I was not into journaling for a long time. Maybe I would write something if I was feeling particularly sad, or happy, if I had achieved something that I would want to remember. But I wasn’t consistent with it. While reading Derek Sivers’ talk about their daily journaling practice, I felt I needed to be consistent with it. Consistency was the point.

Today, I read Victoria Song talk about journaling, especially this part:

Some days, it’s abundantly obvious what you should write about. A great tragedy, a joyous occasion, an event you’ve been looking forward to — anything that sparks a strong emotion is an obvious prompt. But most days pass without much happening at all, forcing you to sift through mundane minutiae to find anything worth recording. That’s the point. Honing your discernment, exercising your brain, wracking your vocabulary to find the right phrase to express your inner world. These are not things that are supposed to be easy.

I felt motivated to write about my own reasons. Here they are:

• As future notes to myself, as random things I might read back on. As things my future self might reference.
• As a kind of therapy, a signal to wind down after a long day.
• So that one day, if Savya wants to, he could train an AI on these notes and ask the AI, if Dad were here, what would he think, or say.

Principles

• Do daily journaling, preferably at the end of the day.
  • If it’s not possible to do it at the end of the day, do it early next morning
• Write anything
  • What I did
  • What happened and how it made me feel