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Journaling

Here's my thinking

When I'm developing software, and there's some glitch, what I'll sometimes do is go back into the source where I suspect there might be a problem, and try to figure it out.

When in regular life, though, I'm thinking what I should do is start keeping a journal. Then when I ask myself "What was I thinking!?" I can go and find out exactly. Then remind myself "Oh yeah, don't think that."

Also sometimes I vent online when I shouldn't. And in some cases it may be seen by people I might not, and sometimes it's googlable and everything.

So I downloaded a journal program for the Mac that looked pretty spiffy. But then I realized why I make my to-do lists by hand -- there are certain things that just look stupid typed. And if I kept it in a digital format, there's always that risk of anyone who finds it reproducing it quite easily.

I went and ordered a Moleskine ruled large notbook thing, 'cause they seemed nice (and the descriptions of reminded me a little bit, for some reason, of the journal Winston purchases in 1984). I can't wait to get it -- I ordered it with cheapo Media Mail shipping which takes forever.

I figure what I should do is set aside a small amount of time every day, probably before bed, to write in it. I could put down thoughts, ideas, reflections, etc, and probably start to develop some conventions for doing so to make it easy to go back and see (e.g. the 'meta data' notebook hacks on here).

Does anyone here journal? Is it a useful activity? Any journaling hacks?

Ecgtheow's picture

Does anyone else have this...

amoody wrote:

Does anyone else have this problem? What do you do to make sure your journal stays private?

I journal/note take in my planner (Franklin classic size) and I keep it with me, or hidden, and I purge any unkind entries about my wife or in-laws or whatever fairly often.

I have an advantage that even if someone finds it, and tries to read it, my handwriting is so bad that they won't be able to decipher it. In fact, even I have trouble reading old entries...

--Ecg

 
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