Maple Changed My Lifelong Journal Habits

I’ve been keeping a Personal Journal for years. I mean years. In various formats dating all the way back to high school, which again, was YEARS ago. When I say various formats I’m not kidding. I have a smattering of “books” – composition, spiral, hardcover – siting in my nightstand or my “archives” drawer. The mixture of digital journals is baffling. Word docs reaching back even farther than XP. Local, external, and flash drives.  The Cloud. You name it I probably have a journal of some sort there. I’m not even going to talk about course journals. Yet.

Even so keeping one “online” initially made me a bit leary. (I try to be super candid about stuff like this because I can’t be the only one who feels this way, am I?) I believed to journal properly I had to clear time, sit at my desk and just brain dump. That didn’t require virtual anything. Until it did.

A friend does all her writing on her phone. I shutter in disbelief. Journaling is a thing for me. A process. A ritual! It requires the right conditions, resources and mindset. None of which line up with the hectic life I lead. Which means it is increasingly difficult to do, even though I love it and I find it a thoroughly useful tool to deal with… the hectic life I lead. (You see the chicken and egg problem I have hatching here.)

When we deployed Maple as an app (aka I had it on my phone) I suddenly found my journaling paradigm was just that – something I had created (in my head). Something I could change, and to my own disbelief, I have!

Now when I have one of those Ah HA! Moments that I am so excited about I dig out my phone and I plop in the ideas and insights right into Maple and I save them. I no longer think to myself “Now don’t forget that. You’ll want to journal it later.” Instead I journal it. And when it’s something that I haven’t fully thought through, I can Tag it with ‘Add More’ and set a Reminder to look at it again.

I don’t have that lurching feeling of ‘there’s something that I’ve got to remember to remember, though I don’t know what’. You know that “its in there, but my brain can’t quite reach it” sensation that you exhaust yourself trying to figure out. Not anymore. What a relief.

When I finally find myself at my desk, to journal, I can look back on those entries to flush them out – or not. I love having it all in the same place because it makes journaling super flexible for me. Suddenly I can journal when I need to not when I have time to. Hooray for making my life easier!

I know first-hand that trusting your innermost moments to an app can be daunting and feel risky. Because until you try it out, it is risky for you. That is the key, give it a try. It may unlock all types of new opportunities.

Let me know how it goes!