Do indie hackers journal?

Me 🙋‍♂️

I've been using the daily notes of Reflect for journaling.

I pretty much journal whenever something sticks inside of my head. Whether it's an idea, thought, worry, or frustration even. I have a pretty busy mind, so it helps me get things out of my head and sometimes see the bigger picture of what's currently going on with my work/life.

The great thing about Reflect is that I can use tags and backlinks (which are also available in apps like Roam Research and Obsidian. This way, whenever I am researching or thinking about something, it all gets bundled inside of a note.

Whenever I am working on an idea, I can always go inside this backlink to see everything I wrote down doesn't matter if it was inside of one of my notes or inside my daily journal.

Although I have tried, I don't have a method like Channing. What works for me differs from time to time, sometimes I want to write out some thoughts in bullet points, but at other times I want to write everything out in a couple of paragraphs.

I do. The tool I use is Notion.

I actually integrate journaling into my work itself through a method called interstitial journaling. It's basically the process of systematically documenting your thoughts in the "interstices" — breaks — between active work sessions.

Interestingly, I've been using the method for nearly a decade, and I only learned there was a term and research around it last year via this great article by @anthilemoon.

In my case, interstitial journaling takes place at multiple highly structured levels, each of which I call a "plan, do, learn loop." That's just a fancy way of saying the scientific method; when I work, I a) make a plan, then b) do the plan, then c) review and learn from my progress/ failings.

These plan, do, learn loops ("PDL loops" for short) happen at these nested levels:

1. Months
2. Weeks
3. Days
4. Sessions (3–5 per day, lasting 90 minutes each)
5. Cycles (multiple per session, lasting anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes each)

As you can see, each PDL loop consists of a smaller PDL loop (except for cycles, which are the smallest loop.) And journaling, to return to the original topic, takes place at the beginning ("plan") and end ("learn") of each loop.