# What Are Daily Notes Useful For Important events in our lives tend to be solidly anchored in our long-term memory. Although, most of the things we live fade away quicker than we realize. Do you clearly remember what happened today? Yesterday? Last week? Last month? The month before that? The further you go back, the fuzzier things will be. I personally have trouble remembering what I did a few minutes ago. You can ask my wife, she'll tell you about it 😂. When we don't have any external system and fully rely on our brain, we can only hope for the best, even if memorization techniques can certainly help (e.g., [[Spaced repetition]]). I recommend practicing daily journaling. You can start small, and write a few sentences each day. The most important thing is to do it on a regular basis. The goal of daily notes is to *capture* things that matter *to you*. For instance (in no particular order): - Important events (in your life and/or in the world) - Your ideas, thoughts, observations, emotions, etc - Your progress - Your achievements - Your experiments - Things you've read - Things you've learned - Interesting facts, links, ideas get exposed to - People you've met - Meetings you've had - Things you're grateful for - Things you want to do next - Places you want to visit - Future goals - ... The goal of daily note-taking is *not* to log everything. That would defeat the purpose. No, the goal is rather to **make your days more memorable**. It's so easy to let the daily life/work routine take over and let days/weeks/months/years pass us by. By practicing daily note-taking, you'll pay much more attention to *how* you live your life. Writing daily notes regularly will make you much more self-aware. It's like a window to your mind and your soul. When I started practicing, I realized that my journal helped me a lot. It surfaced thoughts and ideas that I didn't express otherwise. It has helped me better understand myself, and listen to my own needs. At work, daily notes have helped me to never forget anything, which made me incredibly reliable. Look at: [[How to Take Notes at Work and Never Forget Anything (Article)|How to Take Notes at Work and Never Forget Anything]] Daily notes are also a great way to bring order into your life. I'll get back to this in a jiffy. **Daily note-taking is actually a mindfulness practice**. It forces you to actually *think* about yourself and your own experience of life. And not only once a year, but on a regular basis. Your notes will also allow you to "save" the context of events and learnings. It may seem useless, but it's actually very helpful to be able to correlate events in your life. And to understand what led you to explore X or Y. As a content creator, this is invaluable to me. The hard part is turning the practice into a habit. To do that, it is important to keep it entertaining enough. Otherwise, you might abandon before you can reap the benefits. Try it for a few days, and reflect back. Go through your notes and pay attention to how it makes you feel. Does it help you to be grateful for important events in your life? Does it help you remember key learnings and discoveries? If the approach you've taken so far seems tedious/boring, then explore other journaling techniques. Experiment! Sometimes, reminders are helpful to establish habits. Try scheduling journaling into your day. For instance, you can plan to take 5 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes before noon, and 5 minutes at the end of the day. That can help in the beginning, but I would not recommend taking daily notes only at fixed times. The main reason is that you might forget about what you've learned and what happened (thanks, flaky memory!). Also, writing things down right after the fact means that the emotions are still fresh. You know how you felt a moment ago. You still have the context in mind, which is invaluable. If you practice journaling regularly, you'll realize how impactful/enlightening it is. ## Related - [[Journaling]] - [[Benefits of journaling]] - [[Interstitial Journaling]] - [[Why use daily notes as your capture system]]