The One-Line-Per-Day, One-Page Plain Text Daily Journal

I discovered the perfect solution to keeping a digital daily journal: one plain text file, with one line per day that sums up the most significant event(s) of that day.

Read on to learn how I use it, and how it fits into my plain-text journaling system.

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Yearly Recaps: A Monthly, Contextual, Plain-Text Journaling System

While I regularly maintain a daily journal, and do so in plain text (while also keeping a concurrent journal in the Momento app on my iPhone for the search and tagging features), often I find that I never actually read any of the old entries. Which is fine, as I mostly just like the habit of recording the information. Recently, I developed a system that is proving to be immensely useful.

One-Page Printable Yearly Calendar

I like to see the Big Picture. Most calendars suck for that. I also have idiosyncratic wants. Here’s the list of criteria:

• The weeks starts on Monday. I started experimenting with this a few months ago and love it. Weekends are chunk and belong together visually.
• The days are continuous. We live an endless stream of days. The calendar should reflect this experience.
• It fits on one printable page. I want something I can print out on regular paper, and not have to deal with cutting or assembling.

I found this near-perfect solution to my desires, but being near-perfect, I wanted to make it perfect. So I did.