Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

I did that for a good 3 years, writing every day. Started out as a few sentences, and then turned in to bigger depending on how I was feeling that day. I absolutely love(d) being able to look back and read what I wrote and what happened on those days.

It did get difficult at times to force myself to write. Many times I hated having to open up the computer and use that to type. On the other hand, typing was much better than writing because of the amount of words I was able to get down.

In the article, it says to write about work and side projects, and I get that the article is career based, but really, skip that, don't write daily about work and side projects. If you're journaling, write about personal life. That's what's important to have logged.

Something happened that caused me to stop, which sucks because it almost feels like I've lost the last 3 years of my life because I don't have anything written.

View on HN

> I absolutely love(d) being able to look back and read what I wrote and what happened on those days.

Did you actually look back or just liked the idea that you could? If you did what sorts of things prompted you to do so? I am asking because I have journaled on an off but never had the impulse to go back and read what I wrote.

I did read back and look more than a few times. One was what I wrote when a person, wondering what I said then. Other times trying to see the first mention of an experience.

I definitely didn't go back and read sequentially though, because mostly I didn't do anything interesting day to day. But I've found that sometimes things stick out that I didn't realize when I was writing it. By the end of that stretch when I did write daily, I got very in depth because I was curious what would be of interest later.

I’ve used DayOne for journaling for 6+ years, with varying degrees of consistency. One of the things I like about that is a) the ability to attach photos, and b) when I open the app it shows me all of the entries from the current day, over the years. Lots of little memories that I’d have forgotten if I didn’t have that ongoing reminder.

I keep separate «diary» for personal stuff and «devlog» for work-related notes. Different files in different languages, so it’s never mixed. I almost never reread any of those. At times the devlog is a handy reference though. It’s also amusing to be able to peek at some day in the past and see what you thought back then. Sadly, it’s more like an ability that incites me, not any real use that it can be for therapeutic reasons.

I can relate to the feeling of «lost time». Sometimes I’ve missed to write a day and it felt that it never happened at all, why did I even bothered living through that day? Sometimes I’ve lost entries due to software malfunction and it felt like that app maliciously killed my experiences. Learned the lesson the hard way and keep text files since.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com