The Most Minimalist DIY Diary
Over the last few years, I've been on a quest to find a diary format simple enough for me to commit to daily usage without any effort. I'm now very satisfied with my final iteration, a suite of Siri Shortcuts, but I also learned a lot about designing habit-forming processes along the way. First Attempt: Google Doc July 2018 - July 2021 I knew that to get myself started on any diary habit, I had to reduce my day down to three simple questions: What did I do for lunch? What did I do for dinner? What else did I do out of the ordinary (e.g. brushing teeth, etc.) on this day? (and other miscellaneous notes/learnings) I would then fill out the answers in a Google Doc. This format worked well for about three years, which, given my laziness, was quite the accomplishment. I even wrote a brief Python script to populate the date headers when I started a new doc every month. What's cool about this approach is that Google Drive can search the text written in these docs. For example, I...
