A couple weeks ago I got introduced to a fantastic app called Day One, thanks to Episode 10 of the Ihnatko Almnanac. It’s a beautiful journal / diary application that is designed to make writing in it incredibly easy. If there is one killer feature that a journalling app should have, effortless entry has gotta be it, and Day One has nailed this.

I must confess that prior to imbibing episode 10 of the Ihnatko Almnanac, the idea of keeping a journal was not even on my radar. However, the episode got me to start thinking about it and the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became.

Of course I had the typical objections. Could I be consistent? My life is pretty typical, why even keep a journal?

Even if I did get off to a good start, would I shortly thereafter fall back into old patterns and forget about it?

Well, despite these objections, I checked out Day One and was very impressed by it. It just looks beautiful. But beyond it’s good looks, the app’s features were what sold me. Two features in particular stood out:

  1. Automatic reminders. Exactly what I need if I am going to be consistent.
  2. Available on the Mac and all iOS devices with seamless syncing via Dropbox. This in particular sold me as I am finding I’m doing much more productive writing tasks on my iPad, thanks to the Zagg Keyboard.

So on December 9th, 4 days after the podcast, I bought Day One for both OS X and iOS and started journaling. Since then, I’ve only missed one day and several days actually have two entries, one earlier in the day and then one later.

The reminders feature of Day One dealt with my concern of not being consistent, and from over 2 weeks of usage I can confirm that this feature does work. I especially like how you can tell the reminder to come back in 15 minutes or an hour. I myself use that all the time and by the time the second reminder appears, I’m ready to write something.

There is still the potentially greater issue of actually having something to write about. Speaking from 2 weeks of experience, I have not found this to be an issue. In fact, I’m now looking forward to writing each day. Usually it’s just a quick dump of thoughts and experiences. I’m finding the whole process, both thinking about my day and then writing those thoughts down, to be very therapeutic. Life is so fast paced that it’s nice to step back for a few minutes and assess how you’re doing. I also think it will be helpful for me to look back on these entries months, even years in the future, and get a sense of how I’ve progressed.

I would highly commend the practice of daily journalling to you and I would most definitely recommend Day One as the tool to help you in that practice.

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