Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What strikes me is the empty spaces where we don't recognize what we did, or didn't do anything memorable.

I made an app to try to address this about a decade ago which I called Bucket52, the idea being that every week you put one memorable thing in it. Trying to do this just for a year was surprisingly difficult.



For me I just want to remember what's gone on in my life better, even if it's sometimes mundane. I've tried short-form daily journaling, but I've only made it around 3 months before I start skipping days and stop doing it altogether.

When it comes to doing something new/memorable, I'd be fine with aspiring for just one thing per month (with the assumption that sometimes/often I'd end up with more than that).

I think the way to make things like this work is to start with a low-ambition target, and then scale up until just before the point where it starts to feel difficult to keep it going. I'm not sure I could keep up a cadence of doing one memorable thing per week. Once a month seems doable, though. But if I were really uncertain, maybe I'd first target once per two months, and then see how much more frequently I could do memorable things before it started feeling like a difficult burden.


I started this in 2015 and I'm still keeping up with it. Maybe it will work for you.

https://medium.com/@markracette/make-every-day-matter-9ac6db...


Oliver Rackham (the woodland history bloke in the UK) used small notebooks. Kept one in his pocket. Went everywhere with them. More of a free-form approach.

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/rackham/1


Could you share the template please?


I have started and stopped journaling times over the years. When I initially got a smart phone, i started taking photos of mundane everyday things. I’ve now been consistently doing this for many years. It just takes a few seconds to take out the phone and snap a few photos. I have many short videos and photos of my kids over the years doing them mundane that I treasure with my life.


I've started just keeping a text list of "interesting things that I did / happened to me this year". It's nice to look back on at the end of each year - my primary reaction is "OMG that was this year??"




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: