Journaling feels self-serving and egocentric, since your entries are about you. I'd of course tried several similar apps before like Momento for iPhone, and even good ol' TextEdit on Mac, but always felt like I was trying too hard to find things to write down. What matters most is the act of saving and not letting the tiny private things in life evaporate.īloom founder Paul Mayne asked if I'd want to try a new version of his journaling app called Day One (which launched yesterday). I hadn't been "journaling" in the conventional sense (recording thoughts at the end of each day), but recording memories I would otherwise forget: a gold mine of inside jokes, transitory moments, and ideas to build on. No longer was I writing in an old Belle & Sebastian notebook, filling it with stray thoughts, ticket stubs, funny jokes somebody told, and quotes I liked. And of course, writing takes longer than typing and your hands ends up sore. The biggest difference here is that people use these services to share things with others, and that you can access them from just about anywhere. These services have made logging your life on a small scale super simple, and journaling apps haven't kept up. Increasingly people are taking their thoughts to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. While Moleskines will likely never fade in popularity, I've learned that the act of journaling is shifting. "You should journal." The word journal has taken on a new meaning - as a verb, and as a bragging right for those sitting outside coffee shops brave enough to stay off their iPhones. A hundred times I've attempted to "start journaling," but I always gave it up after a few weeks. The hardest part about journaling is remembering to journal.