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Ask HN: How do you incorporate learnings from journaling?

2 points by mettamage ↗ HN
I have a good journaling habit going since April. Every thought that I consider to be interesting, I write it down.

However, my reading habit is quite bad. In part, this is because I don't really know how to take my own ideas and move them to a more organized place (most of the time).

For people who read their own journal entries at a later point in time: what do you do (and why)? Do you categorize everything? Or do you just read it and that's that?

5 comments

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eimrine
I read when I feel a desire to move on forward in something really important to me. I do not categorize anything because I am terrible at file storing: I have not enough computers, my HDDs are too small for my needs and they are almost never plugged in, because of too few SATA ports on my machines; also software just sucks.

But I have discovered a really working way of using kind of external device for learning goals - I have a student who desires to learn anything I know on programming, he is probably a best way possible to refresh and debug my knowledge.

brudgers
For me, the act of writing is the most useful part. Because most of my ideas are not very good, reading is much less useful.

Because my heuristic for good ideas is actually acting on the idea, reading is even less useful.

For me good ideas are actions not ideas so to speak. YMMV.

Good luck.

cableshaft
You can try something like Obsidian out. It just saves your entries into Markdown files, so you'll always have a text version of them, and it will automatically link together any tags you include within the document, so you can tag the concepts or subjects in your journals and then you can access them again via those links.

It's kind of like a wiki, except markdown based, and in a cross-platform application.

It's free as long as you don't want to use their cloud services, also.

mettamage
Hmm, reflecting on this. I think an AI language model would help a lot here. Like, it could categorize your notes for example.
nicbou
The purpose of a journal is to acknowledge your own feelings. That awareness is enough in my opinion. For example you might notice that the same problem is a recurring source of stress in your life.

Your journal should not turn into a to-do list. Usually, I'll highlight a problem in my journal, and brainstorm a solution elsewhere, or just think it through on a walk around the neighborhood. I'll rarely revisit my journals.