It’s not hard to write when your hand is led by your heart. Keeping a daily journal is one of the best habits you can form. It not only builds your writing skills but helps you express your inner thoughts and feelings, unburdening your mental stress. A diary is a physical record of your life, from your memories-a way to view your life from a distance.
Journaling isn’t a hard thing to do. Neither is it time consuming. If you incorporate it as a morning or nighttime ritual, it takes a few minutes a day, writing a few lines about the day you spent, important events, or reminders.
According to Forbes, it is not only an invaluable daily practice for your personal life but is also a great development tool and a vehicle for goal setting.
In this technological age, where an app is invented for everything, digital journaling sounds better than pen and paper. There are an overwhelming number of apps to choose from in digital journaling. Some of them are as follows:
- 5 Minute Journal
This app is based on its bestselling physical version. In the morning, you receive specific prompts on your device with questions like what you are grateful for or what you will do to make that day great. Then in the evening, you have to answer questions asking what amazing things happened throughout the day or how you could have made it better. You can also add photos to your post and receive daily quotes shared on social media. This app is ideal for beginners trying to build a regular habit of journaling.
- Daylio
Daylio is a micro diary and a mood tracker. Unlike traditional journaling, you are prompted with “labels” and short snippets of text in this app. You also share your general mood or sentiment regularly. It’s straightforward to use, isn’t time consuming, and is perfect for people looking for a new approach to a digital journaling app.
- Diarly
This app offers you a perfectly created private personal diary. Here, you can write, customize formatting, and organize entries the way you like. For secure and easy access, the app also lets you enable encryption and password protection and syncs your data across devices.
- GoodNotes
The best feature of this app is that it is highly flexible. If you are a visual thinker, you can take notes with shapes, highlight colors, and even in your handwriting. You can even customize the pen flow in this app, create forms, move them, stretch them, or add photos to your day’s events. There are different canvases to write on, including a blank page or grid-style. Additionally, this app can also be used as a digital bullet journal.
Digital journaling has a lot of benefits that users enjoy. Some of them are:
- Privacy
Technology can any day give better privacy than a lock and key or a secret hiding place. Whether you are writing locally or online, tools such as password protection, encryption, and others can ensure your files are kept private.
- Durability
In digital journaling, you can back up your files quickly without physically taking up the space of 100 diaries. You can stash your thoughts and secrets into a CD, pendrive, HDD, or any secret server, and they will remain safe longer than on paper.
- Multimedia
You can have fun with multimedia by including photos, audio, or videos in your digital diary. In addition, you can add references to your writing with screen grabs, embedded documents, or hotlinks to web resources.
- Convenience And Portability
It is easier to move your entries and carry them around in a small device when you journal digitally. You can access your diary anywhere, on any platform with digital journaling. Additionally, most of your work is already on your computer or smartphone, so documenting your thoughts on the same device you use for work all day is just more convenient.
- Productive Reminders
A digital journal offers you automated reminders or prompts regularly. Productivity often falls while using a physical diary because generally, people get busy and forget to write after the initial few days. A digital diary app prompts you over email, which helps create the habit.
- Comfort
People nowadays are genuinely attached at the hip with their laptops and phones and are more comfortable using them for journaling. It also comes down to the fact that most people can type faster on a keyboard than write with a pen. When your hand can’t compete with the surge of ideas, be grateful for quick keyboarding. You can say more in less time in digital journaling.
Writing a journal removes mental blocks and allows people to use more of their brain power to better understand themselves and the world around them. Creating a habit and sticking with it is the first thing needed. After that, you have so many options to choose from as the technological world evolves with every decade. So start keeping a diary, and one day, years later, you will find your youthful thoughts preserved in its depths.
