I recently re-watched Future Diary, an anime relating to keeping a journal that then gets shifted forward into time which, depending on what you were documenting, could be to your advantage or disadvantage.

This inspired me to keep my own journal YEARS back, and I've been doing pretty good at keeping it alive. I've recently migrated to using Obsidian as my software (in fact, I use Obsidian for everything! From notes in class to quick to-do lists for the day) and it's made it pretty easy to look back on old notes. I used to be obsessed with minute-by-minute updates like in the anime, but took a more realistic approach to having a daily review. However recently I've found that I am losing track of more and more as my life gets more and more busy. I've tried some different note-taking methods but those work for some aspects, but not all aspects of what I need to remember.

I have (most likely, at best undiagnosed) ADHD to where I can't remember a conversation I just had as soon as I turn back around to continue what I was working on before getting interrupted in conversation. So I have tried writing EVERYTHING down. This works, as long as I remember all the details by the time it's written down. (I've been interrupted 5 times while writing this so forgive me if it's scattered) But notes can get lost in the sauce and I have to search forever to find bits of info.

The way I use Obsidian is by having the daily note set up with a template which is timestamped and asks loaded questions, with tags, to help me find what subject I want to look back on in certain dates. These tags can be relating to work, emotions, relationships, interactions, and ways to improve any of those.

These get stored in folders for each year, but I generally keep them open-ended with the file name being just the date with a quick summary after it.

I've tried to use it as a task tracker at work, but when it came for annual review time, I struggled to find a way to parse a lot of notes all at once to remember what I had done for the year. This made me want to migrate to Microsoft Lists but now I have to use two different software for close to the same thing, and I lose which one I used for information I need.

So, how do you use a journal? What software do you use? What works best for tracking your tasks for annuals? What works best for keeping you on task when ADHD gets the better of you? How do you keep track of everything?!