Tim DeTellis

For the past five years I have carried a journal almost everywhere I go. My friends have nick-named me “the scribe.” I have used one of three journals the entire time: Ampad gold fiber, Moleskin, or the black croc leather journal.

Here are a few journal entries:

11/27/2007, meeting with Kris DenBesen at Mimi’s Cafe, he shared with me about his sales team and their 14 store managers. The score card system was explained to me that his company used for sales, parts and service within their tractor business.

8/8/2008, meeting with Bill Webster at Starbucks, he shared with me about www.ning.com and www.wordpress.com and how online marketing is all about eyeballs and not technology.

11/9/2008, listening to Pastor Tim Grosshans as a guest speaker at Dover Shores Baptist Church, sharing on the topic: What is your heart’s desire? Philippians 3:10&11.

10/27/2009 breakfast with Doug Dees at Einstein’s Bagels, we talked about singular focus, multi-site church models and how emotion does not always translate.

The history is fascinating while the capturing of ideas have been enjoyable. I’m now moving away from my days of journal holding. Why? Here are my five reasons:

Five Reasons I’m Saying Goodbye Moleskine Journal
1. My filing system has changed. I am going 100% digital. This is the biggest reason. By making all my journal entries in my Awesome Note app on my iPhone, I can categorize my entries and retrieve them faster for better use and productivity.
2. I do not want a library. I now have just one digital journal. Many days, I found myself back at home, looking through old journals trying to find that note or reference to an idea. I have stacks of journal books and I’m sure I could have indexed my entries better, but now I can search on my iPhone or open the specific folder where that subject is filed under.
3. My meeting notes are now on my calendar. The biggest reason I used a journal book was for meeting notes. Now, I can take my meeting notes right in the appointment on my calendar, therefore the meeting notes are always where and when they happened. This is also where I store the agenda for the meeting which provides me a better management tool during meetings.
4. I’m tired of running out of pages. I mentioned in #2 about my freedom from having a library, yet the ending of a journal was a greater challenge. On many road trips, I found myself shopping for a journal because on the airplane ride, I began to download ideas and planning notes then quickly used up the pages in my journal. Then what? I had to buy another journal, which leads me to number 5.
5. I find myself taking more photos and they are value for my journal. It’s hard to print and tape the photo inside my paper journal. With Awesome Note app I can add a photo to a note. Super simple and then I have the moment archived for future reference.

The downside to this new direction of a digital journal are back-up concerns. Therefore, I have engaged two redundant systems to archive all my journal entries. Google docs and Evernote. All the entries I make in my Awesome Notes app are automatically backed up to these two separate platforms. My calendar entries sync with my .mac account and back-up on my computer which back-ups to my time machine external hard drive. Wow, maybe paper was not that bad. Well, I’m still walking away from the journal book.

One day, long after I’m gone, maybe someone will find one of my old journals with drawings, notes, and crazy “my impossible list” goals in the back, but until then, I’ll just carry around my iPhone. For certain, in a decade the iPhone will be replaced and maybe I’ll find myself back to the old faithful paper journal. I’m sure there will be days of withdrawal and I’ll miss it.

By the way, on my desk I still keep a large spiral white paper journal to storyboard ideas. Mostly because I like to use visuals to think and explain. Maybe I need to replace that large drawing journal with the iPad. Time will tell.

Do you journal? How? Why?

Continue on!
Tim