My non-obvious observation after five years in this field:
In essence, journalling is similar to a psychotherapy session.
The clarity of mind you get after a journalling session comes from structuring things in your head, not in your TfT tool.
Yet, as one would expect, people project that feeling onto a tool — which leads to more time invested.
Ultimately after the N-th session, when you try to use the tool to get more of that feeling — you get the opposite, burnout, and then people switch to a new TfT app for the same cycle.
These benefits are why "Daily Pages" were vital to Roam Research's success. Not the bi-directional links or graphs as many think.
"Daily Pages" get you closer to a new therapeutic session, which is what you want most of the time.
I use :
- paper notebooks.
- remarkable 2
- markdown/notion + NeuraCache [I'm a founder] for flashcards and spaced repetition
+ I've been in group and individual therapy for three years now.
I've found the same, the catharsis of writing the "Daily Notes Pages" [0] is probably the main benefit of these systems.
In my case, the immediacy of handwriting has been a better fit than typing for this purpose. I also use the reMarkable 2 with a linked pdf planner [1] that I built, and with some custom collections I find it hits about 90% of what I'd use a "proper" TfT for. Obsidian and Logseq still look pretty seductive, but I know I'd spend most of my time in the weeds configuring plugins etc.
I'm hoping the rM2's OCR and export capabilities improve over time so that we could combine the benefits of quick, effortless capture on that device (via handwriting) with automated categorization, linking and search (on my laptop, maybe via Obsidian/Logseq/etc). There's a lot of potential if someone can effectively bridge that gap! It's something I hope to explore some more this year.
> In essence, journalling is similar to a psychotherapy session.
Thus why I journal. I don't do it daily, but when I do, it gets my thoughts out and I find that once they are out, it just helps to put words to something that you might be feeling.. well, isn't that what you pay a therapist for, right?
Our tools differ, but our end goal is more or less the same. I keep it as simple as possible, because as you said, burnout is real.
I also agree that the one most useful habit is a daily log. It hits the sweet spot for me in terms of low friction + benefits in organizing information.
In essence, journalling is similar to a psychotherapy session.
The clarity of mind you get after a journalling session comes from structuring things in your head, not in your TfT tool.
Yet, as one would expect, people project that feeling onto a tool — which leads to more time invested.
Ultimately after the N-th session, when you try to use the tool to get more of that feeling — you get the opposite, burnout, and then people switch to a new TfT app for the same cycle.
These benefits are why "Daily Pages" were vital to Roam Research's success. Not the bi-directional links or graphs as many think.
"Daily Pages" get you closer to a new therapeutic session, which is what you want most of the time.
I use :
+ I've been in group and individual therapy for three years now.I have never been happier with my setup.