The Deconstructed Journal

A couple weeks ago when I wrote up my magic organizational system using Notion, I mentioned that I use the application to organize many other things in my life as well. I received a few emails asking how else I use it, so I decided to discuss that today.

Things I track in Notion that would may be of general use/interest to others:

Books I Read

I track Title, Author, Start and End Date, and short summary.

Movies I Watch

I track Title, Director, Date I watched it, Who I watched it with, and short summary.

Seasons of Television I Watch

I track Name of the show; the Season; the day I started watching; the day I ended watching; if it’s the sort of show that tells one story over the course of the season I’ll write a couple sentences about the arc of the season; and I have a checkbox to indicate if I’ve completed the full series, and another checkbox if I’m rewatching the season.

Meetups and Dates

If I’m seeing someone I don’t see on a regular basis, I’ll keep track of it here: Who I saw, where I saw them, the date, anything interesting or amusing that happened.

Things that made me laugh really hard

Not just laugh a little, but if a conversation or something I’m watching/listening too has me doubled over with laughter, I’ve started keeping track of that. It’s fun to relive the things that almost made you pee your pants.

Notes on non-fiction books

If I’m reading about something historical, or something like that, I don’t keep notes. But if it’s a book about anything productive or business-y, I’ll usually make note of the 3-5 valuable sentences in the whole book.

App Ideas

I have no idea how to make an app, but I better learn because I have close to 100 ideas for apps.

Business Ideas

Products, inventions, potential money making ideas.

Story Ideas

Basic plot elements for things that may one day emerge in some creative outlet.

Meals

Not every meal. But when I’m eating somewhere new, I’ll note the restaurant, rate it, and mention the best thing I ate.

Outings/Adventures

I make note of where I went, what I did, who I was with, the date it occurred.

My Anticipation List

I’ll discuss this in a future post, but basically it’s just a list of stuff I’m looking forward to and the date those things are happening.

Finally, I have some daily checklist stuff for habits and tasks I need to do daily.

Beyond that I have a bunch of pages devoted to specific projects I’m involved with.

I would say I’ve moved 95% of my planning/tracking systems over to Notion. The one thing it’s actually not good at is any spreadsheet that you’re using to manipulate numbers and data. For those sorts of things I still use Google Sheets.

As the title of this post suggests, I think of this manner of tracking things as a “deconstructed journal.” The nice thing about Notion is that any database you keep that has a date element in it can be converted into a calendar with just one click. So I can just change the view to “Calendar” view and see who I was with, what I was doing, what I was watching or reading, etc. It’s perhaps not the best choice if you want to journal about your thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams (although you could do that as well). But if you just want to keep track of the things and people and events and moments that make up your life, it’s a really good way to do that.