AD INFINITUM
A Month of Journaling ✍️
Insights from a new habit
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For years, I had used Evernote as my primary note taking app on my Android phone, my work laptop and my personal laptops. Although Evernote can be used as a journal, I only used it for writing the drafts for my now indefinitely defunct Instagram poetry page called Khayali Pulaav (Castles in the Air) and taking notes and sometimes storing important information (not recommended).
In the beginning of October 2020, I steered away from Evernote and started using Day One app for Mac, not for note taking but for writing a daily journal. I take notes on a physical notebook or on my work Slack account.
As mentioned in the first post in this series, I am very fond of writing and putting my thoughts out on paper (even digital paper). To me, it’s a surreal experience of looking at my own thoughts on paper and understanding them from an observer’s point of view.
I started writing regularly about a month ago and have been fairly regular in writing the journal. Some days, I would write about random stuff from work, the French classes that I have been taking on and off, my weekly music classes with Pelva Naik, the weather, friends, money, family and whatnot. Other days, I would just pick up from Day One’s prompts.
I have not tracked my time but I am sure that I haven’t spend more than 15 minutes a day on this. Good writing speed definitely helps. I think I am able to type at the speed of my thoughts. In the time period shown in the picture about, I have written 94 entries comprising of 15,784 words and 85,835 characters. Even if I assume a decent speed of 50 words per minute, it comes down to about 10 minutes a day for writing this much. Spending 10 minutes a day on this fun exercise is totally worth it.
Hopefully, I continue with it.
