Paperless Productivity - Journal It!

After the success of Tick Tick, I decided to try another productivity app that had come up on Google Drive and decided to give Journal It! a try.  Unfortunately this time it wasn't as much of a success I just didn't get along with it and actually stopped using it after a couple of weeks.  However, just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean that it won't work for someone else so I'll try not to be too negative in this post.

This app is meant to be more like an all-around journal and tracker rather than just a diary you put your tasks into and is actually set up to be something similar to a bullet journal.  This app is also one in which you can log into using your Google account, allowing everything to be backed up and accessed from different locations.  I didn't do that however as I wanted to see how the application would work before I started syncing it with Google and, as I wasn't keen on it after the first week, I decided to not experiment with it any further.  One thing I don't like about this layout is that, with the tracks, it only tells you how many you have managed to do continuously rather than how many in total, and if you miss one it goes back to zero.  I don't necessarily want to make myself feel like I have to do them every day as it can be a little intimidating, but this is the feeling that this gives.

The Home page is the default page and it basically gives you an overview of everything that's going on.  It shows you the photos that you've taken recently and which you can add to a note for that day by tapping on it, lets you select your mood for the day allowing you to track any changes, holds the habits you've added, and contains a timeline which shows you all your actions, posts, and tasks you did or didn't complete on any given day, including the time in which these actions were done.  

You can also add habits, event posts, journalling etc by clicking on the cross at the bottom right and selecting which one you want.

The Planning page is where you add your to-dos for the day, as well as any notes you want, similar to a post-it note you might use in a physical diary.  I usually used this for shopping lists etc, which could then just be deleted once completed.

These are pretty easy to add by just clicking on the cross again and selecting what you wanted.  As I mostly used this page for to-dos that's the one I selected most often.

Then you type in the name of the task, select the date and a time, if needed, you want, set any reminders, and set the task up as a repeat.  

The three symbols at the bottom allow you to add a location in which the task needs to be carried out, add a photo to the task, and connect the task to a specific category, activity, journey, or tag (this is the files symbol and we'll get into this more a little later).  One of the smart things about this part is that if you haven't got one set up already you can just type the name into the box at the top and then click on which section you want it to go to.  

Then you click done and that's your task set up.  You can bounce through each day to see what tasks you have coming up and, as with previous apps, the screen size was a good way of controlling how many tasks I added to each day.

The Journeys page was not something that I used at all.  As far as I could tell it is a section you could use to either plan an actual journey or use it to organise specific things like an event or decorating a room.  To create one you just click on the cross, add the name of the journey, the expected start and end date, a description, and a covering picture if you want.  You can then add tasks, habits, and notes to this, see how you're journey is progressing on the timeline, as well as marking this as complete once your journey is finished.  I don't need anything that complex and I enjoy using a physical diary to write about things that are going on, so this wasn't a section I used at all. 

The last section is Activities and this is where you can put together any projects you have going on.  To be honest, Journeys and Activities seem pretty interchangeable, with the only difference being that you can 'complete' a journey.  Again, I don't need anything this complex (at least not at the moment anyway, I hardly have lots of complex activities whilst I'm in lockdown) so I didn't really use this section either. 

To set this up just click on the red cross and here, the only thing you add is the activity's name.  As with Journeys, once you've set up an activity you can see how it's progressing on the Timeline.

Add any tasks and notes that you need to do which are connected to this particular activity.

And add any habits or photos, etc that might be connected.  An Activity or Journey can be added to a task already made at any point.

All of the journeys, activities, photos actually added, habits, notes, and to-do can be looked at on their own through the menu.  You can even look at statistics which show you how your week, month, or year is progressing if you really want to keep an eye on how well you've been doing.

To be fair to this app, I do think this is a good app for someone who is either using it for a small business; organising a large event such as a wedding or large holiday; or someone who really likes to have a fully organised life right down to the last detail.  It would probably also work for people who already use a bullet journal and want to take those features into a digital format.  

However, for me, it was just too complex for what I was needing and I felt like I was using less than half of what the app could potentially do.  That seemed to be a little bit pointless, especially seeing as this app takes up quite a large chunk of storage on my phone.  So this is definitely not an app that I will carry on using, but, if you like bullet journals definitely have a look at this one, it might work for you.  This all means that Tick Tick is still on the top of my list of productivity apps and I am definitely saying goodbye to Journal It.

Next, I'll be testing Memorigi.