The Daily Gratitude Shortcut: A Simple Solution for Efficient Journaling
I began using Shortcuts regularly on my Apple devices about a year and a half ago. I’ve found that they’re helpful and quite fun to use and create, especially when I can trigger them from a physical button on my Stream Deck while working on the Mac.
One of my favorite daily use shortcuts launches the Daily Gratitude Journal I keep in Day One. I like this shortcut because it brings me into the writing space quickly, and Day One is configured to create a new entry from a template with the prompt, “Today I’m Grateful For,” ready to go.
To further my intentionality around journaling, I’ve also connected a Focus mode that triggers automatically when Day One opens and turns off when I close the app. All I need to do is hit the shortcut and I’m able to write without distraction.
Shortcuts can get very complicated with multi-step actions, although the ones I create mostly just use one or two steps at most. Yet, despite their simplicity, they are delightful and can help build habits for the better. This shortcut was easy to make, thanks partly to Day One’s support of Automation and Shortcuts. You can download the shortcut here if you’d like to use it. Remember to change the name to match your own Day One journal names.
Craft Turns Two and Celebrates With a Discount
Craft, my favorite app for building ideas, planning projects, and organizing information, is turning two and celebrating by offering a healthy discount of 50% off subscriptions. If you’ve been on the fence, now may be the time to jump in.
PKM Toolkit: The Daily Review Journal in Day One
PKM Toolkit is a series featuring ideas, tools, and apps that help collect, organize, review, and share knowledge. You can learn more about personal knowledge management by reading the first entry of the series.
The latest addition to my journalingl practice is the daily review. If you read my post about returning to journaling, you’ll note that I was doing something like this at the beginning of this year, and things went a little sideways which made writing by hand challenging. I’m resurrecting the general idea but changing from paper to digital for the format and tweaking the prompts. I’ve been doing this for several weeks now, and here are a few details on how I’m doing it:
End of Day Routine
I start my day with a brief daily gratitude entry in the morning and try to end my day by doing the daily review and some reading. My total time on this routine is rarely more than thirty to forty-five minutes because there isn’t much day left once the kids are asleep and everything is finished.
Occasionally, I end up doing the review the next morning. I don’t mind adjusting the date for the intended day. I’m not gaming the streaks system. I just want an accounting for that specific day.
My Prompts
These continue to evolve, and I’ve changed them several times already. Right now, every entry has the following questions:
What happened today that went well?
It’s helpful to celebrate and consider the positive moments.
What happened today that could have gone better?
Conversely, the less-than-optimal deserve a quick review too. This is not an opportunity to blame or dwell but instead is a chance to just write it down and have an opportunity to learn from it.
How did I make a positive impact on those around me?
Both David Sparks and Jim Eagar, two of my favorite writers on this subject, have similar prompt in their journaling and review process. This is the most important question I ask. I want to help people, and I think a lot about how I can do that.
Is there anything unfinished that needs to be written down for tomorrow?
This helps to clear my mind. Then, as needed, I take a minute or two of action to create a reminder or maybe put something into Craft or a shared note.
This is not a sacred text
I write a sentence or three for each prompt and rarely more than that. I also try to write what comes to mind without much mental processing or editing. I want the purest consideration I can get, regardless of tone. The intention is not for anyone else to read this. It’s for me to put what’s in my head somewhere else.
Once I’m done, I review what I’ve written down. It helps to process the day and feel gratitude for the better parts or a sense of understanding about what went wrong.
Ignore the Streaks
I love streaks until I break them. Then, my brain starts saying some not-so-nice things. Streaks have their place, but I avoid focusing on them here. I want journaling to become a desirable habit, something I want to do every night, fully aware that I probably won’t always be able to do that.
My Tools
I use Day One for all of my journals. I like having prompts automatically populate when I start a new entry and being able to journal on my iPad, iPhone, or Mac. The backup features are helpful too.
I began the year using a print journal to do a version of this daily review, but it didn’t stick for me (mostly because of that pesky broken wrist). Ultimately, the specific tool of choice matters far less than finding the right tool that accomplishes the journaling practice.
Practice Makes Progress
The more I get back into journaling, the easier it is to have it as part of my daily routine. The Daily Review helps me put my day to bed, so I can sleep too. I have a chance to defer and organize lingering things, and if something went well or was not so great, I have a structured opportunity to think it all through.
As you can see by my recent changes, journaling is quite adaptive. You can try something out and change it if it doesn’t work. How you write your thoughts down doesn’t matter as long as you do it. It’s a helpful process in many aspects of my life and one that I recommend to everyone.
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PKM Toolkit: Using Kindle for Learning and Research
Books are a significant source of joy in my life and a big part of what inspires this site. I read daily, even if only for a short time on busy days, and I do most of my reading using the Kindle app on my iPad.
I like using Kindle because it makes reading more manageable and more accessible. I can easily organize highlights and streamline knowledge transfer into other places for future access. Here are some other reasons why Kindle is an essential aspect of my personal knowledge management system.
Readwise Integration
I wrote about how much I use and like Readwise in the first entry of the PKM Toolkit series. I have used an old-fashioned highlighter in print books and then typed those quotes or passages into Readwise, but it’s time-consuming. Live Text on iOS makes this a little easier by taking a photo and then copying the text,, but highlighting in the Kindle app is simple. Readwise is integrated with Kindle and can automatically sync highlights for me.
Using the Kindle highlight feature, which imports into Readwise easily, is a low-friction way for me to take notes because I need to highlight the text. As a result, the interruption in reading is limited.
Split Screen for Intensive Note Taking
While Readwise is my go-to app for short highlights and the quotes that I feature, Craft is the app I use for data collection, in-depth note-taking, and as a tool for reviewing and tracking my projects.
On my iPad, I can have Craft and Kindle open in split-screen, so I can paste text and take notes. I don’t do this often, but it’s convenient to have the option.
Searching
The keyword search feature in Kindle works well. I like how It breaks down the results into different sections, starting with notes and highlights and then sections of the book by chapter.
I use this feature a lot when building a quote post, so I can find the original context from which the quote was pulled.
Access on Other Devices
Sometimes I read on my iPhone or my hardware Kindle, and because the sync feature is pretty reliable, I can switch back and forth as needed.
Where it Fits in
I get a lot of information from the books I read, which end up in different places based on the intended use. Highlights go into Readwise but can end up in Craft for a different kind of review, and some go to Day One in my personal reflection journal, where I can write at length to get more clarity on a concept.
Despite enjoying ebooks, I still like the printed page, and my personal preference for Kindle is what works best for me right now. With Kindle, I like the portability, ease of note-taking, and access to my books on different devices.
If you’re trying to improve your reading experience on the iPad, you can read about how I hid the reading progress and clock in Kindle and also check out my Reading Focus Mode that helps deal with distractions.
PKM Toolkit is a series featuring software and ideas that help collect, organize, review, and share knowledge. You can learn more about personal knowledge management by reading the first entry of the series.PKM Toolkit: Using Day One for Higher-Level Personal Reflection
I keep several journals in Day One. I’ve had a general catch-all since I started using the app regularly in 2016, and I have a gratitude journal that I wrote about here. The newest one I’ve created is for higher-level personal reflection. It’s where I ponder big ideas.
The most recent entry is about focusing on the present and being in the moment, which I struggle with sometimes. Another topic I’m writing about is humility, looking at this concept through the lens of my relationship with various elements of my family, friends, and professional groups. I don’t write in this journal daily, although I have a reminder to look at it weekly and glance at the topics under review, sometimes contributing and writing further.
Journaling, in whatever form works for you, is worth doing for many reasons. It doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy, and while a prompt or theme can be helpful, it’s unnecessary. Just start writing your thoughts. It helps figure challenges out and better understand yourself and those that are closest and most important to you.
PKM Toolkit: Rediscovering My Journaling Habit with Day One
My earliest personal knowledge management tools were journals. Even in the days of using the original iPhone, I did most of my note-taking and writing in print. Can you remember the before times when you double-checked your pockets not for your phone, but to be sure you had your iPod and that tangle of earbuds?
For many years I kept a Moleskine journal and would write in it daily, sometimes more often. I documented my ideas, days, creative bursts, to-do lists, big plans, and emotional struggles. Later, I also kept a Field Notes in my pocket for jotting things down when I was at work or away from home. I even got nerdy and created a basic index system so I could reference stuff I had written.
Eventually, I just stopped. I got pretty intense in my habit and would write even when I lacked much to say because I didn’t want to break my streak. I became burned out by that part in particular and also found myself having more responsibilities as I got older, leaving less time for the kind of detailed journaling that I was prone to.
Making a Brief Return to Print…
With the changes that occurred in my life over the last year, I felt the desire to return to journaling so I could document my life and process my thoughts and feelings. To get started again, I picked up a new journal and decided on the following three prompts to answer for each entry:
What am I grateful for?
What did I win today?
What did I learn today?
It worked well for a few months, and then I had that little broken wrist issue, which made writing by hand impossible for eight weeks. So I took a few days off as I went through the initial recovery stage and decided to modify my approach instead of giving it up.
… And then to Digital
Using Day One, I switched to a simple one-question gratitude prompt and found this to be an even more effective method for my needs. It’s been rewarding, and here are my four big reasons why Day One is working better and will be the format that I stick with:
Photos with a date and place
It’s easy to import photos from the day’s events and have the journal automatically change the location and other relevant info based on their metadata.
Access from anywhere
It’s the same with reading on Kindle; I like that I can access this journal on my iPhone, iPad, or Mac. I have a shortcut on all of my devices that gets me right to a new entry with the date and the prompt so it is very convenient. I don’t have a set time for my reflection, although I try to do it in the morning. If that doesn’t happen, I can do this easily from any device later in the day.
Backups
Because my Day One backs up to the cloud and syncs to all of my devices, I don’t have to worry about losing my writing.
Less Pressure
By reducing the prompts from three to one, the process is simplified. I can write a sentence or a paragraph and feel happy with whatever I’ve recorded.
Journaling for Myself
I do not journal for anyone other than myself. I enjoy the process of recording gratitude because it feels great, and the ability to look at past entries and see what was happening can be fun too.
Do you maintain a journaling habit? I recommend it, in whatever form and frequency work for you. It’s helpful in so many ways for the present and can interest your future self too.
PKM Toolkit: Using Readwise to Spark Creativity
Personal Knowledge Management, or PKM, feels like it has hit its stride in the digital world. Task management, mind mapping, project management, and knowledge management apps like Roam, Obsidian, and Craft offer various options for collecting, organizing, and managing our data. These tools aren’t just popular with users; investors are taking notice too.
What is PKM?
Great question. The productivity nerds reading this probably already know, but for those new to the idea, Wikipedia does a great job of summing it up:
Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities (Grundspenkis 2007) and the way in which these processes support work activities (Wright 2005). It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning (Smedley 2009). It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM) (Pollard 2008).
Mike Schmitz from The Focused Podcast wrote an excellent primer on PKM over at The Sweet Setup that goes deeper into the concept. I encoruage you to read it.
My PKM journey has changed a lot in the last six months. After a shift in my professional trajectory, I’ve become more engaged and focused on being creative and developing new ideas here. I’m working on some other projects as well, so with several irons in the fire and the responsibilities of a stay-at-home Dad (my biggest promotion to date!), I saw an opportunity to assess and, in some cases, add or change the tools I use to find, catalog, review, and act upon my information.
With this closer look, I’m starting a new 24 Letters series called PKM Toolkit, where I’ll share my results, the apps, workflows, tools, systems, and ideas that I use to get organized, keep focused, and create.
First up in this series is Readwise.
What is Readwise?
Readwise is an app that helps me manage and organize highlights from ebooks, articles, and email newsletters.
I’ve always enjoyed highlighting or writing marginalia in my books. Sometimes, I even keep a notecard in books to add notes or reference certain pages for future review. When I found out about Readwise, I was excited to try it out because it sounded like the digital version of what I’ve been doing for years.
A few weeks into the 30-day free trial, I subscribed, and It has become an essential part of the workflow that I use daily.
How I Use it
My favorite part of Readwise is the highlights emailed to me every morning at 7 am. It’s a great way to start the day because It can help set the tone and spark inspiration and creativity.
The email also encourages taking a deeper look at each quote and provides options to process it further and decide if I want to favorite it, share it, tag it, or even discard it. The same opportunities for review are available on the Readwise app and site via the Highlights Feed. There is also an option to browse the entire library on the site that I use regularly.
Readers of 24 Letters will note the weekly quote that I share. I always pull them from my highlight feed. Kindle is set up to sync into Readwise, and the bulk of my highlights are from books that I have read on that platform, although some are from newsletters and websites.
I can export my data in various formats and styles, including CSV, Markdown, and the graphical format I frequently use here, perfect for the web or Instagram. The data remains accessible, and that’s important to me.
There are several syncing options, currently in beta, for many of the aforementioned knowledge management apps like Notion and Roam. My preferred app, Craft, is not included at this time. I’m hopeful that Craft X will help build a bridge.
There is a robust search feature where I can use author names, titles, keywords, or tags to find what I need. Search can be narrowed to specific books or the entire collection. I use tags to track what’s been shared here before. I want to explore creating tagged collections based on the content or theme for personal and shared use.
How it Fits in
Readwise is a vital tool in my workflow. It’s the beginning of many things. In addition to the weekly quote I publish, sometimes a highlight gets imported into Craft and becomes the inspiration for a new idea or helps feed an existing project. Other times, it gets moved to my commonplace book for further consideration. It also helps me remember and reflect on what I’ve read in the past and sparks creativity and curiosity. That’s why it’s a daily use app for me and why I recommend it to anyone looking for a tool of this kind.
The read-it-later app that Readwise has in development looks exciting too, and could prove useful for the gathering stages of the PKM process. I’ve requested early access via beta, and look forward to trying it out and sharing my thoughts when I can.
Are you a Readwise fan, or perhaps you have another productivity app that you think I should look at? Email me and let me know. Your feedback about this series and 24 Letters is welcome, too.