MoNote
Keeping a voice journal without typing
Most journals are abandoned by February. The ones that survive are the ones that cost almost nothing to keep, and talking costs less than writing.
Why a spoken journal lasts longer
A written journal asks for a time, a place and the energy to compose sentences. On a bad day, which is the day most worth recording, you have none of the three.
A spoken one asks for two minutes and a phone. You can do it walking to the car, or in the dark without waking anybody. And it keeps something writing loses: how you sounded.
What to say
Nothing in particular, which is what makes it hard to start. Three prompts that work:
What happened. The plain facts of the day, in order. These are what you will want in a year and what you will not remember.
What somebody said. As close to their words as you can manage. What the doctor said, what the teacher said, what your father said on the phone.
What is coming. Anything with a date. Saying it aloud is how it gets from the back of your mind to somewhere it can be found.
Skip how you felt about it, unless you want to. The facts carry the feeling perfectly well when you hear them back.
Finding an entry again
A journal you cannot search is a box in the attic. After a few months of daily recordings, scrolling is not an option.
If you are using your phone's own recording app, name each recording with the date and three words the moment you stop. It is tedious, and it is the difference between a journal and a pile.
Better is for the words themselves to be searchable, which needs transcription — and better still for entries to be split by subject, so a search for the boiler does not return every day you also mentioned the boiler in passing.
Keeping one in MoNote
MoNote is a voice journal that files itself. One recording comes back as several notes, each under its topic and under who it was about, with a calendar to find a day and a search box to find a word. Anything you said you had to do is listed separately, with its date.
Recording works with no signal; everything is written to the phone first and sent afterwards. The free plan is a couple of short recordings a day and does not expire.
Questions
How long should a voice journal entry be?
One to two minutes is plenty. A short entry every day is worth more than a long one every fortnight.
Is a voice journal private?
It depends where it is kept. Check whether recordings are stored on the phone or on a server, who processes them, and whether you can delete everything yourself.
Can I keep a journal about somebody else?
People do — a child's first year, a parent's appointments. Record what you would be comfortable having recorded about you.
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