Some of my readers may think that keeping a daily journal is what only little girls do, but don’t be so quick to judge. I will try to convince you that keeping a daily journal is something that each one of us should do if we are seriously looking into changing the quality of our life.
- Day One 1 8 – Maintain A Daily Journal Entries
- Day One 1 8 – Maintain A Daily Journal Article
- Day One 1 8 – Maintain A Daily Journal Articles
There are mainly two reasons why I decided to bring this topic up and to share it with others. The first reason is that keeping a daily journal has tremendously changed me in a positive way in so many different areas of life. The second reason is that the majority of people out there underestimate the power of journaling. We tend to think that keeping a journal has no real practical implications to it, and therefore no use of having one. And even when we do understand the potential of journaling, we procrastinate and are simply too lazy make it happen.
Perhaps Day One's best feature is the ability to customize multiple reminders. Most other journal apps only send you one reminder during the day. But with Day One, you can get prompted to write, say, when you start the day, at lunchtime, and then at the end of your workday to keep track of your activities and thoughts throughout the day. Printable Journals in PDF format. If you don't see a planner page design or category that you want, please take a moment to let us know what you are looking for.
We forget that life is a lot about movement and becoming better as we grow. We try out new things, become more experienced, and then we strive to become even better. This can concern relationships, sports, career or life in general. But because we are constantly bombarded with so many things, we tend to miss or forget the small successes and failures of life. And this is the reason why we make the same mistakes over and over, and not experience the progress that we were after. Simply put, we have nothing to compare our life to. We change, but because our memory is very limited, we remember only what we were, and we see what we have become. The process of changing, making mistakes, trial and error, is unfortunately left out.
Like I said, having a daily journal has changed me to the extent that I now feel obliged to preach to you about its effectiveness. Today, I want to share with you six examples where keeping a daily journal will bring you real, solid, legit and positive results!
Examples of effective daily journal keeping
1. Lucid dreaming
One of the longest periods of keeping a daily journal in my life was related to lucid dreaming.
For those of you that don’t know, lucid dreaming is when you become fully or partially aware in your dreams, and you can basically do whatever you want. Remember the movie Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio? It’s kinda like that, kinda.
When I was a little younger, I noticed that once in a while I am able to become aware in my dreams. It happened, but quite rarely. I decided to improve this and got myself a dream journal. Whenever I would wake up in the middle of the night, I would quickly write a few things from my latest dream into the journal, and in the morning I would try to recreate the whole dream based on the notes that I wrote. In the beginning, I could remember one dream partially. With time, I could remember one dream vividly, followed by two dreams, three dreams, etc.
As I wrote in my daily dream journal, my “dream memory” improved as well. Not only I could remember in color and detail a lot of the dreams that I had, becoming lucid in them was also fairly common. It happened about once a week or every two weeks.
Moreover, my dreams taught me a lot about life. When you experience dreams, you are not necessarily the same person that you are in real life. There is an infinite amount of roles that you play. And because of this, you are able to better understand the people around you. You have less prejudice towards others, and you can really step into the shoes of others. It is unfortunate so many of us never remember our dreams – there is so much we can learn from them. A dream journal is extremely powerful here.
Totals 3 0 17 download free. 2. Relationship journal
Relationships are never perfect and easy. They require a lot of work from both people in order to satisfy each other’s needs. Unfortunately, after years of being in one, certain aspects fade out and are forgotten. Sometimes this will lead to the inability to handle each other and eventually break up, and sometimes will require participating in couple therapy. Either way, the result is sad.
So, one way to avoid this is to live in awareness. Get a daily journal and write things down that you do together that you both enjoy or don’t enjoy. Write down the things you have done or said that made your loved one happy or not so happy. Note down as many things as you can. As a result, you will be able to keep a healthy, romantic relationship for as long as you desire.
If you are interested, I cover more of the relationship topic in another post here.
3. Meditation
If you have decided to properly meditate, don’t expect to do it twice a week for 3 months and have spectacular results. No, meditation is something that you should do daily for the rest of your life, ideally. And just like with any other work or hobby, you will become better at it with time.
I have meditated with both, a journal and without. And while without a journal I still get to experience all of the positive effects, with a journal I was more aware of the things happening around me during and after meditation. Did I feel something special this time? How was it different from last time? Should I try to go deeper into that state the next time? – these are some of the questions that I am more aware of when I have a journal. Without a daily journal, I can experience something, and forget about it the next day. With a journal, I am able to notice it every time it happens to me and to expand that feeling or state further. This also concerns the benefits of meditation outside of meditation sessions, when I eat or ride the bus, for example.
4. Workout
This is probably the most straight-forward example of why we should be keeping a journal.
In the gym, a very good indicator of your progress is the ability to pick heavier weights and/or do more reps. If you have only begun going to the gym, you most likely won’t know what you are doing. A lot of walking around, checking out the machines, picking up random weights and exercising with them in a random sequence a random amount of times. Sound familiar?
So, unless you have been working out for a year or so and know what you are doing, it makes sense to keep a journal of what you do and when. This way not only you will avoid harm to your body due to heavy weights, but you will also be able to see the progress. As an example, if your body weight, as well as the weight that you are lifting, has stopped increasing, it is time to change something in your workout routine. If you don’t keep track of your progress, it will take longer for you to notice this.
5. Stress reduction
As I have already discussed this in one of my previous posts about how to stop worrying, one way to approach the problem is to think about it rationally. Why am I stressed out? Can the problem be dealt with? Am I stressed out just because I am used to being stressed out in these situations, or is there a real problem?
One very effective way to handle this is to write down your emotions, fears and thoughts onto a piece of paper. By noting them, you are letting it out of your system, kind of like sharing it with someone else. Except not always people want to hear about our problems, which is why keeping a daily journal is crucial here. By writing them down, we become more aware and can better analyze them. I am sure you have all been in a situation where you were under so much stress that at a certain moment you couldn’t even remember what caused it. In such a moment a diary will be your doctor and a best friend.
6. Work and business
Last but not least, it is good to keep a daily journal regarding work and business.
Maybe there are things happening to you at work that are especially important, and you would like to remember about them in the future. And in the case of a business, a journal can be a place to write down your plans, fears, strategies and overall progress. It is like bookkeeping, but instead of handling the money question, you are also being aware of your satisfaction towards what you do. What have I done particularly well in the last three months? What did I do poorly? What did I enjoy most? What should I change? …
Again, don’t underestimate the power of this. Your work and/or your business is what earns you the bread and butter. The best possible approach is to make the least amount of mistakes. Both, regular job and business can be highly stressful, leaving many important aspects of it hidden. If you note these things down, you will be spending more time analyzing your next steps, as opposed to making quick and sometimes irrational decisions.
Conclusion
As you can see, I’m a big fan of writing things down. This is actually also one of the reasons why I have decided to make this blog, to keep track of my progress and to be able to share it with you.
If you want to start keeping a daily journal, but not exactly sure yet what you would want to write in it, then I highly recommend this resource – Intelligent Change. They have a few different types of journals, but I especially like their “Five Minute Journal”.
I truly believe in the power of keeping a journal for a variety of things, and my experience with it just proves how powerful it is. I really hope that if you haven’t begun one yet, that you would start one right now. The only obstacle to keeping a journal is your laziness or procrastination. But as soon as you overcome that, and begin writing everything down, you will see some very positive results and feedback. Trust me.
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There are many different reasons that people write down the things that they think, do, or experience in a diary or journal. Some of them are trying to watch what foods they eat. Some want to meditate on their faith in a Bible journal to become better people, or to get through tough times. Some like to count their blessings and focus on the good things that they have in life. And still others try to recall their dreams and figure out what they mean.
Regardless of why they do it, people have been writing diaries on paper since the second century C.E. Now, thanks to the advent of computers and the Internet, you can create your own digital-data journal online – no paper required! You’re also usually allowed to keep your diary private, but sometimes you’re given the option to share your reflections with anyone out there on the web who cares to listen.
There are some great journal websites out there for you to make use of, so we’ve got a list of 8 of the best apps and websites for keeping a digital diary or journal. Hopefully, it will help you decide on one that’s best for you.
1. Penzu
(www.penzu.com)
Based in Canada but available worldwide, Penzu is one of the best online journal sites, having been featured in technology publications such as LifeHacker, GigaOm, The Next Web, Mashable, and ReadWrite. It allows you to create whatever kind of journal you want, and doesn’t put a limit on how many pages you can have in your journal – write as much as you want, for as long as you want! You can even write in your diary on-the-go with Penzu’s free journal app, available for devices running either Google Android or Apple iOS operating systems. In our opinion, it’s one of the best journal apps out there! And you don’t need to worry about other people reading your secrets and deep thoughts, because your journal is kept private with double password protection. Penzu is free to start, but its paid features allow you to keep more than one journal at once, tag and search entries by keyword, customize how your journals look, and more!
2. Day One
(www.dayoneapp.com)
Day One 1 8 – Maintain A Daily Journal Entries
This diary-keeping app for Apple iOS devices has received a lot of praise from technology publications such as MacWorld, The Verge, The Sweet Setup, and Mashable; it has even won a couple of awards! It has a bunch of cool features, including the ability to add pictures to your entries, automatic adding of metadata (such as date, place, time, weather, etc.), and customized reminders and prompts for writing. You can also create tags for entries and later search them by keyword, synchronize your entries across the Day One apps on all of your devices, and easily share entries to social media platforms.
3. Diaro
(www.diaroapp.com)
Diaro is another of the most popular journal sites, and it also has a mobile app that can be used on Google Android devices or Apple iOS devices. Diaro lets you write and organize notes in various ways, and then find them later based on what words are in them, when you wrote them, where you were when you wrote them, or even custom tags that you attach to them! The paid version of Diaro removes advertisements, lets you synchronize your entries across Diaro on all of your devices, and even lets you convert your entries to “.PDF” files so you can print them out.
4. My Wonderful Days
(www.mywonderfulapps.com)
Made by Haha Interactive, this diary app only works on Apple iOS devices. However, what makes it one of the best diary apps is that it has some really neat personalization features. Chief among them is that, for each entry, you get to rate how you’re feeling that day on a scale of 1 to 10. You can also add photos to your entries or star significant dates, and you can search and sort your entries by mood rating, number of views, and more. The free version allows you to write up to 10 entries per month, while the full version removes this limit.
5. Journey
(www.2appstudio.com/journey)
Journey is a multi-platform piece of journaling software made by 2 App Studio in Singapore. It synchronizes with several other services from Google, such as Google Drive (to secure and back up your entries) and Google Maps (to add location metadata and even Street Views!). Plus, you can set daily reminders to write, attach up to four images to each entry, export your entries as printable file types, and even import entries from certain other journal apps. However, Journey requires a Google account to work, and it costs money to use (or at least use its premium features) on some platforms.
6. Momento
(www.momentoapp.com)
The brainchild of a British company called “d3i,” Momento bills itself as being the “smart” private journal app. What it means by this is that you can connect it to your social network accounts – such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and more – and it will automatically add to each entry what you did on social media that day! Of course, you can always manually add your own notes to your entries, including pictures or videos of what happened, people whom you were with, places you went, and other keywords to mark the occasion. And, of course, you can sort and filter your entries based on any or all of these pieces of information! Sadly, Momento is only available for Apple iOS devices, but if you have an iPhone or iPad, then this is one digital journal app that you’ll want to look into!
7. LiveJournal
(www.livejournal.com)
LiveJournal is an online journal app has been around for quite a while, started in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way to let himself and his friends update each other on their recent activities. In some respects, it was one of the precursors to many modern online social networks. It’s still around today, allowing you to create and customize a user profile and write journal entries. You can also connect with other people to see what they’re writing, and comment on it if you wish. You can keep your thoughts private, or allow them to be shared with your friends or anyone else.
8. Evernote
(www.evernote.com)
While Evernote isn’t specifically a diary app, it can be used as one; it’s pretty popular for other purposes, too. Basically, it’s an all-in-one cross-platform note-taking application that you can use on your BlackBerry, Google Android, or Apple iOS device. You can also simply use Evernote right on its website, or on the desktop of your Windows or MacOS computer. Use it to create and organize to-do lists, checklists, quick reminders of important appointments and events – anything you need to remember, really. Plus, there are several ways that you can create notes: write them manually, snap a picture, link to a website, make a voice recording, and more!
If you want to learn more about how Evernote works, visit our Evernote course!
Other apps and websites for specific types of journals/diaries
Food Journal Apps | Dream Journal Apps |
---|---|
My Food Diary | DreamJournal.net |
My Fitness Pal | Dreamboard |
Lose It! | Dream:ON |
FatSecret | Lucidity |
SparkPeople | Awoken |
Trip Journal Apps | Gratitude Journal Apps |
---|---|
Bonjournal | Mojo |
Tripcast | Bliss |
Trip Journal | Thnx4 |
Jauntlet | |
TravelPod |
Day One 1 8 – Maintain A Daily Journal Article
People keep journals and diaries for all sorts of reasons. So hopefully, one of the websites or apps that we’ve listed here – whether it’s one of our top 8 or a specialized one – will fit your needs. Whether you’re preserving fond memories, analyzing your inner psyche, or just trying to stick to a diet, journaling can be a therapeutic, stimulating, and fun exercise for you to try. Give it a go – you might be surprised by the results!