""" your affection for [writing] has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so. """

However, some people experience too much metacognition/reflection and that is actually correlated with depression/anxiety. These people also tend to be highly intelligent, and I suspect a higher proportion of HN readers will fall into this category.

Turns out just running on autopilot most of the time is the healthier human experience.

The mix of encouragement and critique is motivating, and it came at the right time since I’d been wondering whether to keep going.

I’ve spent decades in IT, mostly software dev and consulting, but writing and storytelling are new to me. The blog’s a work in progress, rough edges, a few nuggets, but I’m learning by doing. If one post helps someone else, that’s a win.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback. It really is a gift.

Glad to answer questions if anyone has them.

The structuring of your thoughts and emotions, by nature, forces a certain amount of meta cognition and distance from your feelings as you can more easily identify and further think about the insights, inconsistencies, etc. You have a scaffolding that you can continue to build on or rebuild.

Beyond the immediate thinking, it's also interesting to see how the thoughts on something change over time or how they relate to other topics. Now, I'm thinking about my thinking rather than just focusing on the immediate topic.

Deep thinking without a sense of permanence can be great as a start of ideas. You need a low cost way for ideas to form where you can pick the most promising ones for more introspection. But without permanence, there's this danger that you get lost in your half-formed thoughts because it has a lot of "feel" in it and makes it hard to build on or critique. There's a danger that you end up going down an Escher staircase mentally and emotionally that seems like the logical, immediate thing to do but is a contradiction at a higher level.

At first I was in love - I made an app around Whisper transcription model the weekend it came out. (Still working on it - https://whispermemos.com)

But when I try to read those recordings, they seem long and uninteresting.

I think the slowness of writing forces us to transform the thoughts/ideas into a format that has more substance.

So typing creates better distilled version of the text, and writing with one even more.

Recording audio just makes a raw stream of consciousness.

The process isn’t as therapeutic. It’s like stuffing food in your face instead of slowly chewing.

What are your thoughts on this?

"What I regret right now is ____"

"What I should now is ____"

"I am become aware that ____"

You don't need to journal these on paper. Don't do these in public. You might find yourself overwhelmed by what comes out.

> 2. Digital Typing. The Modern Powerhouse

Not to say it is but it kinda means the article is pretty light on "new" information

And while I think it's great when that can actually be another person, whether it's a friend, or partner, or therapist, it is still surprisingly calming, healing, even, when we pose the question to ourselves, and then really wait to hear the answer.

Digital is faster and more convenient. My journal is in obsidian. My work notes are on my iPad. Everything is synced and backed up. However it's missing the chronological anthology that is a paper notebook.

That being said, I try not to overthink things. The map is not the territory, and my notes are not a perfect capture of my mind at a given time. I don't need to perfectly observe and process everything. Sometimes it's good to just live in the moment.

As for what actually "works", one measure is not whether one produces journal entries (however insightful), but how journalling helps with minding one's life -- in the same way that anticipating a dialog with a therapist or friend might lead one to temper one's own dialog (or conversely, how worrying about what people think might be inhibiting).

I do think that imagining oneself in a constant dialog with Socrates could be illuminating.

Some interlocutors are direct, correcting faults or encouraging you. But the best teachers use indirection, setting you a challenge that should break you of a bad habit or push you to realize a mistake or integrate some insight (Nietzsche intimated that enemies can be better than friends in this regard). People who posit that everything happens for a reason (or, as Thales said, the world is intelligible) do a reflexive form of this, challenging themselves to find that insight or truth.

Similarly, some interlocutors are careful to not inject their own positive bias, but eager to protect against errors; e.g., "the unexamined life is not worth living" says little about what kind of examination helps. That creates essential space for one's own agency.

Ultimately, you create your world, even if you have no choice, so be at least as kind and forgiving as you are critical and diligent.

By the way, in addition to occasionally writing a personal journal entry, I also really enjoy keeping notes on my thoughts on the books I read, whether fiction or non-fiction. I love flipping back and seeing what I was going through while reading a really good story, and reminding myself who the characters were, and seeing the important points to remember of some technical material. All good stuff :)

(Edit: the many many paragraphs of fluff before unveiling the actual method did counter this effect somewhat)

I agree with the simple physical pen/paper combo.[1] For the digital part, I suggest sticking to plain-text.[2] Personally, I’ve a feeling video or audio, unless transcribed and texted, will likely become cumbersome and will remain in oblivion.

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/notes/

2. “Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text.” - Derek Sivers

1.https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/comm...

I counted 3 almost back to back and stopped reading.

I don’t think people realize how much ChatGPT “leaks” its own commentary into their writing.

Interestingly, recently I started journaling using a method that, in contrast to this, one might call, "Aristotlean journaling", simply because thinking deeply up front caused me to forget important thoughts, and more infuriatingly, elegant phrasing.

It starts with the triggering event or observation, and goes on in a style that includes a lot of "this seems like", "let us now consider", "so then the question remains..."

Here's an (unedited, and admittedly convoluted) example from yesterday. Please ignore the subject matter and only pay attention to style and structure.

Let us say that we have now created a society where paid disemination of political speech, whether through direct payment of fees, or through indirect payment in the form of sponsorship, is not legally permitted. what of commissioned works? No one can prevent one person from paying another person to produce a work of art, literature or media to their specification. In fact, this is one of the primary sources of income for artists in particular. If the work is for private consumption and is not publicly disseminated, then it does not affect balanced political speech at large. However, if the creator is free to disseminate their work to the public (once again, by some means of advertising that is not paid political speech), then the person who commissioned the work would have, through financial means, influenced the prevalence of certain types of political speech over others by increasing the supply (and perhaps also reducing the price) of work that align with their political views. This is a hard problem to solve.

I use the Kobo Elipsa e-ink tablet, which comes with a stylus and a notebook that can convert handwriting to text on-device.

Daily questions:

1. All habits done that can be? (this is my reminder to meditate if I haven't, or watch a mandarin video or do some pushups or whatever)

2. Tomorrow planned? (this is my reminder to real quick make sure I at least know where I need to be on the next day)

3. Work done towards goals:

3. A: Mandarin:

3. B: Weight Loss:

3. C: Improving Engineering:

4. What gave me energy? (literally what made me feel more able to do things? This could be, relaxing and watching a youtube video, or, going on a run, or even just eating)

5. What drained my energy? (what subtracted from my daily capability to do things? Often will be a long meeting, or if I overdo a workout)

6. What gave me joy?

7. What made me feel bored?

8. When did I feel most myself today?

9. I felt most absorbed when… (this is seeking out activities that triggered flow-state, which is important in finding happiness with ADHD)

10. I felt slightly playful when… (related to 9. Playful as per Edward M. Hallowell's definition: "I mean something deeply and profoundly formative - any activity in which you become imaginatively involved. The opposite of play is doing exactly what you are told.")

11. This made my brain light up: (related to 9 and 10, Hallowell: "When you play, your brain lights up. This is where you could find joy for the rest of your life, so take note when it happens… When you play, you are likely to enter a state… named “flow.” In “flow,” you become one with what you are doing… Your brain glows.")

I answer these questions every day, and then every week summarize the answers to these same questions into a week-based entry, with an additional question:

12. What activities did I naturally seek out?

Same then for the month, I summarize the weeks into a month entry. The month has some more questions:

13. What surprised me this month?

14. Did anything I explore make me curious?

15. What habits felt enjoyable or supportive?

16. Which habits am I doing out of obligation?

17. Which small experiments genuinely improved my mood or confidence this month?

18. Where did I unnecessarily push myself too hard? What can I release next month?

19. Did I speak kindly to myself this month? When did I struggle most with self-compassion?

20. What tiny victories can I celebrate this month (especially regarding Mandarin, weight loss, or exercise)?

21. What feels truly sustainable going forward (diet, exercise, language, emotional health)?

For year, I do a year compass. I review my year compass monthly. https://yearcompass.com/ (these I've been doing for 8 years)

Each day review takes about 5 minutes max, week reviews take about 15 minutes max, and month reviews take about 20 minutes max. Year compasses take many hours to complete spread over a couple days (an excellent Christmas activity).

I've been journaling for ~28 years (since I first learned to write, yes really) but my journals were just me kinda flowing my thoughts. I think that's been nice but there's not much point in going back to read old journals, it's just nice to look at them on the shelf. What gets journaled gets remembered, or only I only journal memorable things, who knows. But I've been doing this day/week/month question thing for like a half year now and it's made significant improvements in my life, in terms of keeping me on track for my goals, allowing me to be more in touch with my emotions, and helping me realize a couple key things about myself that completely shifted my self perception and made it all the easier to achieve my goals. For example, I discovered that I actually really like working out, and being fit is a key part of my identity, that I'd been lying to myself about that by telling myself I'm just a fat nerd and that working out is a chore. Or, that despite my nontraditional background, I really do enjoy programming, and can rest in my confidence in my love of my profession.

I do still maintain a longform journal in a Hobonichi book and that has been a nice habit to keep up, it's quite relaxing and I really enjoy using my various fountain pens and inks, pasting in train tickets and whatnot. I'm looking forward to having the hobonichi on the shelf at the end of the year as a year's worth of thoughts.

Back in 1996 I started with just 200 words each week, this is about equivalent to half an A4 page.

Each year this increased by 200 words, until at year 4 you will be writing a personal journal of a minimum 800 words each week.

I used to carry a tatty old cheap notebook and jot down things that interested me during the day.

This could be a thought, a feeling, an interaction with another person, at home, on the train or at work with a colleague.

As the author wrotes, Good Journaling is a dialogue, not a monologue.

example:

I was sitting on the train today on my daily communute into the city.

There was a women sitting in front of me. When she got up to get off at the next stop, she stared at me for a litle too long. I felt uncomfortable.

questions to expand upon:

what is this about? who does she remind me of? Was it a teacher, a bully, a neighbour? What was it about her facial expression that sent a cold shiver down my spine? Is there someone in my past life who has the same expression? Have I felt this before, if so, when.

and so on.

But it is probably different for people who are happier with their lives.