Dear Diary 2.0

Growing up, I religiously kept a diary until I was 20 years old when I read my great grandmother’s teenage diary. I thought she sounded really shallow given what a fantastic person she became. Then it dawned on me that one day I could have a great granddaughter reading MY diary and judging me. That night, I immediately ripped out a couple of pages. Only when it was too late did I realize future generations could infer far worse things than I’d actually done from ripped pages or that I was nutty. I didn’t start up again until I had kids but have found long hand laborious. Enter an intriguing app called Day One…

First of all, I think Day One should’ve named themselves, Dear Diary 2.0. Right?  I guess it would’ve limited their audience to women but still. It’s a lot catchier. Now, we Pixies talk endlessly to people and clients about schedulers and daily planners. We’re always on the lookout to find easier ways for different personality types to remember appointments, streamline their days, prioritize etc. We have long discussions about whether someone has gone completely digital, partially digital or remains married to paper. There are many permutations across personality types. But it struck me the other day when reading an article from Paid Content — I peruse pretty sexy sites, n’est-ce pas? — that we never talk about diary writing or journal writing. This is how I found out about Day One.

The reason we haven’t really researched diary writing is that it isn’t exactly on the top of many people’s To Do list or even ON a To Do list — although truth be told I often put it on my list so I actually write in it once a month. Plus, if you’re trying to streamline your life, it’s not like you want to add on a daily duty. This tip is therefore for anyone still writing “Dear Diary” in long hand or writing one in Word or saving important emails like me. Day One really makes it easy to capture the nitty gritty of your daily life. And diary writing is not just for posterity when you think about it. It has productivity uses as well. I read how someone actually used it to help him come up with his business time log for billing clients on a business trip.

But as a Classic Freedom (SFJ) I’m almost irretrievably bound by the tradition of having something tangible even though the ease of Day One calls my name. I’d dreamed of handing these beautifully bound journals to my sons when they graduate high school. If I do Day One, I just give them a web address. Although the advantage of a website is  they cannot spill beer all over the web page in their dorm room and ruin 18 years of my hard work!

Here’s my essentially rhetorical question to finish off today’s tip, am I the only one out there who signed off her diary as a young girl with “xoxo, Love, Me” even though I was writing myself?