Overview
Journaling is a concept that has been around probably as long as the act of writing has existed. It is one that might not be as popular anymore but one we still find to be largely beneficial. Journaling as a whole is not for everybody but if you find that you’re a creative, or someone that relies on the ability to deliver highly complex, multi-faceted products then you might consider the benefits of documenting your days through some form of journaling. You might even find that you will discover benefits in areas that we haven’t covered below, we highly recommend giving it a shot.
Cheaper than Therapy
Let us preface this by saying that we take mental health very seriously and in no way are we trying to mock or belittle any mental health conditions nor are we recommending against the consultation of a licensed medical professional. What we are saying is that if you are a generally anxious person or someone who other wise might struggle with dealing with your own emotions then daily journaling might be a good method to help you unpack and work through some of those emotions. We are huge advocates for therapy but there are many people who still find it difficult to open up to a therapist or have trouble finding a therapist who is a good fit for them. It’s not as much that it has to be one or the other but maybe journaling could become another tool that you add to your toolbox for helping you take on life.
Therapists are great resources and are generally bound by patient confidentiality but they are still a human being that you have to talk to and some people find it difficult to open up and trust their therapists. A journal removes that human element. Your journal isn’t going to judge you, make fun of you, or give you any sort of feedback at all about the entries that you make. This for some people, is the ultimate freedom to say exactly what they want to say in a judgement-free zone. We speak from experience and although mental health battles can be very complex and an ongoing in nature, some tools and techniques work for some people while others might see no benefit. Give journaling a try, see what it does for you.
A Modern Take on Daily Journaling
Technology has brought us a long way and of course we are advocates for revolutionizing everything into a digital format, but if you insist that you do your journaling through the more traditional pen and paper method we’re not gonna knock you. There are just a few advantages from having a digital journal that we feel can not be overstated if you want to get the most out of daily journaling. Read more about using Markdown when journaling and taking notes in our post and continue reading below for some of the benefits of a digital journaling system.
Automation and Templates
We’ve talked about dynamic templates and their benefits before on this page but we CANNOT over state the benefits of using templates and automations to speed up your workflow. If your daily journal entries are more free form and lack much structure then you won’t really benefit much from templates, but otherwise you stand a lot to gain. If you are the person that doesn’t really have much structure consider some of the examples below to see what you might be missing.
- Automatic date entry upon creation
- Countdown timers for important events
- Daily quotes
- Habit tracking
- Mood tracking
These are only scratching the surface as to what might be possible when using custom templates in your Markdown editor of choice. Stay tuned for a detailed showcase and tutorial of the templates that we use on a regular basis!
Indexing
We hope nobody is out there is journaling with the intent of never reviewing the entries, even though working through your day via journaling would still be largely beneficial for your mental health, it would probably still be a good idea to do some review from time to time. Think about how difficult it would be to find that one day last month when you saw John Mayer at the shopping mall if you had to flip through all of the pages in your journal and read, or at best skim, them one by one. There are some really powerful search tools built right into a lot of the popular markdown editors that make finding keywords and events super fast.
Not just for the Emotional Aspect
Yes journaling is great for helping you unpack your day and emotions but it can also help you track the more objective events that took place that day. If your memory is not the best, or if you have a job that relies on you working on projects over a period of multiple weeks or months, documenting your day is a great practice to help you reach new levels or productivity and quality in your deliverables.
You might experiment with a different structure and purpose all together with your journaling when it comes to work or other projects. A good idea would be to objectively capture the milestones and important events as they take place or at the end of the day. Think of all those old movies and shows where you see the protagonist viciously writing into their notebook and documenting the important events of their current conflict as you hear them narrating their own entry.
We wouldn’t recommend replacing dedicated notes or project trackers with daily journaling but you use it for more of a summary of the key events of the day.
“Today my customer asked me to incorporate a new future for his website”
“I finally got to the bottom of the one bug in my code”
“The shipment of I beams finally came in but they were the incorrect length”
Et cetera, et cetera
For the Data Obsessed
A very popular way to track habits, health metrics, or any other data in Obsidian is to use the Tracker plugin. We use this to track our mood, sleep, water intake, steps and a few other metrics on a daily basis and then use the Tracker plugin to visualize this data on weekly and monthly bases. You can enter the values for this data manually or use more of an automated workflow but this is a powerful way to gain insight to the data that you want to track and then document the trends and maybe, hopefully, with luck, use this data to improve.
In Review
The concepts listed above are some of the benefits you might stand to gain if you chose to begin or embrace new direction in your journaling journey. We are strong proponents for the discipline and recommend everyone try it for some time. It is a discipline that had lasted for a long time and for good reason. Happy writing!