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[Nathan Hale]

Thread for this blog post. Do you have a lo-fi ritual?

[Eric Beavers]

Thread for this blog post. Do you have a lo-fi ritual?

I keep a rough daily journal at work. I bought a Black n' Red hardbook journal to keep my notes. Daily notes are brief statements, not a literary journal. It consists of things like "worked on Web site today," "wrote news release about xyz," attended meeting at central office," etc.

I don't have a strict schedule about when to take those notes. Sometimes I do it as I complete a task and sometimes at the end of the day. Other times it slips my mind and I have to catch up a weeks worth of entries while reviewing my calendar and memory.

Until now I've only kept such a log at the office, but I'm looking at keeping a more comprehensive daily log to include my home life as well. It's a tossup for me, at this point, whether I do that on paper or on my Mac, but I'm I'm leaning toward paper. I've got a sadly neglected fountain pen I need to juice up.

[Nathan Hale]

Once I took the pressure off of myself to keep a "literary" journal, I found it much easier to keep those personal records on a regular basis. If I feel like expanding on an idea, I do. If I just want to write something like "Just had 25th B-Day, best day ever thanks to wonderful wife" then it may not be art, but it still preserves the memory.

[Eric Beavers]

Agreed. In fact, I've started keeping a couple of records of my life depending on my need/wants/desires

[Stephen Smith]

My lo-fi practice is one of my most cherished activities. I write in my journal most every morning, just whatever is on my mind, with my to-do list right next to it. If my mental ramblings uncover a task or project, it gets captured tight away.

I also keep a "Book of Days" where I write a couple of sentences about what happened that day:
The Book of Days is a five-year journal. The premise is that one has a page for daily entries for each day of the year. Each daily page has room for five entries - one per year from 2008 to 2012. This allows you to see what you were doing on a particular day each year. As time goes by, you will be able to track your progress, seeing just how far you have come since the same time last year.

I made this set of three books from blank 5 x 7 journals from Barnes & Noble. The customized covers were created by printing a perpetual calendar image I found online onto parchment paper.

It is pretty cool now that I am into the second year to see what I was doing on this day last year, and I suspect that I will be amazed by the changes 4 years from now.

[Matthew Lang]

At the start of each week at work, I take items from my to do list and add them to a mind map that I'll use for the rest of the week to track goals, next actions, emails and phone calls. It also acts as a nice reference to look back on. It's like a mind mapping journal really.

I'm also trying to stop using any kind of computer about an hour before I put my head down. Instead I am going to use the time to dump my thoughts to a paper mind map so that in the morning I can review and take action on any items in the mind map.

[Brad Blackman]

@Stephen I love that Book of Days idea. I think I may do that with my daughter. She's five months old. THAT will be amazing, to track her progress that way.