Daily Memory Journal

I’m brand loyal to Moleskine for my notebooks at this point. I probably have about eight active Moleskine notebooks going for various topics and another 10+ that are completely full and in my archives.

Each fall, I purchase the Moleskine Classic Daily Journal for the upcoming 12-month calendar year. Sometimes these are in relatively short supply, so I try to order this pretty far in advance. Plus, I need it by January 1st and don’t want a shipping delay to get it to me late.

I’ve found that the full, one-sided page for each day is a good amount of space for my process.

As far as my writing instrument, I’m about as simple as you can get. I order black Bic ballpoint pens by the truckload and they are the only pens I will use in my notebooks. If my own three-year-old daughter drew in one of my notebooks with a crayon, we probably wouldn’t be on speaking terms for a few weeks.

Anyway, here is what this daily process looks like for me. Each night, I spend a few minutes simply recording daily memories, progress toward goals, reading completed, and one thing I am grateful for from that day.

Everyday Notes

Memories

I start by writing “Memories:” on the first line of the day’s page and then bullet point what I did that day on the following lines. For example, here is what a random entry last October looked like for me:

Memories:

• Work

• Cleaned out upstairs office

• Workout

• Carved pumpkins @ Papa + Chrissy’s

• Sat in the hot tub for OMN

• Took a drive and called Skip to chat

Some of my journaling probably needs translation. So, I started my day working, as usual. Then I cleaned out the upstairs office, which I remember doing because now I am writing this blog from my “new” office in the basement.

I probably worked out sometime in the middle of the day and then later that evening we went to my parent’s house (Papa and Chrissy) to carve pumpkins with the family.

“OMN” is “Open Mike Night,” which is my Tuesday tradition. Basically, once the kids are down for bed, I’m open to do my own thing with no expectations from the rest of the world. On this particular Tuesday, I sat in our hot tub for a bit then took a drive and called my brother (Skip – don’t ask the origins of this nickname) to chat.

The end. Those are my memories from the day.

Sometimes, my journal entry is more or less detailed insofar as how I describe my day. I would say this particular entry falls on the “less detailed” side, but is close enough to normal to give you an idea.

I’ll also take time to add additional details, such as major election results or our economy being shut down by a global pandemic. Hypothetically, of course. I’ll discuss this more in a bit.

Sometimes, something really funny or strange will happen and I’ll make note of that. Most of what I record are the “big things” that take up large blocks of my day, but life is mostly a lot of little moments that we shouldn’t miss.

Goals

The next thing I record are which goals I made progress on. Each year, I categorize my goals into six buckets:

1. Financial

2. Career

3. Relational

4. Learning

5. Health

6. Spiritual

For each of these categories, I usually have two goals. Here is what I recorded for another random day in 2020 under “Goals”:

Learning → Spanish, Cooking

Health → ✓

Spiritual → 2 Chronicles 13

It doesn’t look like I made any specific progress on my Financial, Career or Relational goals on this day. But I did spend time on two topics I am learning about (Spanish and cooking). I also did what I needed to do for my Health goals, hence the checkmark. And I also spent time reading Scripture, which was one of my Spiritual goals for the year.

The benefit of this with journaling is that I have a daily visual as to whether or not I am doing the things that I told myself I’d do at the beginning of each year. I would say I probably have about average discipline, so having this mental check at night is a good way of staying on track.

Reading

One of my unwritten and perpetual goals is more reading, so I record this as well. This is very simple and would just say something like:

Reading → “The Old Man and The Sea”

Or whatever book I read (I have not actually read The Old Man and The Sea).

Gratitude

The last thing I record each and every day is something for which I’m grateful, specifically from that day. Here are a few examples of gratitude that I found flipping through my notebooks:

Grateful for family time

Grateful for not having a serious knee injury

Grateful for the beauty of the mountains

The first I wrote after an evening of spending time with my whole family. The second was after an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon that indicated my hyperextended knee was not severely damaged. The last was on a trip to Utah.

Sometimes my gratitude is highly specific, sometimes very general. But the important thing for me is remembering that regardless of whether my day was “good” or “bad,” it was actually just pretty good.

Other Notes I Make

New Years’ Resolutions

In the Moleskine journal I use, there is a blank page right before the calendar pages begin that I write down my New Years’ Resolutions. This isn’t really something I look at often, but it is cool to have it all in one place with my memories when I am looking back on my year.

Travel

I record my travels in two places. First, there is another page in the front of the notebook called Travel Planning. I’m guessing that it is intended for planning out trips given the name, but I use it to jot down places that I actually do go throughout the year.

The columns on the page are Destination/Itinerary, Date, and Notes. My input here is simple, and I just keep it updated as I travel. Here is an example of a few lines from 2020:

Indianapolis 1/24 – 1/26 Weekend in Indy + BU basketball game

Grand Rapids 2/25 – 2/27 Work conference

Connecticut 3/4 – 3/6 Work conference

…

And so on. Additionally, if I’m out of town I will write the name of the place at the top of that day’s page. For example, I was in Cheyenne, WY on the night of October 9, 2020, so I simply wrote Cheyenne on the top of the page for October 9th.

It is cool looking back and seeing where I was each day throughout the year, and also being able to quickly get a sense as to how many days I was traveling and what I was doing.

Weather (only on occasion)

In general, weather doesn’t make the list of things I write down in the journal. However, there is a place to record weather conditions and temperature at the bottom of each page.

From time to time, we’ll have significant weather, such as a major snowstorm or a long rain that Kennedy and I played in or a record high temperature. Sometimes those occurrences feel worth noting. That kind of detail can help bring the other memories on the page back.

Special Memories

For more significant memories, ranging from the outcome of a presidential election to Kennedy’s first time on an airplane to a major anniversary, I “dog ear” the bottom of that page and put a star next to the bullet point of said memory.

This way, I can see which days in a year I felt had an important memory without having to flip through every page looking for something.

At the end of the year, I will go through each of these special memories. If I have a picture associated with the memory (e.g., first ultrasound of a kid, the record of my business’ first sale, me and my buddy after a half marathon, etc.), then I’ll save it to a folder and have Walgreens print out wallet-size versions of these for me.

I’ll then use a strong, double-sided tape to insert these pictures onto the page of that day. It makes the journal a bit thicker, but it’s awesome to look back and not only read important memories but also see each memory.

And that about sums my process. If that sounds like a lot of work, then I probably didn’t do a great job of explaining it. The only thing that takes a bit of time is inserting the pictures, but that only takes a couple of hours one time at the end of the year and is completely optional. The daily practice is literally 10 minutes tops, but is usually less than five.

 I hope that someday when I am old, I will have 50+ year’s worth of notebooks that tell the story of a good life. I hope that my kids will get a kick out of reading, from me, about times in my life that they were too young to remember or moments I was too private to share with them.

There are a lot of good ways to share a life story, but I’m enjoying recording mine as it is being lived.