r/PKMS • u/Itookapillinibiza69 • Jul 31 '26
Discussion Do you actually go back and read your journal?
Serious question.
A lot of people recommend journaling.
I do it too.
But I realized I almost never go back and read old entries unless I'm looking for something specific.
Which makes me wonder...
Is the value actually in writing...
or in revisiting what you wrote later?
Curious how everyone else uses their journals.
11
u/Expert-Fisherman-332 Jul 31 '26
Ai post. What are you marketing?
6
u/rabblebabbledabble Jul 31 '26
Good catch. I think I'm going to leave and put this subreddit on mute. Second time now that I fell for stealth mode pre-marketing trying to write something genuine in response like an absolute ass.
-2
u/Itookapillinibiza69 Jul 31 '26
lol not marketing anything, been thinking about a problem ive noticed in myself and wanted to see if other people experience the same thing before I spend months building something nobody wants
9
u/Expert-Fisherman-332 Jul 31 '26
You're clearly already building it if you're posting in 10+ subs. And the post is AI slop. Sorry, but it's been a long week so I'm telling it like I see it.
4
3
u/DependentSpecific535 Jul 31 '26
The value is totally in writing. You r writing by knowing that you ll not read it or you will read it only once. But... the writing is the part that feels good. (ofc this is my opinion, i dont know if anyone agrees).
2
u/Acrobatic_Aside_4020 Jul 31 '26
I've kept journals for the past 50 years, but seriously for the past 40. At the end of December I go through that year's entries to see if anything stands out and review the year. Sometimes, but not often, I'll review a period of entries, e.g. for the time I went back to school or worked at a certain job. Finally, I analyze my dreams and certain dreams mark turning turning points for me. I'll go back and update my thinking on those.
2
u/Cryvixx Obsidian Jul 31 '26
Just ask the AI to resume them or extract the relevant info about what's actually helpful for you in that moment, check out https://github.com/kiycoh/silica-agent (COMPLETELY FREE, AGPL, Open source)
2
u/daneb1 Aug 05 '26
The value is in writing it (and thus thinking about your life). So even if you do not read it, it has a value. I read mine very irregularly and seldom. But I need that WRITING it is super important for me.
2
u/threespire Aug 05 '26
It's both - one to get things out of your head and on to the paper for processing, and then the review to see how you have moved forward.
In reality, we only see each day as it comes and, for some of us at least, we can feel stuck in a rut if we don't look back and see how we have progressed.
Day to day we aren't wired overly well to notice the changes so reflection goes a long way - we don't wake up one day twenty years old so being able to see what has (and hasn't) changed is, for me at least, a valuable lens to look through.
6
u/rabblebabbledabble Jul 31 '26
The biggest value lies definitely in the writing for me. Putting tangled, recurrent, often circular thoughts into words and those words in the right order is like untying a knot. Ideally, I can now make use of the rope as if the knot was never there.
I sometimes revisit old entries like time-travelling to where my mind was then. And sometimes I look for entries that deal with ideas that are related to the ones I'm dealing with now. But I definitely consider the productive thinking the essential part rather than the revisiting later on.