How to Keep an Accomplishment Journal

Using Journey to take advantage to track my achievements

I’ve always been a journaler since I was a child and I never had issues with it. Sure, I skipped weeks, even months, but I never felt guilty for not having a daily practice since I knew that I would always go back to my journal if I’d feel the need.

However, I’ve never been good at writing about my accomplishments, wins, and things I’m grateful for. For the most part, journaling has always been my way to put my thoughts out of my head, like a sort of Dumbledore’s Pensieve, if you will. I tried multiple times to select smaller notebooks and use them to jot down a couple of things I was grateful for at the end of the day, but I always failed and abandoned the practice after less than a week.

In November, I started keeping a log of the things I did during the day because I was feeling a bit stuck with my thesis research and like I didn’t accomplish much at the end of the day, but taking a look at that DONE list on a regular basis made me feel so much better about my work, so I decided to try something similar for my personal life.

Looking for the perfect app, my first idea was to try using Evernote, but then I realized that I didn’t like to log multiple days in a single note and using one note per day would make it too cluttered. Also, I needed a daily reminder and Evernote doesn’t support repeatable reminders, so I would have to use another app to remind myself to open my journal. I needed a simpler way.

I downloaded the beta version of DayOne (for Android), the journaling app everybody talks about in the productivity and tech communities. I loved it, but I needed something cheaper (the free version allows you to save your entries locally but not sync nor export them).

Then, I discovered Journey. Great layout, plenty of features in the free plan (synchronization with Google Drive!), and a couple of notable awards: Google Play & Chrome Store Editors’ Choice 2015, 2016 & 2017 and Google Play Best of 2017 Apps!

I used it for free during the whole month of December and then I was lucky enough to win their giveaway and get the promo code for the Premium plan on Android. I didn’t purchase the desktop app for Windows, but I can always write on my tablet with the Bluetooth keyboard if needed. I have a daily reminder for 7 pm set up and I jot down the things I did during the day, something fun that happened, movies I watched, and things like that in a bullet list (the Premium version supports markdown!). Sometimes I even write longer entries if I can’t reach my paper journal and I even add a photo or two if it’s something I particularly care about.

If you study or work from home, your days might look a bit boring and very similar to each other, nothing worth mentioning happens and it’s easier feeling like you didn’t accomplish much at the end of the day. But listing silly things like “Went to the supermarket with mom” or “Finally cleaned my car today!” makes me feel definitely better. I find this daily practice very useful also during my weekly and monthly reviews because I can easily go back and see what I did (or didn’t) each day.

You can find more about Journey on their official website and, since it’s free, you can give it a try if you want!

This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

How do you use journal app in your daily routine?!

There’s plenty more ways and we’d love to hear from you in the comments! Share them below!

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