Journals

Journaling recurs in Kyle’s notes as both a record-keeping discipline and a form of private self-communion. In John Quincy Adams, the diary Adams kept almost his entire life is treated as “the man’s truest voice” — writing he did for himself alone, late at night by candlelight, that let him commune with himself and say what he would not say to others. Adams dismissed his journals as pedestrian even as he indexed them and squeezed 650 words onto a page; the book judges them “one of the great works of American political literature,” and reads the late shift to dictating entries as a loss, since a dictated diary ceases to be the place where “the author speaks to himself only.” This connects journaling to Kyle’s threads on Solitude and self-knowledge.

In How To Take Smart Notes, journaling sits closer to the record-of-work tradition: a Wilford Woodruff highlight argues that since time once spent is gone forever, “should we not keep a record of our work, teachings, and counsel.” Kyle flags a related missionary-journal line as a Find the Quote open loop (“He is wise who knows what has been written and where to find it”). The concept also surfaced from a #journals hashtag in the Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith notes, alongside reflective journaling prompts.

• Prompts:
  • “What has happened on this day that happened on no previous day?”
  • How can you act better (more in harmony with your whole)?
  • What went well today?
  • What didn’t go well today?
  • How can I act differently next time?

Where this appears

• John Quincy Adams — Adams’s lifelong diary as private self-communion and great American political literature
• How To Take Smart Notes — journals as record-of-work (Woodruff) and a missionary-journal quote Kyle wants to source
• Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — origin of the #journals hashtag plus reflective journaling prompts