Don’t be a journal snob!
I read a lot of people bashing on Apple’s Journal app. If you’re a hardcore journaling person, I get it. You’re used to Day One and probably pay for it. Or you write in a notebook everyday. Look, I get it. And I am not here to bash you for either of those things.
What I am here to do is ask you why? Why do you feel the need to be a journaling snob and look down your nose at someone else who is trying to better their life by journaling? So they don’t journal the same way you do. They probably don’t drive the same car as you either. Probably don’t live in the same city. Do you look down your noses at them for that too? Probably not.
The journaling app isn’t perfect. But it’s free and it’s on the iPhone already. It’s there for anyone who has an iPhone to use. That’s what makes it so right for so many people. They don’t have to go look for new apps. They don’t have to try and download some new app to try and figure out.
Also the fact that it’s locked on the phone makes it more appealing to some people. I’ve talked to people (and, hell, I’m in this same category myself right now), I’ve been journaling digitally for a little while because I’ve been going through some stuff. I don’t want that stuff to be read by anyone else right now. I don’t want my notebook laying there and someone find it and start reading it.
Besides the ideas mentioned above, here are a few other ideas and things I’ve been using the journal app for:
- Documenting photos and/or videos of a moment.
We all do this. We take a ton of photos of something and then a year or two later we are trying to describe this event to someone else. We look for the pictures and finally find them. What I’ve been doing is putting the best pictures/videos into journal and then describing the event for later on.
Links I want to revisit later.
Perhaps it’s something I want to reference a couple of times or it’s something I want to look at in the future. Using the share sheet I can quickly add it to journal and have it later. I can write something quick about what it is or give it a title. Then I can search for that later if I need to (search feature will be available on iOS 18).Voice Memos.
Believe it or not, a lot of my journaling is done while I’m driving or out for a walk. I’ll pick up the phone and start talking. I’ll use several different methods to do this. If I want it more structured and something I can read later on, I’ll use dictation in Drafts. If I want it to be raw and emotional and where you can hear every bit of angst in my voice then I’ll record directly in the journal app.
There are other use cases for the journal app but these are a few that I’ve incorporated into my routine. I still use the journal app to just journal too. I’ll write (or type/dictate) and talk about what’s going on and use it to work out problems. If you use Day One you can do the same thing. If you use a notebook you can do the same thing (for the most part). The goal here is not to convince you why you have to use this app. The goal is to show you journaling is beneficial, no matter what app you use or how you use that app or notebook.