2026 Changes to Journaling Practice

I’ve been pretty unsatisfied with my current journaling habits so I scoured the interwebs for what other people where doing. Found some things that I decided to implement.

Life Tracker Method by Reysu

I like the core idea behind this method. Compared to the bullet journal system, the analog side of journaling is focused on personal development rather than productivity. Like other journaling systems (found on YT), it uses two notebooks, a journal and a pocket notebook.

1. Journal The set-up is absurdly simple. It starts as a Monthly double spread. Left page has three elements, a calendar, a daily highlight, a habit tracker. The calendar is the core that guides the location of the daily highlight and habit tracking. The page on the right is to set up intentions/goals/priorities/focus for the month. The rest of the entries for that month are focused on good old journaling, a space to think.

2. Pocket notebook Setting up the pocket notebook isn’t any more difficult than the journal. Here it’s a space for writing down tasks. Each day starts with the date at the top of the page and three priority tasks. The rest is space to write down other tasks, notes, or just use as a place to unleash creativity. It’s pace is fast, messy, and it’s aesthetic value is nul. It’s just a notepad to replace using a mobile device for quick notes.

Both practices are appealing. I have been a heavy user of the BuJo method for years but it’s become more of a chore and it doesn’t include the thing I find myself needing the most, journaling. Shifting my daily journaling to the notebook I carry everyday will allow me to have the thinking tool I find myself leaning towards. I can just open it, add the date, and start thinking. Transferring the task management to a smaller notebook quite literally puts productivity as a lower priority which I feel I need right now.

Daily Digital Notes

On the other hand, my daily digital note-taking has been giving me trouble. Unfortunately, I can’t write all the ideas I have everyday on either of the aforementioned journals because some are long-form or drafts. It only makes sense to write this digitally. However, I heavily lean towards writing on mobile. So, what to do?

Last year, I devised a mobile note-taking solution with Obsidian. Using Obsidian Sync, it’s native cross-platform syncing solution, I have been able to type on a vault on my mobile phone and open those files on my laptop without much trouble. But much like other note-taking practices, I have been struggling with note retrieval. With digital notes, it’s even more prominent. I had no way to look back on past daily notes.

I found this article by ConstructionByDee The Philosophy of Remembering: How I Built a Daily to Yearly Journaling System with Obsidian Base. Previously, I had little experience with Obsidian’s Bases, a relatively new feature. I took a look at the template they shared and the associated videos. I replaced the Tasks plugin with Dataview to retrieve tasks across files.

My previous homepage had a calendar and a list of all entries made with Dataview, and a task list made with Tasks. I noticed that Tasks was slowing down the vault’s start up and drained my phone’s batter so I decided to discontinue its use. Fortunately, my use of it was barebones so Dataview was able to easily replace it.

The database template on the article served as inspiration for the database of my own making. At the moment, I linked this database to the home page, serving as a replacement for the list of entries. As a Notion user, I used that experience to think up some views. So far, I have three views, All entries, This Month, and Mobile view. One uses the Table layout and the other List layout. All entries is like a homepage. No filters. It shows me all daily notes and some high-level properties. This Month is a filtered view showing all daily entries of the month. Finally, Mobile view is a list of all daily entries.

This where the article come in. The properties I took from the example were the summary, first-image, second-image, third-image, and on-this-day. The summary is a bird’s eye view of each daily note while the image properties allows to display the first three images in all files. The latter require a formula to work displayed in the article and base template.

On-this-day is a property with a formula that allows for note retrieval. It only works when the associated database view, “Today Years Ago” is added inside a daily note. It displays the note with the same date on previous years.Last but not least, on the new version of the task list. Dataview allows for displaying the the parent note of a task thanks to the GROUP BY file.link string. Now I have temporal context! Then there’s the this redundant and time-consuming thing. For each section in my daily note, I’m creating a task right under it and tag it. I wished Obsidian allowed to double a heading as a task. Most of my notes are drafts and I want to transfer them to my main vault. But with the issue of retrieval, tasks is the only way I can think of as a solution. And so the power of writing make itself known by giving me ideas.