After reading some of this blog, I think I’m going to attempt to write a diary again, and I think I’m going to use freemind for it. (I used freemind the other day to write a design doc for a potential RPG, and it was a much more pleasant way to organize my thoughts than putting everything linearly in a text file.) This week I’m going to shoot for writing at least three entries as the day is winding down, and then evaluate whether or not I think it’ll be a useful habit for the medium-term.
Technical notes: One of the cool things about using freemind for it is that I can make a template, with the various elements of my life that I want to track already identified as nodes. If I’m staring at “exercise?” every day, then it becomes hard to hide when my exercise regimen starts to slack.
Mory also scores himself every day. I’m not sure if that’ll be useful for me. It’s not clear to me how much that’ll affect my values (if I give myself points for eating kale, will that actually make me more likely to eat kale? It seems like I’d be better off scheduling regular grocery trips so I always have some, since historically I’ve eaten it whenever I had it in stock), but it looks like it’ll be neutral or positive rather than negative (if the scores are misaligned, I’ll probably ignore them; if they’re aligned, I’ll probably get some small satisfaction out of them).
I expect the first few days of this will be more “clear out some of my mind into text” than “write about how this particular day went,” and that may inflate the value. We’ll see.
After reading some of this blog, I think I’m going to attempt to write a diary again, and I think I’m going to use freemind for it. (I used freemind the other day to write a design doc for a potential RPG, and it was a much more pleasant way to organize my thoughts than putting everything linearly in a text file.) This week I’m going to shoot for writing at least three entries as the day is winding down, and then evaluate whether or not I think it’ll be a useful habit for the medium-term.
Technical notes: One of the cool things about using freemind for it is that I can make a template, with the various elements of my life that I want to track already identified as nodes. If I’m staring at “exercise?” every day, then it becomes hard to hide when my exercise regimen starts to slack.
Mory also scores himself every day. I’m not sure if that’ll be useful for me. It’s not clear to me how much that’ll affect my values (if I give myself points for eating kale, will that actually make me more likely to eat kale? It seems like I’d be better off scheduling regular grocery trips so I always have some, since historically I’ve eaten it whenever I had it in stock), but it looks like it’ll be neutral or positive rather than negative (if the scores are misaligned, I’ll probably ignore them; if they’re aligned, I’ll probably get some small satisfaction out of them).
I expect the first few days of this will be more “clear out some of my mind into text” than “write about how this particular day went,” and that may inflate the value. We’ll see.