Guest Post by Sam Lytle
Are you part of the crowd that either never got the eJournal memo or frankly just don’t care? Do you still hand write your journal and have no plans to change?
That’s absolutely fine. Hand written journals have retained their beauty and nostalgia, well into the 21st century and I am fairly certain that for many, they will never go out of style.
But even if you are a faithful keeper of a classic journal, that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of advances in technology. These are 5 easy tech tips that will enhance your paper journal.
1) Reminders. Do you have a tough time remembering to write in your journal? Whether you try and journal every day or every week, one of the easiest ways to get in the habit is to set simple reminders in your phone. Nearly every phone has this ability and it is as easy as setting an alarm (the same kind you would set to wake you up in the morning) for the time that you think you are most likely to journal. When the alarm goes off, simply stop what you are doing, grab your journal… and get lost in the pages.
2) Spell Check. Whether you write your journal for emotional healing, your posterity, some other reason or all of the above, there will probably be someone, someday that reads your journal. Most of the time journal writers are good writers by design, but that doesn’t mean that all of the words will be spelled correctly. Luckily, checking if it is spelled Kazahkstan or Kazakhstan is as easy as typing it into your smartphone or word processor. I have even found Google is a great way to find out how a word should be spelled. It almost always recognizes misspelled words and suggests the correct spelling after you do a search.
3) Doc Scanners. One of my favorite creative uses of smartphones is how certain applications can use the camera to scan documents and automatically turn them into PDFs, just like a real scanner. The quality probably isn’t quite as good, but it is almost always readable. This is a great way to preserve your precious journal pages and basically fireproof them. There are a ton of choices (just search document scanner in the app store), but my favorite for the iPhone is CamScanner+.
4) Email Memories. There have been large chunks of my life where I haven’t journaled for one reason or another. One day I realized that those memories weren’t completely forgotten. If you have a certain period where you would like to know more about what you did so that you can record it in your journal, simply do a search in the SENT box in your email during that time frame. Then look for emails you sent to family and other loved ones. There is a good chance that you share much of that life with them and you can use these emails as a great way to fill those blank spaces in my journal. (Or, if you are lazy like me, just print them out and paste them in your journal!)
So there you have it. I have proven that you can still be with it and keep a hand written journal.
As always, let me know if you have any questions about these tips or anything to do with eJournaling- sam@easyjournaling.com.
About the Author
Sam Lytle is an iPhone app reviewer for AppAdvice.com and is the founder of the new EasyJournaling website. EasyJournaling is dedicated to help make journaling more practical in an ever busying world with an emphasis on smartphone and web journals and diaries. You can ready Sam’s other article Write Here!
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