1000 Days of Journaling with Day One

Back in June 2021, Automattic announced that they were acquiring Day One, a journaling app. I had never heard of Day One, but being a strong WordPress user I paid attention to news from Automattic. Given that so much of Automattic’s tools are aimed at public writing and publishing (ex WordPress, Tumblr), I found the addition of the private publishing of Day One to be curious.

I investigated… and rapidly became intrigued.

I liked the fact that it seamlessly worked across all my Apple devices and systems. As a security geek, I loved that all the journals are end-to-end encrypted so that not even Automattic can see them. I enjoyed how I could easily add photos, audio, and video into posts. I was amused that there was an Apple Watch app that let you add audio (which I’ve used maybe twice, but it’s fun that it’s there).

Pretty soon Day One just became an integral part of my daily life.

Today marks 1,000 days straight of using the app. BUT… unlike Duolingo where a “streak” is a gamified way of keeping you involved, this streak is purely a recognition of how much the app has become woven into what I do. Unlike Duolingo, I wasn’t trying to keep a streak going… I was just constantly using the app.

To be clear, I haven’t been writing brilliant pieces of text every day for 1,000 days. When you pay for a Day One subscription, as I do, you can create as many different “journals” as you want.

And so for me, Day One has become a chronological note-keeping database. I do have a “Journal” where I occasionally write down thoughts, poems, ideas, etc. But I also have journals for:

• Gratitude - I do keep a daily gratitude journal of things I am grateful for
• Health - Notes about medical appointments, blood pressure, weight, exercise
• Games - Records of Wordle (yes, I still play daily!) and other games
• Clothing - What I wear during the work week (mostly so that I don’t show up at my weekly Rotary Club meeting wearing the exact same thing as I did last week! 🤣)
• House - Notes about changes, updates, repairs, etc, on our house
• Cars - Records of oil changes, repairs, and other aspects of car ownership
• Home IT - Updates about things I’ve done on our home systems
• Instagram - It automagically pulls in any Instagram photos I post so that I have my own local copy
• And several other journals for notes about family and other life aspects

You can see from the list why it’s never a struggle for a “streak” to happen… the app is just woven into the fabric of what I do every single day.

I’ve also started using it for journals for focused activities. For example, I recently spent a week in Honduras on a service trip. I created a separate journal, and while there spent time each capturing my memories of what I did during the day, and adding photos and videos so that I could remember when I got back home. This worked out well, and by virtue of the new “Shared Journals” feature, I was able to share this journal with my daughter who also accompanied me. As I started using the app more intentionally in Honduras, it was fun to see that it created a map of where I was when I posted each post, so I could geographically see where I had been.

I’ve also started a journal up for the 12-week Climatebase Fellowship that I began yesterday. Again, to capture notes and thoughts while in the middle of that focused work.

I also very much enjoy the “On This Day” aspect that shows you want entries you made across your various journals over the years. It’s a fun and interesting way to reflect back and understand where you were and where you have come from over time.  (There are even more features of Day One that I haven’t played with at all.)

But wait, you might say… didn’t I write about moving note taking from Evernote to Obsidian? How does Obsidian fit in here?

The answer is that I’m using both. Day One is what I use every day for chronological notes. It’s my daily diary of life. It’s where I record thoughts I randomly have, or what I’m grateful for, or photos of what happened on a particular day. It’s also where I check to see when was the last time I got an oil change for the truck - or what clothes I wore to Rotary last Wednesday 😀.

Obsidian is what I use for more long-term or structured notes and storage. For example, when I was taking French classes, all my notes are there. I have a note with the various biographies that I use so that if I need a bio to submit to a conference, I can rapidly get one. I have notes with abstracts for various talks. I have “link dumps” of research I’ve done on various topics.

I use Obsidian for things that I want to retrieve based on topic or search term, rather than date.

I could use Obsidian for the daily diary aspect. I know some people do. The reality is that I was already using Day One when I discovered Obsidian, and so I already had solved the chronological note taking in my daily life.

And so here I am… 1,000 days of using an app… every…. single…. day!

If you haven’t checked out Day One, I encourage you to do so. For me, it’s an amazing app that helps me every day with capturing what is going on in my life, and in my thinking.