45 // Journaling in Formable

Whenever I do any writing or knowledge management work myself, I find new ways of working with Formable.

Here are some ideas for workflows I got while writing my annual review a week ago:

I write a weekly journal, which I read for writing my annual review. Transclusion can help here by letting you “copy” weekly entries to the annual one.
These copies can then be annotated at both ends and link to each other.

Another idea for pulling in content was through defining the significance of single items in your journal or log.
This could just be adding a tag to automatically include it in the annual review, or using multiple tags, or weighted edges to set a custom value.
It could be done fully automatically or assisted by automations and AI.

There could be a UI for zooming in and out of your journal, going from only most relevant items down to the smallest details, by significance.

What Alex shared here as “One Ling Log OS” is related to this idea. It includes some visuals one what such a log could look like:

Alexander Obenauer @alexobenauer

In my latest experiment, I've built OLLOS – part digital chronofile, part spaced review of items. I posted a member update today, exploring the "spaced review" concept within: alexander.memberful.com/posts/14304

Alexander Obenauer @alexobenauer

Last year I designed an OS to work entirely this way — OLLOS: One Long Log OS. The primary method of seeing your items was in one, mostly chronological log. It spoke to me in ways I’m still trying to digest; I have a homemade notes app that works this way to help figure it out. https://t.co/XZv2QDl4i6

Further utilising Formable’s graph data structure, this could not just be logged by time, but connected to happened before, after and during an entry:

🫡💙 @hunktwink123

I had an idea for browser tabs branching inspired by subway maps. Ever wonder how did you fall down the rabbit hole? This might help

Going back from ideas to what’s possible today:

The way I already write in Formable also helps view my journal in multiple different views. I write it chronologically, and insert inline tags for topics. I might write about what I’ve eaten and insert #food, about Formable with #Formable, and so on. I can then over a longer time horizon filter for those tags or filter for their parents, like #health or #work.

What makes a good journal? Not just the writing experience, but how you’ll read and work with it. Formable lets you turn daily journals into weekly ones, weeklies to annual reviews. Chronological logs into sections by topic.
Formable is a great journal.

If you wrote an annual review too, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how the writing you did during the year helped with that.

–Emil