[HN Gopher] Show HN: I fixed journaling for myself
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Show HN: I fixed journaling for myself
Journaling is a great practice to learn more about yourself - if
done daily. I tried it multiple times and couldn't stick to it.
This project is how I finally fixed it for myself. It works by
eliminating my excuses. There is only one question a day that I'll
answer - no time spent on "finding the perfect topic". I only need
to go to the page - not find my notebook or create a new
note/paragraph in another app. I only left myself a relatively
small input area, less than a page in a small notebook - that way
the commitment doesn't feel too big. I really enjoy the process
and it has become something that I do early in the morning - a
little bit of time for myself. It's now public because I am sure
it could work for you too. Bonus: The data is all local, the input
will be saved in the browser (IndexedDB) while I type, no login
necessary - the full journal is accessible as a CSV (bottom right).
https://dailyprompt.org
Author : kuehle
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-07-18 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dailyprompt.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dailyprompt.org)
| ComputerCat wrote:
| Hmm I like the idea of prompts, it has always helped me when
| trying to think of what to write... but I also like the actual
| act of physically writing on paper. This is a great idea for
| somebody who prefers to work on the computer though!
| stomczyk09 wrote:
| What a great idea for people that don't have too much time! I
| personally try to stick with the same topic every night(something
| on the theme of "what went well" or "what are you grateful for").
| However, this is a great way to speed things up and start putting
| ideas/thoughts on paper. Also keeping it locally stored is great
| from a privacy standpoint.
|
| My only question: is there an "open" feature that makes the
| prompt optional for folks who maybe have something more pressing
| to journal about than something that the prompt may suggest that
| day?
| kuehle wrote:
| There is not yet an open feature as you suggested but I feel
| like this could be nice. Not only for journaling but also for
| todo lists or similar, just starting every day with a blank
| sheet.
|
| I saw that "1 Day" as suggested in another comment seems to be
| basically that.
|
| I'll play around with it later.
| pidusd wrote:
| This is awesome! Had been looking for something like this for a
| while.
|
| Small suggestion/question (you would have probably thought about
| it and I wonder if you consciously decided against it) - why not
| provide a way to seamlessly store it in cloud storage - google
| drive, etc?
| kuehle wrote:
| I guess this is one of many ways to improve it, I can still
| give my reasoning:
|
| With the current setup you don't have any setup. You don't need
| an account, you can just start.
|
| As I wrote above, trying to minimize all of the friction, this
| was easy to implement and made sense.
|
| How would you imagine the cloud storage feature?
| em-bee wrote:
| i am confused by the prompt i am getting: " _Write about a time
| in your life when you struggled with a choice and made the right
| one_ "
|
| i understand journaling to be about today, not something eventful
| in the past. that prompt i'd be tempted to answer with a multi
| page essay.
|
| the key for me for journaling is habit. the habit to do this
| every day, and not to skip. the prompt doesn't matter. i just
| write about anything noteworthy from that day.
|
| with a plain text editor, into a file.
|
| it's not ideal though. it's the last thing i do before going to
| sleep, and once in a while i miss an entry. and on some days, i
| feel there is nothing to write.
| kuehle wrote:
| > and on some days, i feel there is nothing to write
|
| This is what I was trying to fix for myself.
|
| And I found that creating a new text document is just an
| additional friction.
|
| > i'd be tempted to answer with a multi page essay
|
| This is what I visually restricted the input field for as I
| also feel like some questions would otherwise suggest a long
| answer. Trying to answer them in a brief way is a feature for
| myself.
| em-bee wrote:
| it's not just that the question suggests a long answer, but
| it is that i like writing and i have a story to tell, so i
| want to tell that story. i would not even want to write a
| short answer because i already know what the short answer
| would be, and it's not very interesting so there is no point
| to even bother to write it down.
|
| what i am trying to say is that, for me at least, the prompt
| itself would have to limit the scope to today or maybe this
| week. (but then i would not be able to write anything for
| this particular prompt)
|
| maybe prompts like: what made you happy this week? what made
| you sad? what was a challenge you faced this week?
|
| if you come up with a dozen questions like that, and then
| randomly rotate through those, one each day, i think that
| might produce interesting results.
| barthelomew wrote:
| This does look very interesting. I like it.
|
| I shall admit I've spent too much time though building my own
| journalling apps too. What's the right tradeoff- I wonder -
| between writing your own journalling apps v/s time spent
| journalling.
| nemo1618 wrote:
| I had an idea for something like this, although it would require
| a bit more up-front effort. Basically, you provide a list of
| important people, interests, and events in your life, and then
| the prompts are generated dynamically based on that information.
| So instead of a prompt like "Write about a time in your life when
| you struggled with a choice and made the right one," you'd get
| something like "If you had to take a vacation with [Tom], where
| would you go and what would you do?" or "When's the last time you
| went [kayaking]? Do you think [Jake] would want to go with you?"
| etc.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chadwittman wrote:
| I built an app like this & raised a respectable pre-seed round
| for it. tl;dr journaling types were into it, but already had a
| journaling process. Regular people would use it for a week or
| so & then stop. tbh (app) had flash-in-the-pan success with the
| concept, but did it via simple one-tap survey. Might be a tbh
| 2.0 approach here.
| mettamage wrote:
| I use Day 1 and talk into it, listen back and reflect
| bovermyer wrote:
| Nicely done. I love simple apps like this. Bonus points for local
| data.
| Evidlo wrote:
| Cool idea. Include an about page somewhere. Where do you pull the
| questions from?
|
| Also a random idea is that you allow people to save their entry
| directly into a git repo, which feels a bit safer than browser
| storage. I think there's a way to do that from the web.
| kuehle wrote:
| I guess an about page is a great idea, I'll create one that
| answers the questions here later.
|
| My setup for the questions is the following - I have a
| questions file with one question per line and a cron job that
| takes the top one, builds the static page by including it in
| the template and then appends the question in the end.
|
| That way I can always add more questions but if I run out of
| questions it would just start from the beginning.
|
| Do you have an idea on how to save to a git repo from a static
| page? I don't want to make it any more complicated than it
| needs to be.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Prompts for journals is an old concept. You can buy lots of
| (physical) journals that have 1-3 questions as a prompt on each
| day.
|
| Personally, I tried it and still failed to maintain it.
| kuehle wrote:
| Do you have an idea why you could not maintain it? I think
| another component why I open the page every day is that I only
| have the chance to fill this question that day - something that
| you wouldn't have in the paper one.
| BeetleB wrote:
| So your prompt changes daily?
|
| A fixed prompt likely was why I couldn't maintain it. The
| prompt was generic and open ended, but I tired quickly of
| coming up with new stuff to the same questions.
|
| But the likely real reason is that it just became a chore. I
| probably should have reduced it to once a week or something.
| I have kind of tried that as well and still failed.
|
| Another reason is quality. The first draft of anything sucks
| really bad, but I don't want to write badly. It's a lot more
| effort to write something present or future me will be happy
| with.
|
| Ultimately, I think it's a matter of perspective and
| priority. I like the _idea_ of journaling, but it is somewhat
| labor intensive (especially if the "first draft" is not good
| enough for you). The reality is I often choose to do
| something else with that time.
| stakkur wrote:
| Well done, and the one-click download/local data was exactly my
| first thought when visiting. One question: why CSV?
| kuehle wrote:
| I can just open it in other tools and for example merge two
| sources. E.g. I do this on my laptop and on my phone. Download
| both, open with Excel and sort by date. I also considered more
| questions in the future or tracking numerical values.
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(page generated 2022-07-18 23:01 UTC)