Journaling In Obsidian Every Day For A Year
A year ago today I started using Obsidian as an everyday journaling app.
I had been using it as a general note-taking app and PKM tool, but I decided to implement a digital bullet journal system with it as well. With the exception of 10 days, I've opened the app every day, created a daily note, logged my day and journaled.
Some days I don't write much at all. Some days I have a lot of thoughts to get down on the page. When I'm particularly busy the journals are often just a list of the tasks I'm focused on for a given day.
Prior to using Obsidian, I was someone who would journal off and on for years with no real consistency. This, by far, has been the stickiest journaling system I've stumbled upon—and I think it's given me a lot more intention and balance in my life.
Just putting my goals down each day and then having a regular feedback loop for myself helps me stay focused on what matters. When looking back at my entries from the last year, I'm primarily writing about work and fitness.
Sometimes I'll throw in thoughts about a book, or a movie, or a podcast or some random thing that happened in life. Maybe a quote I heard that resonated with me. Sometimes I also throw in random new words I've heard and want to get into my own vocabulary.
Extremely frequently, I use the journal to hold myself accountable. It's hard for me to ignore the fact that I've been slacking on my lifting or running when, for three days straight, I don't have my exercise tasks checked off as "done."
And now, a year later, it's cool (and often funny) to look back at what I was doing throughout the year. To see what I was thinking about, what was annoying me, what I was working on or worried about. To see what has changed.
I backlogged all of the journals I wrote digitally in other areas before switching to this Obsidian bullet journal system—my earliest is from November in 2021—so I have multiple years of sporadic entries to look back at.
But there's something extremely satisfying about having a full year of my life logged and sitting there for me to look back at whenever I want. Imagine what that'll be like five, 10 or 30 years from now?
I'm sure my future self will laugh at all the mundane things that took up so much of my mental energy.