Org-Journal May Replace My Daybook.org File

The more I use Bastian Bechtold’s Org-journal the more I like it.

For the past few years I’ve kept a sort of “Daybook” using a datetree in a single Org-mode file. This works pretty well, but it’s always felt more suitable for shorter entries. I wanted something that would work with longer entries, so I tried Org-journal.

Org-journal uses one file per day. I first thought that this would make browsing my journal difficult, but it doesn’t. I find the built-in search to be easier to manage than using sparse trees or other search methods in an ordinary Org file.

I have found myself creating a journal entry using Org-journal for everything, including the things I’d normally put into my Daybook.

Org-journal even handles TODOs, and carries forward any unfinished TODOs from the previous day. It’s kind of like an automated Bullet Journal.

I export things I write each month to PDF files and print them out. (Yes, I’m that guy). With separate files for each day, I can do this by running something like cat 2018-05*.org > 2018-05-Journal.org and export the resulting file to a nicely-typeset PDF easily enough.

I’m not quite ready to completely let go of my habit of logging things into my Daybook, but the writing is on the wall.