I have reached for a notebook when I needed to get the mess of thoughts in my head organized. It has been a great tool for dumping my brain, organizing thoughts, and finding a sense of direction for what to work on next. Historically I have done this in moments of emotional turmoil, moments of frustration, and after both positive and negative experiences in life. I’ve got years worth of snapshots from my life as a result. These can vary in frequency from days to months between entries.
In the last month I’ve started taking a fractal journaling approach where I jot dot thoughts more frequently throughout the day or week long timescales. I have found this far more efficient in capturing the intent of the thought as opposed to trying to summarize multiple thoughts at the end of a day in a single session.
With this new approach I get timestamped (For example: 2025-09-10 1209) entries that focus on single topics or a couple of closely linked topics. Far more useful when reviewing compared to an entry that tries to summarize a day long timescale (or worse a week) worth of thoughts. This fractional in the moment approach has stopped from editorializing my own thoughts or missing thoughts entirely. The timestamps have also proved a useful piece of data for understanding the flow of thoughts during a day or week.
Every weekend I try and review notes from the week, pulling out common topics or areas I wish to consider more thoughtfully. Those topics may get additional entries or longer form entries as I chew on them. From a reflection and review standpoint this has worked out considerably better than my usual review of rambling entries. With each entry being largely self-contained it is far easier to follow thought processes and mental swings.