Where I write

Feb 3rd, 2024
by makeworld

Many months ago, I made a goal to write at least one blog post a month on here. I thought it would do me good to practice writing, and to publish things that were useful to other people. I still think that, however I clearly haven’t acheived this goal recently. But where did I write that goal? And where else have I been writing? In lieu of a hard hitting technical blog post, I’ll give an overview of some other places I’ve been putting down my thoughts.

Writing

The place that first comes to mind where I write things is my journal, Daylio. In 2023 I wrote 13.4k+ words there, or 1100+ words per month. That’s more than my last blog post. Mostly these are just thoughts at the top of my mind that day, or interpersonal things I’ve been trying to work through. Writing things out can really clear my mind, and helps me feel like I’m not running through life forgetting those abstract social things, like “X really surprised me today when…”

Key features of Daylio are logging your mood and activities. I’ve found this to be helpful personally, to stay more aware of my mood and how I spend my time. Daylio can use this data to draw correlations or generate reports for you, but personally these are not that useful since I don’t make myself write an entry every day. Having that level of data collection is appealing, but only journaling when I feel like it’s important helps it not feel like it’s a chore.

Journaling through my phone instead of paper seems little funny, but in practice it’s very convenient, and quickly typing my thoughts on my phone is already something I’m used to from messaging friends.

I also use Obsidian. I previously had a large collection of “cool stuff”-type bookmarks that I never looked at, and now most of these have been transferred into a much more accessible “personal wiki”, most of which is public.

I have been contributing content to these pages (beyond the original bookmark links) for the past several months, mostly adding bits here and there, but occasionally doing deep dives like on Local Currencies or Software Licensing.

Finally, I set up a self-hosted instance of Monica in 2023, mostly just to get my contacts in order. I will write things in here sometimes, like when I’m getting a lot of information about someone and would like to remember/review all of it, such as when dating.

Goal setting

Moving on to smaller word counts, there’s goal setting. Discrete tasks that I’m trying to track or remind myself of all go in the Loop Habit Tracker app. It has no annoying gamification, but the simple act of tracking my progress (or lack thereof) has definitely helped me stay aware of whatever I’m trying to do. The phrase that’s come to mind is “tracking shapes behaviour”.

Longer term and more abstract goals go in a private Obsidian note. For 2023 I wrote out a laundry list of goals across many categories, but nearing the end of the year I realized annual goals is too long a timeline, at least for my life currently. Starting in winter 2023-24, I’ve set goals for the season (meteorological). For example in winter (Dec 1) I set five goals, and on the first of each month (Jan, Feb, Mar) I reflect how well progress is going with these goals. On March 1st I will also set the next few goals for the spring.

It hasn’t even been one full season yet, so I might shift this system, but so far I like it a lot. Reflecting monthly is helpful, but more importantly having seasonal goals feels way more useful than any other time frame. My life and goals are heavily affected by the seasons, and it’s useful to be able to shift my focus like that.

Synergy⁉️

The systems described thus far can combine in helpful ways. For example I like to look over my Daylio entries and moods for the month when doing my goal reflection, to remind myself of how the last month went. If one of my goals is “do activity X at least Y times per month”, I can look at my habit tracking app to see whether I completed it, then write some of my own feelings on the topic.

Productivity

At the absolute minimum of writing there’s productivity tools. I use Todoist for day-to-day tasks and a digital calendar to keep track of events. These feel like fundamental, bedrock parts of daily life that would be hard to live without, to the point that I rarely think about the fact that I use them.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing I can take away from all these systems, it’s that it’s truly very helpful to write things down. Grappling with your thoughts can feel like trying to do mental math, and the solution is the same in both cases: write it out!