Journaling

Back in early 2022, about two months before starting college, I spent a great portion of my time reading about Stoicism. For those who don’t know, Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece and Rome that focuses on helping people navigate the chaos of life through personal virtue and rational thought. Its main idea is that while we cannot control external events, we have power over our own judgments and reactions—a principle often called the “Dichotomy of Control.” As someone who considered himself a Stoic at the time, I was brought back to the concept of journaling—something Marcus Aurelius himself used to do every morning—and I started to research it more and to wonder what that looked like in the digital age. This inquiry led me to discover the Productivity Community on YouTube—their apps, manners, methods, and aesthetics—and I quickly became an adept of their cult. With all this, I also saw the different ways people in this space used notebooks and note-taking apps, which made my interest in this niche grow. Eventually, I decided to test some of these apps, like Notion, Standard Notes, and Obsidian. I wanted to create a second brain for myself and started compiling my knowledge into personal encyclopedias—something I abandoned after finding little use for them—and I decided to start my personal journal, which I have been writing in religiously every day for over three years now. ...