Hey,
I am a big proponent of writing in a journal - I think it really helps me unload the scrambled mess in my brain. The thing is though, writing in my journal takes 1-2 hours of my time - not to mention the time it takes to get into the mood to write for 1-2 hours a day. How do you guys write daily / regularly? When I’m on vacation it’s super helpful to write in there, and I wish I could do that during the week. Typing is a solution, but I feel like I write with less efficacy since I don’t have a lot of time between sentences. My sentences while writing are a lot more well formed, I think.
What do you guys do?
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Any writing is better than none. To be able to write “enough” every day sounds like an unimaginable luxury to me, but I still manage to write a little bit every day and I haven’t completely lost my marbles yet.
Do you handwrite or type? I feel like when I type I could write 4 equivalent pages but have de-stressed the equivalent of a half page via handwriting
I type. The ASMR of clicky keys makes up most of the difference in therapeutic benefit.
I have a clicky keyboard too but it only feels good when I’m coding. It seems like the consensus is that I should just make it a habit and it’s benefits will come as I do it consistently, tho
I can’t dedicate that sort of time in a shot generally, certainly not with the extra time to get into the right headspace. I tend to aim for paragraph-size thoughts, expounding as and when necessary.
I actively work to avoid typing, because I genuinely enjoy fountain pens and because Lord knows I type more than enough in my day job. I end up with very different outcome styles typing vs. hand writing, the former tends to be more business-ready, the latter tends to be much more true to the actual feelings/thoughts I’m trying to capture.
One of my most frequent use cases for journaling is to keep running logs of interactions with various organizations, in a mostly chronological way that I can later follow. Currently juggling a number of insurance companies, doctors, and a bunch of other related stuff and I’d be completely lost if I didn’t have a way to easily see whom I spoke to about what, when, and what documentation I sent where. That part is tailor-made for handwriting, from where I sit, if I try to type contemporaneous notes they invariably end up being closer to a transcript than to useful bullet points.
There is no right or wrong way to do this, only what works for you.
I keep a couple of journals. One is personal for clearing the junk in my head. That one is handwritten using a favorite fountain pen, ink, and notebook. The other is a quiet little record from work, mostly to process and to jog my memory should it be needed in future. That one is typed in an encrypted note taking app.
Both of them are generally just as-needed. I try to make writing a daily habit, but I also don’t force it if there’s nothing to write about.
If you do it everyday, I think you’ll find many days will just be shorter. It seems to depend a lot on what’s going on in my life. I’ve been doing it almost daily for over 20 years, but I’ve also been typing it all.
I have tried handwriting journaling, but I find it frustrating, especially at the wpm output I’m used to being able to do. Also my handwriting sucks. Or as one of my teachers used to call it - “chicken scratch” haha
The other thing is that once you have years of it, it’s pretty neat to be able to search a name or keyword and be able to see your entries about it across years of history. I’m always astounded at just how fallible our memory is.
