Journal by Email
Every journal asks you to come to it. Open the app, find the button, start typing. Email journaling turns that around, and the journal comes to you instead.
Here’s how it works in Little Memory. It’s an iPhone app, and the evening asks you about your day. You answer with one sentence, in about fifteen seconds, and that’s the entry. Today that answer can be a reply to the reminder email.
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.
Why being asked works when apps don’t
Reply-to-journal was one of Little Memory’s very first features, suggested by behavioral scientist Jason Hreha. The thinking: the best trigger for a new habit is one that shows up inside a habit you already have. You already check your inbox in the evening. So the journal meets you where you already are, instead of waiting for you to remember it exists.
If you remember OhLife, this is that idea. OhLife did exactly this until it shut down in 2014, and Little Memory has been a home for OhLife journalers ever since.
Still a real journal underneath
Whichever way the line gets in, it lands in your journal like any other entry: it shows up in search, it keeps your streak alive, and it exports with everything else. When one comes back around a week, a month, or a year later, you read it in the app, which is where the journal lives.
The gentle reminders (of which you can customize by time of day so it works with your schedule) to say something about your day are very useful and unobtrusive.
Tim Walsh, Product Developer
Where this is going
Being asked in the evening is the part that isn’t going anywhere. The channel is a different question. Little Memory is moving to an app that keeps your memories on your device instead of on a server, which is better for your privacy and changes what email can sensibly carry. If you write by email today, you can keep doing that.
Prefer a keyboard to your inbox? You can also write the day’s line on your computer.
Curious about the rest, like photos, streaks, emotion trends, and backups? The little tour covers everything, and the help pages have the mechanics: what to send, what comes back, and what to do on a night the reminder doesn’t arrive.
