A 1 Second Everyday Alternative in Words
1 Second Everyday is one of the good ones. Cesar Kuriyama started filming a second of his life every day, gave a TED talk about it, and the app that came out of it has people who’ve kept it up for a decade. If you’re looking at 1SE, you already want the same thing Little Memory is for — a way to hold onto ordinary days while they’re still going past.
The difference is what a day gets kept in, and what it takes from you on the day itself. 1SE asks you to be filming while the moment is happening. Little Memory asks for one sentence, afterwards, which means you can keep a day you didn’t have your phone out for.
exactly 4 years ago
Friday, Jul 8, 2022
★
Drove out to the valley. Stood there a while.
Your memories come back
Write one line tonight and that’s your journaling for the day. Seven days on it turns up again, and after that it keeps turning up.
- a week later
- a month
- three months
- six months
- a year
- every year after
little memory
now
Exactly 1 year ago
Walked the long way home for no reason.
Have it come to you at an hour you pick, or leave notifications off and find them waiting the next time you open the app.
The days you never filmed
Some days announce themselves and you get the shot. Most don’t. The conversation in the car, the thing your kid said at bedtime, the afternoon the news came — by the time you’d know to film those, they’re over, and a lot of them wouldn’t look like anything on camera anyway.
Words catch that part. Told them I was leaving. Hands shook the whole time. No footage exists of that day and it’s still kept. You can attach a photo when there is one, and skip it when there isn’t.
It comes back without being assembled
A 1SE year is a film you make: you collect the seconds, then mash them together and sit down to watch. It’s a wonderful thing to have, and it’s an occasion — something you do at New Year, or on a birthday.
Little Memory does the looking back for you, in small daily doses. Open it tonight and last week is already there, and last month, and this date a year ago. Nothing to compile, nothing to schedule. By your second year every ordinary date has an anniversary waiting on it.
It’s really a great way for me to look back and relive little moments.
C.C., reader letter
Little Memory vs. 1 Second Everyday
| Little Memory | 1 Second Everyday | |
|---|---|---|
| A day’s entry | One sentence, written after the fact | One second of video, filmed in the moment |
| Old entries come back | On their own, after a week, a month, and a year | When you mash a project and watch it |
| What it holds | Words, with a photo if you like | Video, with notes on the side |
| Storage | Text, so years of it stay small | Video, with unlimited backup in 1SE Pro |
| Mood | Sentiment analysis on what you wrote | — |
| Export | Everything, anytime | Your finished videos |
| Platforms | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, Android |
The rest of the quiet features: search across all your years, streaks if you like them, most used words, emotion trends over time, and automated nightly backups to Dropbox. Little Memory has been at this since 2011 — over 1,000,000 one-line memories from over 30,000 journalers, featured by Apple three times — and everything is private by default.
Who should stay with 1SE
If what you want is to see and hear it — your kid’s voice changing, the way a place actually looked, a year you can play for someone else in four minutes — video does that and a sentence never will. Plenty of people keep both: the film for the highlights, the line for the Tuesday.
But if the seconds have started slipping past unfilmed, or the project has become something you owe rather than something you enjoy, the written version asks a lot less. There’s a page about getting back into it after a lapse, and one about the days blurring together.
(Weighing a few apps? All the comparisons live at Little Memory vs. other journaling apps.)
