When is the last time you took five minutes to reflect about your day? We’re not talking about just scrolling through your daily Facebook and Twitter feeds. We want to know when the last time was that you just thought about what you did all day — what was awesome and what sucked. It can be therapeutic and help you unwind, and this week, to Upgrade Your Life, we’re journaling with a tech edge.
1. In the Moment: The Day One app is like turning your tweets and status updates into an actual timeline that’s just for you — not for likes or RTs. If you want to record what you’re doing at the moment, take a pic, write it down and the app will even take note of the location and the current weather sitution, so when you revisit that memory, you’ll remember the street you were on and if the sun was shinning, if there was a chill in the air or if it was raining cats and dogs. You can conveniently scroll through your timeline to get a quick view of what you’ve been up to lately.
DL It: $4.99 on iOS and $9.99 on Mac
2. Get Personal: At the end of the day, your mind might feel totally exhausted, and the last thing you want to stare at is a blank page, waiting for the words to come out. Stigma gives you an easy jumping-off point by having you select your emotion — happiness, accomplishment, sadness, etc. From there, just enter what you’re feeling right then and the who-what-when-where of your day. You can even track your mood on a graph to see when you’ve been feeling up, when you’ve been feeling down and revisit ways to stay positive.
DL It: Free on iOS
3. Keep It on Auto: All day you’re going places and taking pics. Sometimes you’re just capturing the swirl in your latte and sometimes you’re taking pics of your kiddo’s first steps. Heyday takes your pics from each day and pairs them with the locations where they were taken to automatically create daily stories. You can easily share your story with friends and family or search if you’re feeling nostalgic. It’s a great way to scroll through your day in a way that’s very visual.
DL It: Free on iOS, Android soon
4. Enhance Your Feed: So we said that you shouldn’t rely on your social feeds at all, but guess what? They’re part of our lives now. Moment incorporates your journal entries with any number of social feeds from Instagram and Facebook to Uber and Moves. If you’re wanting a really detailed track of your day, this app is the one for you. After all, sometimes writing a funny tweet can be the best thing you did all day.
DL It: $1.99 on iOS
5. A Picture’s Worth… : If you’re more of a visual person, there are a couple ways to track your days. The Everyday app reminds you every day to take a quick selfie — perfect for those end-of-the-year recap vids. Speaking of vids, 1 Second Everyday reminds you to capture a video of what you’re doing for a second each day. Sometimes it will just be footage of walking the dog and other days it’ll be video of your epic vacation. Live and relive those moments over and over again.
6. For the Anti-App Digital Writer: If you just can’t deal with yet another app sitting on your phone and you prefer to use your laptop, you’re going to want to work with My Evening Post. This website sends you an email every night, reminding you to email them with your journal entry and up to five photos. They’ll handle the formatting and layout for you. Little by little your online journal will grow into a full fledged autobiography. My Evening Post also recognizes that some days aren’t the most eventful, so there’s no pressure to write every single day.
Do you journal? We want to hear about your journaling style in the comments!
