Writing constitutes a big part of my day, whether it’s academic writing, email, or the occasional blog post. But some of the most valuable writing, no one but me—and perhaps my family—will ever read. Processing thoughts in a journal consistently brings clarity and perspective into life’s matters.
I have been using Day One as a journaling app for several months now. I love the idea of handwriting journal entries in a moleskine notebook, but since I am a painfully slow at writing by hand, most of my attempts at a handwritten journal have ended in frustration because my pen can’t keep up with my thoughts. Add to this the fact that a physical journal can be lost or stolen—as well as that it is unsearchable—and the case for digital becomes stronger. Thus Day One became the chief repository for issues I’m processing, things my daughter says that I want to never forget, and archiving my descriptions of significant events in my life.
I have been very, very impressed with Day One. The iPad version (paired with a bluetooth keyboard) is my favorite flavor and lives on my home row right beside Mail and OmniFocus. It sports a crisp design, Markdown support, syncing between my iPhone/iPad/Mac, passcode lock, and plain text export (my data is future-proof). But today, this already great app gets an overhaul which adds support for photos, location and weather data logging, better typography, and more. This means my daughter’s antics can now be documented with text and photos, I can capture that I was thinking through such-and-such decision while I sitting in a coffee shop on a brisk morning in Chicago, and in general, the documented narrative of my life now has words and images in a beautiful, easy to read format.
For more, check out Shawn Blanc’s detailed review of Day One.