How Audio Journaling Brings Structure to My Life!
When even writing into my journal seems too much to bother...
I know of the benefits of journaling. Every time I do it, it helps me process the many ideas, feelings, thoughts that are rushing through my head every day. It helps me get a clearer picture of who I am and what I want.
But sometimes I don’t have a notebook by my side. Or don’t even feel like picking it up to confront my feelings.
Yet, I still want to do it. Because I know it’s good for me. It’s just like working out. I know it’s good, but you need to find your own ways to get it done.
Early on I learned that the secret to establishing and sticking to any habit is removing all friction. Basically, making it as easy as possible to start. So easy, that not doing it, seems harder.
Last year, when the winter depression was knocking at my door, I had an epiphany, what if I journal with my voice. Inspired by apps that record your meetings and summarize them for you I had the idea to build the same thing for personal organization.
Inspired on a two week vacation I sat down and build a prototype within a week.
Fast-forward to now…
I have been using it myself for almost a year now for a variety of things. In it’s current form it transcribes recordings, extracts a title, summary, to-do’s, my mood, key insights, people I mention, and some other things. It works great on mobile and on the web (a native app is still in the making).
Here are some things that I currently use it for extensively:
Ramble Journaling—I do this whenever I’m upset, when there are too many things going on in my life, when I feel directionless or lack motivation. The act of talking gets the negative thoughts out of my head. It helps me get a perspective shift! Untangles circular reasoning.
Organizing busy days—I just talk about what I have planned, or what I have to remember to do. It works in whatever structured or unstructured way and then I get a neat TODO-list that I can check off or edit. Kind of like a standup meeting with myself, where I don’t have to feel bad that I haven’t thought about what I want to say beforehand.
Frictionless capturing of ideas—I like recording whatever genius or dumb idea rushes through my head. In the past, I would write it down. But sometimes thoughts are coming faster than you can type. They also might seem random if you would explain it to another person. But with the app I can just embrace the context jumping to make sense of it later. Or not! Sometimes ideas are just funny and I’ll have a laugh looking back at them.
Grocery lists—My wife and I can just simply talk into it and have a grocery list afterwards. Convenient.
Presentation and interview rehearsals—Before going into any interview, meeting, or call I try to warm up speaking freely and also get my own motivation and messaging straight.
Diary—Do you ever feel like life passes by very quickly and you don’t even remember what you did last week or even yesterday? When recording my memos I feel like I’m tracking better what’s going on in my life, which ideas I’m grappling with. And it just simply makes me feel like my life is an unfolding story and I’m an actual protagonist with full agency.
If you feel like you could be interested in an app like that, consider checking it out and subscribing to the waitlist (or this publication).
Just today I sent out the first beta invites to interested people.
See you on the other side!
Goscha