If you’re like me, you have a ton of photos of your kids on your phone. All the highlights result in screens upon screens full of nearly the same photo so you could ensure you got exactly the best photo.
But what about the smaller moments or random milestones that don’t warrant photos or would otherwise go unnoticed? A more concerted effort is required if you want to remember your child’s first lie, or the way they reacted to the first time they went in the ocean.
A year or two ago I first read an article called The Art of Noticing that inspired me to start tracking these small moments.
“Buy a small notebook, keep it handy, and write down things you notice.” It doesn’t need to be every day, once a week, or with any kind of regular cadence. Simply start recording the things that itch your brain. They may be significant milestones, but they’ll just as easily be minor, almost imperceptible, events that you alone observed. Another wonderful side effect of this habit? As they grow older you’ll end up with a book filled with the hilarious things your little ones say. “Future you” will thank “today you” for capturing them: fleeting moments, forever enshrined.
Hopefully these few words and the full article have convinced you to start tracking these moments. Since this is ostensibly a tech blog too, let’s focus on how to actually do the tracking!
The actual tool/app/service you use for tracking these moments is not super critical, but based on my experience so far there are several features that it should have for maximum effectiveness:
- Easy entry of memories, especially on mobile. If you have to remember something until the next time you’re at a computer, it’s a non-starter.
- Reasonable search and/or tagging. Being able to rediscover memories or filter by kid if you have more than one is helpful.
- Support for images is a plus. You’ll likely have some other way to revisit photos but it’s nice to have the option.
- An “on this day” or similar feature for revisiting entries is also a plus.
Tools that I’ve personally used that hit all or most of those criteria:
- Logseq or Obsidian
- Great options if you prefer to use your own storage or are already using these tools to store other types of notes.
- Purpose built journaling apps
- The paid version of Day One is what I’m currently using but likely anything would work! It’s not as open as Logseq or Obsidian, but you can at least export your notes as json.
- Apple Notes
- If you’re completely in the Apple ecosystem then everything works out of the box.
- The least open of the bunch, but with some hacking on macOS you can get at the note content if necessary.
That should be enough to get you started! As I said above, the most important thing is that you do it. Migrating the data between apps is a more tractable and solvable problem than forgetting them altogether.