals I have written, perhaps five or
six, are now forever gone and deleted.

The strange thing is that in every entry, though I primarely write about
myself and for myself, I aboslutley feel like there is an audience out there.
Yet the more stranger thing is that, regardless of the imaginary glory of the
moment, a diary to me is a personal thing, for my eyes only. It is something
which maks sense to me only, and sometimes, to the moment that I wrote it
alone.

Diaries can be dangerous. They are a perfect tool for narrowing your thinking.
What you want is repeated over and ver, to the point that you do not feel that
you want it anymore but are just saying so.

But I love writing journal entires. Despite the many journals that were
deleted by whim and others that were deleted not by choice, I love writing
them.

A journal makes me mak sense of what is was ad could be, and tthat, abouve my
childrens fascination, is why I write them, despite the fact that they end up
deleted and disapeared forever.

~~~
kentosi
I'm sorry but could you please explain the difference between a diary and a
journal? I just realised that I have no idea what the difference is ...

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
I used the terms interchangeably.

------
warbee
I love blank books. I feel like there's so much potential to fill it with
random thoughts, ideas, doodles. Most of all, I have a greater appreciation
for just being able to exercise my handwriting. I feel like that is the one
skill I have taken for granted since school. Granted it's much faster to type
down my thoughts, but I take greater pleasure in trying to decipher--if not
improve--my handwriting.

------
ChuckFrank
Always remember that diaries are admissible in both the courts of law and
public opinion. Contrary to actions, diaries can unequivocally prove state of
mind. Furthermore diaries will not speak in the voice of those that wrote it,
but will speak in the words of those that read it. So when deciding to keep a
journal, ask yourself "what would Bob Packwood do?"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Packwood> Knowing what he knows now, he
would decide not to.

~~~
dctoedt
You'll also spend money on the legal fees required to have your lawyer (or
paralegal) review your diaries / journals to see what parts must be produced
to the other side and what parts can be withheld.

Here's an example of what can happen if you don't screen your document
production. I once took the deposition of a guy who was suing my client, his
former employer, claiming that he owned an invention he'd made for them. The
guy kept a diary. Instead of giving me only the diary entries that had to do
with the invention, his lawyer just turned over the entire diary for the
relevant period -- including entries about feeding live mice to his pet snake.
Needless to say, in the deposition I asked the guy about that. Snake-feeding
was completely irrelevant to the case, but if we'd gone to trial, I imagine I
would have tried to find some way to put that testimony and those diary
entries in front of the jury. (We didn't go to trial because the judge granted
summary judgment for my client.) My guess is that the lawyer wished he'd
screened the diary before producing it to me.

------
beza1e1
I just wrote myself a little script. Let's see, if it sticks ...

    
    
      $ cat bin/journal 
      #!/bin/bash
      FILE=${HOME}/Dropbox/journal.txt
      echo >>${FILE}
      date >>${FILE}
      echo >>${FILE}
      vim + ${FILE}

~~~
jcw
I've been using this zsh function for a year or two:

    
    
            jr () {
                echo "---"
                echo "\n##"`date +" %a %D %l:%M%P"` >> ~/journal.txt 
                cat >> ~/journal.txt
            }
    

It usually emits 72 dashes, so that I can stay within that margin (manually,
heh). Edited to not break HN. The '##' is because I habitually markdown format
everything.

~~~
Khroma
That seems kind of unsafe to me, since it's all keeping it in one file.

~~~
nlco
How is it unsafe? (asking because I don't know, not to contradict)

~~~
nitrogen
One accidental command and every entry is lost, not just one entry or the most
recent. Adding a "git commit journal.txt; git push offsite master" or
something similar to your journal script will alleviate that risk.

Edit: you also don't have file timestamps to show when an entry was actually
written, in case that matters to you.

------
wccrawford
Sounds to me like he just failed to find any great men that didn't keep a
journal. It's by no means a common trait among them.

------
vimalg2
I found 750words.com useful to get me started on the Private Journalling
habit. It also helps with brainstorming on the days when i feel like doing
that.

The site uses game mechanics to keep you at it, until you no longer need the
game mechanics - You just do it everyday without the reminder email or the
Badges. They have a one-month challenge as well for those inclined for healthy
competition.

750words.com/one_month/accept

Everybody 'wins' as long as they stick it out.

------
scotch_drinker
I've kept a journal off and on since my junior year in high school (20 years)
and while I'd never claim to be a great man, it certainly is fascinating to
look back over time at the things I was going through, the things I chose to
write about, the times I wasn't writing, etc. I've found patterns (like I
don't write in the summer much which corresponds to pretty much everything
else - summers in Texas are brutal), worked through personal issues and of
late, I've started working on convincing myself to do something completely
different with my life by examining my meditations in the journal.

I tend to find writing easy but I think even jotting down what you did in a
day could be useful on all kinds of levels. I recommitted myself this year to
journal regularly every morning when I wake up and so far, it's been a fun and
enlightening experience.

------
mhd
I think before I could keep a handwritten journal again, I'd have to learn
either shorthand or drawing. Besides resisting the temptation to self-pity, of
course.

Might actually a good idea for some neat new skills this years. Sadly last
time I looked there were too many shorthand systems (and the default German
one looked rather complicated), and I've yet to find a drawing book that makes
me seem less clumsy ("Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" was recommended
here before, but didn't do anything for me).

------
dkarl
I kept a journal on a couple of backpacking trips. I ended up spending over an
hour a night on it and would have kept going if it weren't for exhaustion.
Eventually I couldn't bring myself to start an entry because I couldn't face
the commitment.

Usually my days aren't as interested and filled with introspection as when I'm
backpacking, though. I just signed up with <http://ohlife.com/> as mentioned
by dabent.

------
rahoulb
For work I have weekly text files, where I write down what I'm doing.

Originally this was to help me compile the weekly timesheets that my (then)
employer required.

But the notes saved me from a lawsuit and I know find it useful for keeping
notes on why I'm building things a particular way (especially when coupled
with grep/ack/Spotlight).

For personal stuff, I have an A5 hardback book and a fountain pen - nothing
beats it.

------
theprodigy
Journaling is very good for the mind. I have a lot of random thoughts and
theories about business, life, politics, science,etc that I love to document.
Writing it down forces you to think out my ideas into something coherent.It's
fun to look back in your jounal and see what you were right or wrong about.
And for some reason it is an emotional release.

I use a livescribe pen to jounal. Stores everything I write down digitally.

------
sabatier
I used to keep a journal and found it very therapeutic writing my innermost
thoughts and then as I got older I'd laugh at the things that stressed me out
when I was younger. Then my mum found it one day and started reading it and
that put an end to it... I've tried doing it online but it's just not the same
as writing it in a beautifully bound journal and flicking through the pages.

~~~
elviejo
I've wanted to keep a journal for several years. But I just didn't stick to
the habit.

But now <http://ohlife.com> has changed that.

The fact that they send you an email daily And in the same email they also put
a random memory from your past has really helped me stick with the habit.

I'm into 4 months... I think it works.

Maybe you would enjoy it too...

~~~
losvedir
It's a neat interface and very compelling.

I just signed up since I've been wanting to keep a journal, just never gotten
around to it.

------
startupmike
I've created a web site called "PublicLog.com" which is at
<http://publiclog.com>

It's 100% public.

It's for sharing your activities (past, present, future) and learning about
other user's activities.

(I know, I know the UIX design is horrible! I'm working on improving it!)

Hope you find it useful.

------
omouse
There was another trend back in the day, something like a bookmark/quotes
book. You would write in this journal quotes and page numbers from books/poems
that you liked so that you could refer to them later on. The nice thing is
that by writing down the quote, you would also be more likely to remember it
and the surrounding context. I read Byron's Don Juan and man, if I didn't
write down a few quotes and page numbers I would have forgotten what happened
in this epic story!

------
elasticdog
Are there any good command-line journaling applications out there? I'm
thinking about writing something simple that would automatically organize
entries into separate monthly files, add date headers, store everything in
version control, etc.

Googling for "command line journal", unfortunately, is not the right way to
search for such a beast...

------
bergie
Here is a quite easy way to add journal entries via Emacs org-mode:
[http://phunculist.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/adding-a-
journal-...](http://phunculist.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/adding-a-journal-
entry-using-org-mode/)

I'm currently looking at syncing org-mode files through a private GitHub repo.

------
vdm
Case in Point: Excerpts from Captain Rich Habib's Journal during The Race to
Save the Cougar Ace

[http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_s...](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys_journal)

------
JoelMcCracken
The digital/analog divide is a problem for me. I love the process of putting
pencil to paper and writing, but amazing tools like org mode keep me on my
computer. I hope eventually I discover how to properly balance these two types
of logging.

------
javahava
another helpful site for keeping a journal: <http://www.inboxjournal.com>. i
like that the site sends email reminders where you can post entries, and that
it has a clean interface.

------
acconrad
Every time I read a title like this, I just picture Teddy Roosevelt. Figures
this link is from art of manliness.

------
lhnn
I keep a Moleskine journal in my rear jeans pocket. It's small, and contours
to the curve after a day or two so you don't even notice it's there. I keep it
with me like I keep my keys and wallet, without exception.

I write on it on a semi-regular basis. The purpose of keeping with me is so I
have something to write on as ideas come up, as girls give phone numbers, or
ifI have free time to write down the thoughts of the day. That last part is
the most important: I never liked sitting down and braindumping my day in a
blog or a big book; I write a lot more when I can do it at any moment,
sentences at a time.

I've been doing this since September 2007. 3 years, 3 months later, I'm on
journal 14.

~~~
hammock
I do the same thing but mine's a Field Notes. Smaller (about the size of 2.5
credit cards). I write my travel itinerary, phone numbers and dates, random
ideas, todos, etc. It's also good for sketching, something which my smartphone
cannot handle.

Would love to find a book that has a more durable, fabric cover though as
opposed to a paper one. Sort of like the old US passports had, my passport has
seen so much abuse it ought to be illegal. Anyone know of one?

~~~
naner
I actually use a small sketch book. Hard cover, acid free paper with no lines,
and heavy enough paper that ink doesn't show through. Also about 1/3 the price
of a Moleskin.

------
jw84
Now it's called blogging. Xanga -> LiveJournal -> Tumblr.

~~~
bmj
Did you read the article? Blogging is mentioned.

Personally, while I do blog periodically, my journal is entirely different
than what I publish online. My journal is for my own consumption. Some things
that are written down there (I prefer pen and paper) may end up online or in
an essay, but others won't see the light of day (often for good reasons).

~~~
jw84
I write the same way in my blog as I do in a diary and leave it open with my
name attached. I prefer it.

Other than that I'm not sure what we're arguing about. Though it is
interesting you have things to hide.

~~~
maxwell
For me it's not having things to "hide", it's editing and keeping drafts. And
I sometimes like pen and paper to supress premature editing. If I have a
keyboard, it's hard to keep my fingers off Alt and Ctrl. (I exclusively use
web apps and I haven't found/made a good browser-Vi yet.)

~~~
bmj
Why is it a bad thing to keep some thoughts to yourself? And I'm not
necessarily referring to thoughts about other people.

