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25 Comments

Could journaling be better in 2021?

Hey Indiehackers!

Over the past couple of weeks I've been brainstorming many problems, ideas, and solutions in today's world.

Since we've entered a new year, I started to take up journaling.

Except I don't want to write a whole page every day on what happened.

I want it to be simpler.

What's the idea? 💡

A simple journal app where you reflect on something you:

  • "glowed" at ✨
  • and one thing you can grow at 🌱

I want it to be completely open-source too!

I would love to hear what you think about this idea.

Thanks!

  1. 3

    Journaling is the most interesting topic I would love to explore. I have been making some random attempts to build a note taking app like roam research.

    But journaling should be easy to use and should be on multiple platforms for fast note taking.

    One suggestions, before building you can do some research and start journaling using your tool of choice and see what's missing in that to make a variation of product.

    There are many note taking apps out there, even niche apps, so find your niche carefully and ensure that your solution is what people want.

    P.S: There are many open source journaling apps.

    1. 1

      Agreed, I've been working on that for the past day or so. Thanks for you advice!

  2. 2

    I keep a journal in a notepad

    1. 1

      Cool! Is everything going well with that? Would there be something you’d change? Thanks.

  3. 2

    Sounds interesting.

    For me as someone that spends a lot of time in front of their laptop typing, I really enjoy journaling by writing things down.

    A lot of people I know feel the same but we've already made it a habit, but something simple like your idea is probably better.

    Most people don't do it because it's hard to make a habit out of it I think and the rewards are not always immediate, so the easier you and more rewarding you can make this the better. 🎉

    1. 1

      Thanks for telling me a bit about your experience and others too.

      I’ll for sure keep this in mind through development.

      1. 1

        Yeah don't overanalyze that different things work for different people the last part is probably more applicable to you

        1. 1

          Very true. Thanks for your help.

  4. 2

    There's probably still tons to be done around journaling indeed.
    Worth checking out. Many people out there have yet to hear about journaling, productivity journals and the like.

    I suppose that creating a community-based journaling system could be nice for some people. You just have to find an audience and get people on board! :)

    1. 1

      I think a community based platform would be pretty cool.

      Thanks for your thoughts!

  5. 1

    I've been journaling for a long time, I've tried out many several apps and notebooks, but always come back to writing on paper. Nothing beats a clean moleskine, a good pen and some dim light in your bed at night.

    On this note: Having a fully customizable template pre-printed notebook with journaling sections (e.g. gratitude) would be something I would pay $100 or more for.

    1. 1

      Sooo true. Same here.

  6. 1

    @BraydenTW I've been a long time wannabe journal-er but I've always struggled to keep the routine, so this problem is near and dear. I've wireframed various solutions which incorporate social, gamification and ML, each meant to enhance the journaling experience. I'm a believer that journaling/writing will be the next meditation craze - would love to bounce some thoughts off of ya - feel free to shoot me an email if you're interested in connecting on this - maybe we can work together

    1. 1

      Thanks Erik, I am actually already partnered with another friend I know. I will shoot you that email now.

  7. 1

    I started video journalling this month, specifically to track progress on What Is A Farm?.

    At the end of each day, I record a 1- to 10-minute selfie video on my phone and immediately upload it privately to Youtube. I do that because Youtube automatically generates a transcript of what I said (or at least what it thinks I said... it's far from perfect).

    It takes some time for the transcript to be generated, so I generally go back the next day to copy that text into a Notion page. Sometimes I clean up the text, sometimes I don't bother. (Insert something here about automating this step with a hypothetical API that I might currently be under NDA on.)

    I wind up with notes that are easy for me to record each night and easy for me to skim later on. Win-win!

    1. 1

      That's neat! Great idea!

  8. 1

    I don't quite understand what the added value would be. Couldn't you write about these things in every text editor or journaling app with minimal effort too?

    1. 1

      Agreed, this was one of the ideas of what would add to a cool journaling app. I’m still working on it ;)

      1. 1

        Sure, if you can combine it with a bunch of other writing prompts it could be quite useful. Maybe different prompts every day to keep it interesting?

        1. 1

          Interesting idea, I’ll definitely add that to my list. Thanks for your help.

  9. 1

    It's 2021, we need to spice up journaling.

    I present: Community journaling

    Seriously though, find your competitors and see where their customers have pain points. You have good design skills, so I believe you'd be able to provide a great UX which is largely important

    1. 1

      Nice. Would community journaling basically be a way where you can share your thoughts/highlights of your day to a specific group of people in your group?

  10. 2

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 2

      Minimal is great!

      Nice resource btw. Thanks!

  11. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      Cool, @TomGrigory. I definitely will.

  12. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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