I started journaling before it was cool.
Okay, it was never cool and will probably never be cool. But, I did start the practice and developed a habit around recording my everyday activities, plus additional reflections on life and work and happenstance, about 12 years ago and have kept a continuous streak of almost 2,400 days. More recently, though, both Apple and Google have started to inject AI into journaling; this layer of automation turns it from something that has traditionally been intimate and personal and thoughtfully considered, to…another piece of content that can be ginned up instantly, with far less effort.
In this formulation, it’s not too far removed from where photo apps have gone in the last decade. What began as simple repositories to store the massive amounts of smartphone photos has evolved into storytelling engines powered by images and videos. Both Apple and Google Photos do a good job of incorporating metadata like timestamps and locations, then augmenting the process with AI-based organization and facial recognition, to assemble smart albums individualized to their users’ photo libraries by weaving together stacks of related media1 into cohesive memories. Sprinkle in a sentimental soundtrack and animated transitions, and it becomes a mini-presentation that works surprisingly well, both at tagging at nostalgic heartstrings as well as to share with friends and family.
These simplified journaling apps prescribe to the same ethos. They gather what’s available on the phone—photos, mapping and geolocation data, emails and messages from known contacts, etc.—to sketch out a personalized narrative timeline. The canonical use case would be travel; most travelers do want memorabilia about their destinations and activities, and these auto-composed journals take it half a step further than their photo-centric analogs. It’s a digital scrapbook on autopilot.
But that utility is orthogonal to what journal-keepers traditionally value, including the author of the aforementioned Verge article. The vast majority of journaling and diary apps—including the original medium of pen-and-paper—emphasize journaling as an act of contemplation and reflection. The point is to slow down and think: What matters enough to jot down? How should I consider what happened, how do I feel, and what can I do about it? To that end, apps have their own takes on this central objective. Many have prompts designed to get their users into a particular mindset, like health or travel or gratitude. A few have started applying AI for sentiment analysis and coaching. Day One, that app that has recorded my thoughts for a dozen years, still lets you print physical books off of your journal entries.
This style of journaling can be, well, pretty hard. It’s a tough ask: to sit down and ruminate with your thoughts, to articulate what you can, to confront your thoughts and express your emotions. When it works, it demands intentionality and vulnerability2 similar to that of therapy—but without a professional on the other side providing support and accountability. To entice their users, journalin apps look to create habits with features like entry streaks and reminder notifications, which does give them an edge over low-tech written diaries.
When it works, though, the effect is, well, therapeutic. I’ve advocated for the utility and clarity that writing provides to people who ask about this blog, and that goes doubly true for grappling with a tough day, or recording a spark of insight, or celebrating life’s small victories. I remember having a tough conversation with my kids, waiting for them to go to sleep, and then sitting down to work through my approach and what I should do next in my “life” journal—not necessarily for anyone else, but just for me to have something to think through.
So knowing how hard it is to start and maintain a running journal, I find the simplified journaling offered by Google and Apple fairly harmless. It’s because the difficulty curve is so steep, and the mental and emotional payoff so delayed, that I see it less as the cheapening of a deeply personal ritual and more as a gentle on-ramp that could get more folks interested in practice. Yes, it feels sacriligious from the perspective of the traditional journal-keeper, but that stance is akin to gatekeeping, an artificial rite of passage that sets a dauntingly high bar to not to welcome but to discourage. And sure, generating a list of Google Journal posts will take much less work than penning a handful of introspective Day One entries. But if a couple of simple and timely prompts get users to reflect a tad more, with a bit of persistence, that may lead these users down the path of intentional, mindful reflection.
