23Jun19 | I have tried every journal app that exists

From a “Human Performance Optimization” perspective, of all my habits, journaling has constantly been the most rewarding act.

Everyone of us is the sum of their experiences.

We develop our lenses by which we see the world through our very own life events & changes. We are very different yet very similar at how we perceive the world around us.

Every experience despite how small, could introduce the biggest changes to how we think!

The act of writing enables us to relive and savor those experiences. When we write, we engage with the present moment, immersing ourselves in the sights, sounds, and emotions of the experience we write about.

Reason I say journaling is the most rewarding act is because your writings are available forever to reflect upon anytime you want. Keeping a journal involves both writing and reflecting.

When writing, you remove parts of the fog that is always cluttering your mind, you become more confident of your beliefs & views, you reiterate on your ideas & experiences providing for a clearer perspective. Writing is the catalyst for clear thinking, and without clear thinking, it’s easy to get lost in the information overload! Fog gets thicker & thicker without a reset button. Writing provides for a space to be your most authentic self, your own therapist that you can talk to about anything, and without any biases.

When reflecting, we can then revisit those experiences we once wrote about, gaining new insights, understanding, and perspective. Because there’s always new data! So reflecting is often our way to match, compare, learn, and grasp the bigger pictures. And so we can revisit our memories, reinterpret our experiences, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world.

Both combined, they have the ability to enhance our appreciation for life by allowing us to savor every little detail and keep our memories fresh about what matters.

Anaïs Nin was an author who explored themes of self-discovery, personal growth, and the complexities of human relationships. Her diaries, in particular, provided a glimpse into her inner thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Through her writing, she sought to capture and understand the essence of life and the nature of existence.

That said, back in the day I used to use only a paper & pencil for my daily journal.

For me writing on a physical paper always feels good. But my journal notes were random, unstructured, and hard to search. So I decided to explore journaling apps, and since then, I have been addicted to try every new journaling app that I know of, even if I’d try it for a very brief period of time, and even if it doesn’t offer anything new. I have probably tried all journal desktop & mobile apps, free or paid.

The difference between a normal notes app and a journal app is that the journal app provides more functionality for reflecting. This always came in form of connecting your social accounts, notification prompts for inputs that happened on this day years ago, more support for photos & videos, and maybe integrating with Apple Health & calendar.

Beside journaling, I am also a data geek.

I was always trying to keep track of my numbers. Any numbers.

And when I thought of the quickest way to do that, I looked no further than Google Sheets.

So around late 2019, I did a Google Sheet with the purpose of writing down numbers from my day, everyday. These are numbers I could track and keep record of: sleep hours, work hours, money spent, workouts, step count, daily macros, etc.

I tried to stick to writing down these numbers as much as possible. Although it wasn’t easy because it needs time. I would often be on & off with tracking, but the thought of automating the tracking has never left my mind. I was always thinking: maybe if I don’t have to spend the time & brain power everyday, my life would be much easier and I’d stay committed for much longer.

And at the same time, I knew that keeping a journal of my thoughts has to be a manual process, because of the nature of this type of input. It cannot be automated. Sometimes I’d write for 5 minutes, sometimes I’d write for an hour, but at the end of the day, I have to dedicate time for journaling.

💡 So I was thinking of a way to merge both: Manual Journal + Automated Tracking

Goal is to streamline the capturing of my life’s events, my performance, and my progress.

And instead of being on & off, never be off ever again.

Now this task proved to be very hard with the apps that are available today, even with the fanciest integrations & workflows, nothing achieved this goal for me.

Coming from a technical background, I took strides into trying to solve this problem for me.

It was one niche problem but it kept nagging the back of my mind for a few years.

I was always more concerned about What can our current tech make possible? than What’s convenient for me?

1/ Step 1: What data can be collected?

Then I dug one level deeper and instead of just tracking some numbers, I wanted to quantify everything that could be quantified about my life.

I was inspired by examples like HowIsFelix and julian.digital.

In the middle of my curious efforts, I stumbled upon communities on the internet that are interested in something called “Quantified Self” – which means: The practice of using technology, such as wearable devices and smartphone apps, to collect and track personal data related to various aspects of one's life, including physical activity, digital activity, sleep patterns, mood, and more. The goal of the Quantified Self movement is to leverage this self-generated data to optimize and improve one's life in different areas, such as health, productivity, and overall well-being.

So I kept searching about all tools I can use to get any possible insights about my body & my performance with as much autonomy as possible (example, example, example)

2/ Step 2: What ways to visualize this data?

And then I dug one even deeper level! And thought if I have the data, I can do anything I want to do with it. Afterall it’s my day job, and this opened an infinite pool of possibilities for me, I can mix and visualize the data anyway I want!

I thought what metrics do I want to look at everyday?

How do I categorize this data in a way that makes sense?

How to quantify my performance based on the data?

Only principle I’m trying to stick with while solving this problem: Keep it fun & frictionless.

3/ Step 3: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!

And then during the last six months, massive strides happened with AI.

Stuff that wasn’t even possible when I first started thinking about the main problem. There are AI models that are now powerful enough to look at the data for you so it’s not a matter of “how to represent the data” anymore! Because AI can represent it however you want!

To prove my point, I quickly did this design in Figma more than 2 months ago, on how I imagine the next gen of journaling apps should be:

Point is we are no longer restricted by the rigid representation of data we get from fitness dashboards for example, they often provide a strict dashboard how they see fit, but we might be interested in different/new ways to look at the same data.

And then, as part of the advancements that are taking place right now in the AI world, I very recently came across a similar screen by an app I use called Rewind:

CRAZY if you ask me.

Why? Because although this is not a journal app, it’s building a new way to look at the data, upon your prompt! Meaning it’s no longer “Here’s your pre-set dashboard”, but rather “What do you want to know?”.

The type of data in this case is your screentime activity. So instead of providing high-level metrics, AI is now enabling personalization!

In my point of view, journal apps are in the most prime position to benefit from this personalization power. Because afterall they are “personal” journal apps!

In this post, I refer to a rumor about Apple releasing a journal app under the next iOS. The app will gather data from Apple Health, calendar events & phone calls → into an automated journal.

So that it’d make the act of writing your daily journal much easier, you’d be reminded by activity from your day, and you’d even be able to import activities right away into your journal.

Then on June 5th, Apple confirmed the new journal app:

This is going to be aggregating data from other iOS stock apps, but it validated the idea that:

And moreover, it was quite a reassurance for my vision from earlier.

What I came up with is that I’d ideally want something that can help me to keep tabs on my:

And support my decision making through my very own data, in an easy way.

Which brought me to start working on Hyperspaces, the app I wish existed when I first started journaling in 2019. What we strive for at Hyperspaces is to help you centralize data about:

We’re not only concerned about the convenience of getting this data for you into one place, but also making it easy for you to benefit from it!

Mission behind this is to enhance human performance by using what tech has to offer us today, which is constantly proving to be a lot!

Waiting list for Hyperspaces is now live on: