

Ask HN: Do you keep a diary? - liu3hao

Just wondering if people maintain diaries today. If you do, how long have you maintained it and what were your reasons for keeping a diary? Thanks!
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Pyrodogg
I've tried a couple of times to keep an actual paper journal. Every attempt
fell flat after within the second or third week. Even online attempts with
tools like Google Docs, didn't hold out.

Last year (8 days short of exact) I started using the OhLife.com service. Oh
Life will email you everyday at a set time of your choosing. All you do is
reply to the email with your entry, you can even add a photo, and they store
it away.

The emails also come with excerpts from past entries. E.g. "Two weeks ago you
wrote...". (You can turn this off) Finally, the service comes with export
features when you care to leave.

If you don't feel like writing anything for the day, just delete the email.
When you get the next one tomorrow you can pick right back up. I still don't
hit every day but I consistently at least recap the events in a week.

You can probably directly correlate the length of my entries with how stressed
out I am about something in my life. My reason for starting a journal is to
slow down and reflect upon things when otherwise things are just too crazy. It
helps both at the time of writing, and later if I care to read through things
again with a clear mind. When you're stressed out you can do all manner of
irrational things when you're not thinking things through clearly.

Since starting, I've also picked up on writing about the pleasant things in my
life. E.g. fun nights out with my gf and friends, vacations, funny things at
work. Even when things seem dull and boring I'll at least throw it into a
weekly recap.

~~~
mapster
would be good to enable a feature where you have to submit emails of at least
one friend. when you fail to submit a daily entry, you friend gets an email to
encourage you. knowing someone else will be pestered about your slacking will
be just one more motivating factor. :)

~~~
Pyrodogg
So far, I think the daily emails are enough of a reminder. Even if you skip a
day, it comes back the next automatically. With a paper journal, if you forget
one day and it gets buried there is no external process that's reminding you
to do it. (Except your then guilt ridden conscience)

Also, I don't think the dynamic of having a friend involved would work to
well. Why would I like to be bothered if my friend can't keep his commitment
to write a journal. As soon as it becomes a habit and they don't fix it, I'm
just going to mark it as spam.

~~~
mapster
I think its key to bring the social aspect of the net in from rather a passive
thing to an engaged thing. I certainly would sponsor a good friend to stay on
track. It would likely motivate me to do the same so in would be reciprocal.

------
kerryfalk
Yes. I do. I had tried before and found that I failed quickly because I would
try and do like everyone suggests, set a specific time and make sure I write
in it. Or at the very least write once a day.

That didn't work for me at all. It felt like a chore, and one that I didn't
enjoy so I just stopped. This time I bought one (A nice Moleskine) when I was
struggling internally for a long period and felt I just needed to get some
things out. I wrote in it frequently during that time and only wrote in it
when I felt like I needed to or wanted to. Any time of the day, didn't matter
when it was.

I find this to be really helpful and going back and reading what I had wrote
is very interesting. The whole process is great. I still write in it although
not as frequently right now. The frequency varies. The only trick is that I
keep it with me in my laptop bag so when I feel like writing it's available.

Also having a pen and paper is far better for me than typing it in
electronically. I can't see myself changing that habit. So if I were to pass
on any advice I would say buy one and keep it close to you at all times so
that when you feel like writing you can. This is what worked for me - your
milage may vary.

~~~
polyfractal
Echoing this post, and adding "Fountain Pens".

Seriously, a nice fountain pen makes writing so much more enjoyable. Grab
yourself a decent (>$30) fountain pen and a quality ink (I like Noodler's).
Combined with a journal that has quality paper, your writing experience will
be so much more pleasant. Fountain pens encourage better style and your hand
doesn't cramp since no pressure is required.

Plus, it's nice not having chicken-scratch that looks like a ten year old's
writing (or a CS major)

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ZackOfAllTrades
I've kept a diary of sorts most of this year. Every night before I go to bed I
try to fill a notebook page with all my thoughts from the day. Think about
what I want to do tomorrow.

What I ended up doing by mistake which I really like is that when I get to the
end of a diary, I have usually written only on the front side of pages. So I
start writing on the back sides of the pages and I watch as my life unfolds in
reverse. I can see how I felt yesterday, then 3 days ago, then 5 days ago, and
then it gets to several months. And I am looking back on how I thought/felt
and seeing all these patterns. You start looking at what you wrote in a
different like. Patterns, like maybe a person in your life being sad often or
a certain idea that you keep writing about, start to really emerge clearly.

I think it is a worthwhile habit if you want to understand your mind. It also
helps me sleep most of the time by letting me get stuff out of my head.

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madhouse
Since I put every interesting thing I do (be that code, documentation, poetry,
blog entries, or just random stuff, including pictures I take) in git, one
could count that as a kind of diary.

I've been keeping such a thing for over a decade now, first in CVS, then in
TLA (aka GNU Arch) and now in Git.

All my mails since about 1998 is kept and archived aswell.. and the reason I
keep everything, and store them in git, is because I have an unnatural desire
to cling on to every bit of stuff I wrote, every discussion I've been involved
in, and so on. Having it in git also allows me to easily replicate all or
parts of it on my different machines, as a cheap backup solution.

------
lokor
I wanted to create an audiojournal so i could store my longer thoughts that
would be tedious to type. For example, a dream journal. So I created an
autohotkey script that would accept tags and then open up audacity and record
whatever I had to say. The script exports it as an mp3 and appends the mp3 to
a playlist. In this way, I can listen to all my audio notes on a particular
subject, like review from my biochemistry class. I posted it on the forum,
with a bunch of other scripts I use:
[http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=465918#46591...](http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=465918#465918)

------
ethank
I keep a work log using Day One on the Mac/iOS. Mostly so I can remember who I
called, changes I made to code, etc. I rarely if ever look back on it.

That being said, I never delete anything and have files going back 18 years on
my Drobo, so I can pretty much have a record of online activity for over half
my life.

