# Interstitial Journaling ## Introduction The idea behind Interstitial Journaling is to capture short notes throughout the day, in-between different activities/tasks, or as part of those. It's a tool to declutter your mind and stay focused. **Interstitial journaling is a practice/technique that you perform/use throughout the day.** This practice/technique could also be called "micro-journaling". You use the journal's current daily note as your scratch pad, as your second brain, as your place for storing ideas, discoveries, progress, challenges, etc. Whatever you want. You just add new content to your journal about whatever and whenever. ## What to capture Using this technique, you can capture/dump EVERYTHING you have in mind: For instance, using this technique, you can capture things such as: - Your thoughts, ideas & feelings - Tasks you have completed - Goals you have achieved - Things you're grateful for - Things you've learned - Things you don't want to forget - Things you find interesting, want to explore, try or experiment - Things you want or need to do later - Challenges and problems you're facing - Your energy level - ... **The principle is simple: you just write it down so that you can get it out of your head and so that you can "forget" *intentionally*.** ## Benefits By capturing information this way: - You have a SINGLE place where you capture/store new information - No need to think about what goes where - No need to waste time organizing. Instead, you can remain focused on what you're doing - Everything you capture in your journal is connected with time (cfr [[Why you should link your notes with time]]) - You can find things back more easily - You know what happened/appeared when - You can go back to the context you were in at the time (what you were doing, what you were trying to achieve, etc) - Everything you capture (in your trusted system) is there "forever" - When done in-between tasks, this enables a more mindful transition, creating a space for reflection, gratitude, etc. But there's a lot more to this practice - Last but not least, interstitial journaling also helps capture the necessary input for [[Periodic reviews]], which can also help you a lot - You can rollover the captured information (e.g., achievements, challenges, discoveries, ...) to larger time horizons (e.g., daily notes > weekly notes > monthly notes > ... > yearly notes) and observe trends, patterns, recurring issues... Many additional benefits of this technique are listed here: [[Benefits of journaling]]. ## Recommendations ### Digital first whenever possible To make interstitial journaling actually useful over time and at scale, **I recommend using a digital-first approach to write your journal**. Analog approaches will limit what you can capture and will require additional effort to later be integrated with digital notes. You will miss opportunities if you use an analog only or analog-first approach. Check out the following resources for more details/context - [[The value of going from analog to digital]] - My [[Knowledge Management for Beginners]] course - The [[Knowii Community Event - Knowledge Builders - 2025-08-20 - Journaling Deep Dive]] workshop I've recorded for the [[Knowii Community]] ### Store your journal in a Tool for Thought (TfT) / PKMS I recommend implementing this journaling technique in a [[Tools for Thought (TfTs)|Tool for Thought (TfT)]] as part of a solid [[Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS)]], aka a note-taking system on steroids (this is really an oversimplification!). There are two reasons for this recommendation. First, **a Personal Knowledge Management System is (by design) a *trusted* system**, meaning that you can store information in it and trust that it will: - Remain there - Be easy to retrieve/reuse/leverage later **Once your information is stored in there, you can forget it *intentionally*, knowing that it's still in there, even if not in your brain.** Second, **a Tool for Thought enables you to create/grow a [[Personal Knowledge Graph (PKG)]]**. Storing your digital journal together with the rest of your knowledge means that you can: - Move information around (e.g., move a bunch of bullet points from a journal entry to a separate note) - Connect the different parts seamlessly (e.g., create a link from a journal entry to another note, or the other way around) - ... ### Define and Reuse Templates In order to systematize your approach and make sure to maximize the value you get our of this practice, I recommend defining and maintaining specific templates for your journal. You should at least have one for daily notes. You can find a copy of mine here: [[My Template for Daily Notes]]. I actually recommend creating specific templates for different [[Time Horizons]] (e.g., weekly, monthly, ...). ### Combine with Periodic Reviews Last but not least, I recommend combining this technique with [[Periodic reviews]] in order to really take advantage of the captured information. This works really well (from my own experience) with a bulk knowledge ingestion process, where information transitions from raw captures in your daily notes to new [[Atomic notes]] in your knowledge system. ## Complete system overview ![[2025-08-20 - Journaling Overview HQ.png]] Cfr [[Journaling Overview.canvas|Journaling Overview]] ## Morning pages With [[Morning pages]], you use a number of [[Journaling prompts]] or questions that you answer at the beginning of the day. The goal of that practice is to get you to write (basically about anything). Interstitial journaling doesn't have much to do with that. That being said, you definitely CAN also write morning pages using this technique... ## Related - [[Knowii Community Event - Knowledge Builders - 2025-08-20 - Journaling Deep Dive]] - [[Benefits of journaling]] - [[Bullet journaling]] - [[Journaling]] - [[Journaling (MoC)]] - [[Knowii Community]] - [[Knowledge Management for Beginners]] - [[Mental context|Mental Contexts]] - [[Morning pages]] - [[My Template for Daily Notes]] - [[My Template for Daily Notes|Daily note template]] - [[Open loops]] - [[Periodic reviews]] - [[Personal Knowledge Graph (PKG)]] - [[Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS)]] - [[The value of going from analog to digital]] - [[Tools for Thought (TfTs)|Tool for Thought (TfT)]] - [[What Are Daily Notes Useful For]] - [[Why use daily notes as your capture system]] - [[Why you should link your notes with time]] - [[Mental Leakage]] ## References - [[Anne-Laure Le Cunff]]: https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling - [[Tony Stubblebine]]: https://medium.com/better-humans/replace-your-to-do-list-with-interstitial-journaling-to-increase-productivity-4e43109d15ef