Penzu’s the Place for Journaling Online

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Over the course of my life, I’ve probably started a journal about 850,000 times. Every time something monumental happens, or I go on a cool trip, I start a journal, and keep it for a little while. Then, life either gets boring, busy, or both, and I give up.

What I’ve realized recently, though, is that the reason I’ve never stuck to a journal is that it takes so long. In order to write legibly – and it’s debatable if that’s even possible – I have to write stupidly slow, and it takes me about 4 days to write a journal entry that says “had a bagel for lunch today.”

So I went looking for a way to keep a journal in a way that made more sense within what I already do, and I figured it out: I needed a journal online. I’m constantly at my computer, and frequently have a few mintues without anything of great consequence to do; that’s the perfect time to journal!

First of all, here are a few reasons I think a journal online is better than one on paper, or in a Word file:

• It’s permanent: if there’s a flood, or a fire, or a small child, they can’t destroy your journal, because it’s all backed up somewhere else.
• It’s searchable: You can search through your journal if it’s online, and if you want to find a particular event or date, it’s much easier to get to than it is to flip through all your journal pages.
• It’s shareable: I’m a firm believer in how important it is to share things with others – none of us are ever the only ones dealing with what we’re dealing with. But whether you want to share a journal entry with the world or turn it into a book, having a digital record of your journal is a great thing.

I’ve used, and even written about how good Penzu is before, particularly within the notion that all GTDers should keep a journal. But for a few reasons, I stopped using Penzu a year or so ago. Thanks to a few improvements and changes, though, Penzu is at the top of the heap of any kind of journal, and has made starting, updating, and keeping a journal incredibly easy.

Penzu’s keeping me a journaler, for a few reasons. The biggest one, by far, is its speed: in two seconds, you can start journaling. Log in later, but just start writing when you need to write. Your posts get auto-saved as you write, so there’s nothing distracting you from just getting your thoughts on paper.

The Penzu interface looks like a piece of paper, with no frills or extra features – it’s just like a journal, only you can read my handwriting. You can save entries, print them, even attach pictures. Every post has a link that you can make public, or share on Twitter or anywhere else. And that’s about it. If you’re looking for a minimalist way to write just about anything, including blog posts, Penzu’s a good one.

For a few dollars a year, you can get a Pro account, which lets you do everything from export your files to a number of formats (in the Free version, you just copy and paste the text), organize your entries in other ways, and more. I don’t use the Pro version yet, but I’m getting close.

Penzu works because it kills all the barriers to me journaling. Five seconds after deciding I want to write, I’m writing. I don’t have to remember my notebook, or find a pen – odds are, I’m already at my computer, so I just start writing.

Being able to search my journal (“Hmmm… what DID happen on Super Bowl Sunday?”) has been both useful and fun, looking back through my own life. I can’t recommend journaling enough, and for anyone who’d rather type than write, go check out Penzu.

Where, and why, do you keep a journal?

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