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Paper vs Digital Journal

· 5 min read
Remco Simonides

Each kind of journal has its strength and weaknesses. You're not limited to either one of them so you could combine their powers in some cases! Create a system that suitss your needs. In this blog, we go over the advantages and disadvantages of each, and in the end there are examples of how you could potentially combine their strengths.

Paper Journal​

Advantages​

  • It's very easy to open your journal and start writing
  • You can create your own journaling system.
  • The slowless of handwriting comes with the advantages of having a better recall of what you wrote.

Disadvantages​

  • You might not always have it with you.
  • There is a risk of losing or damaging your journal and therefore losing all its information.
  • Anyone could open your journal and read it, or syou have to store it in a locker.

Digital Journal​

Advantages​

  • Easy to share your goals and to chat about them
  • It's always with you on your phone
  • With Strive Journal, you will be guided in how to do proper goal setting, without having the invent your own system
  • It's very compact, despite the ability to add unlimited photos, videos or audio.
  • Send automated reminders for messages to future self / affirmations / daily gratitude / focus questions / milestone deadlines

Disadvantages​

  • A journal is personal and putting this information online doesn't feel good [^1]
  • It's easy to get distracted

Combine their powers​

There is no need to choose one or the other. In some cases you might prefer a paper journal over a digital journal, or the other way around. I, for instance, use a paper journal for daily gratitude. Let me go over some scenarios where and how to combine their powers.

Goal Setting​

For very basic goal setting, only writing your goals down on paper is enough. But if you want to enable any of the strengths of a digital journal, then you have to write it down digitally too.

Visualize​

Takes photos or find pictures of how you envision the end result, stick them together and you've created a Vision Board. Creating a vision board, can be done both digitally and analogue. But it's very strong to have a vision board placed in a place where you see it regularly. If you prefer this vision board to be on Paper, then you can take a photo and add it as an image to your goal on Strive Journal too.

Roadmap​

Ticking off from a paper roadmap is a lot more satisfying. For the roadmap, I would recommend to choose either a digital or a paper one. Doing both and keeping them in sync is just too much work.

If you choose a roadmap on paper, then you could post a picture of it regularly in the Story, or update the image of your goal with a photo of this Roadmap.

Focus Boost​

Regularly sitting down to think why you're doing all the effort to reach your goals and how you're going to continue is something you don't need to write or type down necessarily. You're free to choose whatever you prefer, but it is recommend to think about these questions regularly to stimulate instrinsic motivation.

Affirmations​

Choose one or the other for each affirmation. The fun thing about a post-it with an affirmation is that you can hang it anywhere you should see it. For example write "You're beautiful" or "Smiling is Contagious" on your mirror. It helps to give a positive boost to start your day.

For the more personal ones, which you don't want to bother others with, you can add them to Affirmations in Strive Journal so only you see them on your phone.

Daily gratitude​

Use Daily Gratitude in Strive Journal to receive a daily reminder to write in your Paper Gratitude Journal. And use the digital journal as a back-up in case your paper journal is not with you.

Dear Future Self​

  1. Write the letter on Paper, then copy it to Dear Future Self in Strive Journal to make sure you will never lose it.
  2. Store the letter somewhere save and write in your digital letter where to find it.
  3. Set the date when you want to receive it and send the message.

Thank you for reading! Hopefully you can find the best working system that fits your needs. Contact us if you have any feedback or create a pull request on GitHub with suggested changes.

[^1] This is how I felt and therefore exercises in Strive Journal are encrypted so nobody except you can read it. Encrypted goals will be an option in the future.