Journaling

FlorenceArt · 12-09-2015, 02:38 PM

I've been wanting to start a thread on journaling for a while, and there were several replies to my comments on the "favorite app" thread, so here it is

The most popular app for journaling is probably Day One, but it didn't work for me. I don't like the way it displays entries and images. I think Day One may be better suited to people who mostly use their iPhone for journaling, but my main device is my iPad. Of course this is just my personal experience based on my personal requirements. Feel free to disagree!

I started keeping a journal thanks to my iPad and Noteshelf. I have always loved the sensation of writing with a pencil on paper, and now that I take all my professional notes on iPad or laptop, I miss it. And when I discovered Noteshelf, I liked it so much that I started keeping a journal with it.

But there are some limitations to using Noteshelf. One is that I need my iPad with me to write on it. This was not a huge problem as I took it with me almost everywhere, but since I bought an iPhone 6+ I sometimes leave the house without the iPad, when I want to lighten my handbag. Also, Noteshelf is good for handwriting but not much else. The notebook simile is reassuring but very limiting. I can't browse journal entries by date. I can insert photos but somehow I'm never satisfied with the way they look in the notebook. And I still miss pencil and paper. Noteshelf is the closest to that sensation on the iPad but it's not the real thing.

It took me months to finally come up with a combination that mostly gives me what I want, although of course it's not perfect, and it requires a little work. Here's what I use:

- Noteshelf of course, I still use and enjoy it.
- As many paper notebooks as I want! Currently I'm using a large one for home, a small one for traveling light, plus a Moleskine just because.
- Awesome Notes.
- FasterScan on my iPhone, because it's much more practical to use for scanning than the iPad.
- Evernote.

Awesome Notes is the central app that I use to store all my handwritten notes, typed notes, photos, checklists, and occasionally reminders (though it's not the best app for that and I just bought 2do, so I may stop using Awesome Notes for reminders). Evernote serves as a gateway for sending notes to Awesome Notes, and also as a backup and a way to sync between iPad and iPhone, and even read my journal on PC or Mac even though Awesome Notes is iOS only. Actually Evernote is probably the most important element in this setup, but I prefer the look and feel of Awesome Notes, so I use it as a kind of Evernote client.

Noteshelf has an option to sync to Evernote, but I don't use it for my journal. It creates one note per notebook in the Noteshelf Evernote book, and each page is an image in that book. This doesn't work for me since I want to be able to mix Noteshelf pages with entries from other sources. So at the end of each day, I export the pages I wrote in Noteshelf. This creates a note with one image for each page, and I upload it directly to the Awesome Notes journal notebook. I use the low definition option for images, otherwise the upload would take forever (that's one drawback of Noteshelf, it generates huge files).

For paper journals, I use the same technique except that I have to scan them first, using FasterScan. I then upload them to Evernote as one note per day with an image for each page, directly to the same Awesome Notes journal.

I also have a Drafts shortcut to post text notes to Awesome Note through Evernote, but I almost never use it. I suppose IFTTT could be used similarly, but I have never tried that service.

HarryT · 12-10-2015, 08:55 AM

Does a journal differ from a diary, or are they different words for the same thing?

FlorenceArt · 12-10-2015, 10:00 AM

I'm not a native English speaker so I may have used the term incorrectly. In my mind it's the same as a diary.

HarryT · 12-10-2015, 10:05 AM

Thanks, Florence!

Bookworm_Girl · 12-13-2015, 07:17 PM

Good idea for a thread. Thanks for sharing your workflow! I plan to investigate some of these apps.

FlorenceArt · 12-20-2015, 01:54 PM

Most reviewers (and users presumably) seem to prefer Day One. I don't like the way it displays entries and especially images, but if you don't mind that, it seems to be a very solid app. One advantage of Day One is that it has been around for a while and seems to be very popular, which means there is a good chance that the app will still be around for a while. This is important since a journal is something you are supposed to want to look back on in the future. This is why it's important to me that Awesome Notes syncs to Evernote, because I have more faith in the longevity of Evernote than that of Awesome note. But of course you never know, and it's probably safer to save your journal to a commonly used format once in a while. Day One can export to PDF. I have to confess I don't know how I would export my Evernote journal. I need to look that up. The latest version of Awesome Notes can export to PDF too, but I haven't tried it.

Here are a couple of links to articles about Day One:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/25/irl-day-one/
http://thesweetsetup.com/apps/the-ve...g-logging-app/

I tried, and failed, to find another article that I read when I was researching journaling apps. It explained how the author managed both her Day One journal and her paper diary. From what I remember, she had a system where she kept an index in her paper notebook, and I think she posted the index reference of each paper journal entry in Day One. I like my method better, obviously

Nothingness · 12-20-2015, 10:15 PM

There is the app Wonderful Days - Diary with style, it can sync with Evernote:

http://www.handypadsoft.com/wdfdays.php

kyteflyer · 12-21-2015, 02:03 AM

Then, there's Macjournal. It doesn't sync with Evernote, just with itself via Dropbox. IOS/OSX.

http://marinersoftware.com/products/macjournal/

Penforhire · 12-21-2015, 11:19 AM

I've been using Notability as a journal. I tried a few others, including Day One but so far I like this one best. I am not too demanding so I like something with a simple interface and iCloud sync.

FlorenceArt · 12-21-2015, 12:50 PM

It seems that the Day One apps are on sale now, in case anybody is interested. 1 euro for the iOS version and 7 euros for the Mac version on the French store.

FlorenceArt · 12-21-2015, 04:26 PM

When I was looking for a journaling app, I almost selected As Noted. It has a beautiful minimalist interface and you can insert inline images in your notes. It's a plain text tool, which for me is a plus. Text formatting features usually distract me from writing and ask me to make choices I don't want to worry about. The only feature I want is inserting images (and I don't want them cropped).

When I first tried it, the app was extremely buggy, but it seems to have improved. Although just now, as I was playing with it, it crashed and I lost a note I had just written. Also, I don't think you can change the date of an entry, which is something I often do, for instance when I scan a paper journal page or a document relating to an event, I will change the entry date to the date of the event or the date I wrote the page.

You can sync using Dropbox, and they have a Chrome extension that you can use to update your journal from the web, I haven't tried it. They claim you can import Kindle highlights from your Amazon account, but I can't find the menu to do that.

One last thing, the app is free, which is not good. I'd like to know what their business model is.

leebase · 12-28-2015, 03:07 PM

I was going to mention just writing in a notebook and then taking a picture, but you seem to have that one figured out already

FlorenceArt · 04-23-2016, 04:11 AM

Day One has a new version that doesn't crop photos and allows several photos per entry. You can get it for free until May 1st by getting a coupon on Apple's Apple Store app (your mileage may vary though, it didn't work for me until this morning, after I installed the recent update of the Apple Store app).

So I've been playing with the app and I must say I am very tempted to abandon my Evernote/Awesome Note workflow. The only thing I'm puzzling about is how to get the scans of my paper journal to the app without flooding my photo album. And another annoying thing is that sync is now done using Day One's proprietary service and not via iCloud.

But the app looks really cool and has a lot of useful options, such as setting the time and location of an entry from the photo's metadata. Very useful for me because I tend to update my journal retrospectively.

12-09-2015, 02:38 PM	#1
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	Journaling I've been wanting to start a thread on journaling for a while, and there were several replies to my comments on the "favorite app" thread, so here it is The most popular app for journaling is probably Day One, but it didn't work for me. I don't like the way it displays entries and images. I think Day One may be better suited to people who mostly use their iPhone for journaling, but my main device is my iPad. Of course this is just my personal experience based on my personal requirements. Feel free to disagree! I started keeping a journal thanks to my iPad and Noteshelf. I have always loved the sensation of writing with a pencil on paper, and now that I take all my professional notes on iPad or laptop, I miss it. And when I discovered Noteshelf, I liked it so much that I started keeping a journal with it. But there are some limitations to using Noteshelf. One is that I need my iPad with me to write on it. This was not a huge problem as I took it with me almost everywhere, but since I bought an iPhone 6+ I sometimes leave the house without the iPad, when I want to lighten my handbag. Also, Noteshelf is good for handwriting but not much else. The notebook simile is reassuring but very limiting. I can't browse journal entries by date. I can insert photos but somehow I'm never satisfied with the way they look in the notebook. And I still miss pencil and paper. Noteshelf is the closest to that sensation on the iPad but it's not the real thing. It took me months to finally come up with a combination that mostly gives me what I want, although of course it's not perfect, and it requires a little work. Here's what I use: - Noteshelf of course, I still use and enjoy it. - As many paper notebooks as I want! Currently I'm using a large one for home, a small one for traveling light, plus a Moleskine just because. - Awesome Notes. - FasterScan on my iPhone, because it's much more practical to use for scanning than the iPad. - Evernote. Awesome Notes is the central app that I use to store all my handwritten notes, typed notes, photos, checklists, and occasionally reminders (though it's not the best app for that and I just bought 2do, so I may stop using Awesome Notes for reminders). Evernote serves as a gateway for sending notes to Awesome Notes, and also as a backup and a way to sync between iPad and iPhone, and even read my journal on PC or Mac even though Awesome Notes is iOS only. Actually Evernote is probably the most important element in this setup, but I prefer the look and feel of Awesome Notes, so I use it as a kind of Evernote client. Noteshelf has an option to sync to Evernote, but I don't use it for my journal. It creates one note per notebook in the Noteshelf Evernote book, and each page is an image in that book. This doesn't work for me since I want to be able to mix Noteshelf pages with entries from other sources. So at the end of each day, I export the pages I wrote in Noteshelf. This creates a note with one image for each page, and I upload it directly to the Awesome Notes journal notebook. I use the low definition option for images, otherwise the upload would take forever (that's one drawback of Noteshelf, it generates huge files). For paper journals, I use the same technique except that I have to scan them first, using FasterScan. I then upload them to Evernote as one note per day with an image for each page, directly to the same Awesome Notes journal. I also have a Drafts shortcut to post text notes to Awesome Note through Evernote, but I almost never use it. I suppose IFTTT could be used similarly, but I have never tried that service. Last edited by FlorenceArt; 12-14-2015 at 01:46 AM. Reason: Typos

12-10-2015, 08:55 AM	#2
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Does a journal differ from a diary, or are they different words for the same thing?

12-10-2015, 10:00 AM	#3
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	I'm not a native English speaker so I may have used the term incorrectly. In my mind it's the same as a diary.

12-10-2015, 10:05 AM	#4
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Thanks, Florence!

12-13-2015, 07:17 PM	#5
Bookworm_Girl E-reader Enthusiast Posts: 4,873 Karma: 36536965 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Southwest, USA Device: Kindle Oasis 3; Kobo Aura One; iPad Mini 5	Good idea for a thread. Thanks for sharing your workflow! I plan to investigate some of these apps.

12-20-2015, 01:54 PM	#6
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	Most reviewers (and users presumably) seem to prefer Day One. I don't like the way it displays entries and especially images, but if you don't mind that, it seems to be a very solid app. One advantage of Day One is that it has been around for a while and seems to be very popular, which means there is a good chance that the app will still be around for a while. This is important since a journal is something you are supposed to want to look back on in the future. This is why it's important to me that Awesome Notes syncs to Evernote, because I have more faith in the longevity of Evernote than that of Awesome note. But of course you never know, and it's probably safer to save your journal to a commonly used format once in a while. Day One can export to PDF. I have to confess I don't know how I would export my Evernote journal. I need to look that up. The latest version of Awesome Notes can export to PDF too, but I haven't tried it. Here are a couple of links to articles about Day One: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/25/irl-day-one/ http://thesweetsetup.com/apps/the-ve...g-logging-app/ I tried, and failed, to find another article that I read when I was researching journaling apps. It explained how the author managed both her Day One journal and her paper diary. From what I remember, she had a system where she kept an index in her paper notebook, and I think she posted the index reference of each paper journal entry in Day One. I like my method better, obviously

12-20-2015, 10:15 PM	#7
Nothingness Zealot Posts: 111 Karma: 7574010 Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura H2O Limited Edition	There is the app Wonderful Days - Diary with style, it can sync with Evernote: http://www.handypadsoft.com/wdfdays.php

12-21-2015, 02:03 AM	#8
kyteflyer Wizard Posts: 1,844 Karma: 9547754 Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Newcastle, Australia Device: iPhone 12 Mini	Then, there's Macjournal. It doesn't sync with Evernote, just with itself via Dropbox. IOS/OSX. http://marinersoftware.com/products/macjournal/

12-21-2015, 11:19 AM	#9
Penforhire Wizard Posts: 2,230 Karma: 7145404 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Southern California Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+	I've been using Notability as a journal. I tried a few others, including Day One but so far I like this one best. I am not too demanding so I like something with a simple interface and iCloud sync.

12-21-2015, 12:50 PM	#10
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	It seems that the Day One apps are on sale now, in case anybody is interested. 1 euro for the iOS version and 7 euros for the Mac version on the French store.

12-21-2015, 04:26 PM	#11
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	When I was looking for a journaling app, I almost selected As Noted. It has a beautiful minimalist interface and you can insert inline images in your notes. It's a plain text tool, which for me is a plus. Text formatting features usually distract me from writing and ask me to make choices I don't want to worry about. The only feature I want is inserting images (and I don't want them cropped). When I first tried it, the app was extremely buggy, but it seems to have improved. Although just now, as I was playing with it, it crashed and I lost a note I had just written. Also, I don't think you can change the date of an entry, which is something I often do, for instance when I scan a paper journal page or a document relating to an event, I will change the entry date to the date of the event or the date I wrote the page. You can sync using Dropbox, and they have a Chrome extension that you can use to update your journal from the web, I haven't tried it. They claim you can import Kindle highlights from your Amazon account, but I can't find the menu to do that. One last thing, the app is free, which is not good. I'd like to know what their business model is.

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12-28-2015, 03:07 PM	#12
leebase Karma Kameleon Posts: 2,960 Karma: 26738313 Join Date: Aug 2009 Device: iPad Mini, iPhone X, Kindle Fire Tab HD 8, Walmart Onn	I was going to mention just writing in a notebook and then taking a picture, but you seem to have that one figured out already

04-23-2016, 04:11 AM	#13
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	Day One has a new version that doesn't crop photos and allows several photos per entry. You can get it for free until May 1st by getting a coupon on Apple's Apple Store app (your mileage may vary though, it didn't work for me until this morning, after I installed the recent update of the Apple Store app). So I've been playing with the app and I must say I am very tempted to abandon my Evernote/Awesome Note workflow. The only thing I'm puzzling about is how to get the scans of my paper journal to the app without flooding my photo album. And another annoying thing is that sync is now done using Day One's proprietary service and not via iCloud. But the app looks really cool and has a lot of useful options, such as setting the time and location of an entry from the photo's metadata. Very useful for me because I tend to update my journal retrospectively.