What can you write in a personal diary and how to design it

It's never too late to start

There is no specific time or age when you should start a journal; you may need one at any point in your life. For example, first-grader Alexandra Ippolitova began taking notes directly in her school notebook. She tried to write down everything that happened to her at school and at home:

“January 17, 1984 Here and below, fragments of the diaries are given in accordance with the author’s spelling and punctuation. School. Today at school everyone said that we will have 5 lessons in our class. And I said to myself that we would have three lessons. Because the third lesson was 3 filmstrips and the 4th lesson was a Moscow concert. And in the 5th lesson there was physical training on skis. At home. I forgot!”

A page from the diary of first-grader Alexandra Ippolitova. 1984 © “Prozhito”
And the anonymous author from Ust-Narva, whose diary is kept in the archives of the Research Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa), began writing notes a week after his retirement:

“9-VIII-68 I know that the lot of many who have “retired into a well-deserved retirement,” as our sentimentally saccharine newspapermen and party and trade union committee speakers define pensioners, is unenviable: they are gradually, but still very visibly and noticeably, getting fatter, stupider, sicker and quite quickly merge with mother nature, participating with their remains in the eternal rotation of matter. Salvation is not to lose shape, to do something, to strive for something, to participate in something - while the pot is cooking and the legs are running. Journaling is a type of work like this.”

What do they write in the ld?

In a diary you can write anything that a person is interested in or concerned about. This could be: notes; favorite recipes; poetry; impressions, etc.

Goals and dreams

Entries in the organizer about aspirations discipline and motivate. They also help to understand the possibilities and means to achieve goals.

To create a diary, it is worth developing an algorithm for making entries:

1. Its first page may contain personal information about the owner or a list of aspirations.
2. It is recommended to complete this diary in the evening. This will help you comprehend and set the installation for the next day.
3. Record each day according to the principle of 3 components:
   what needs to be done tomorrow - actions that need to be implemented the next day;
4. understanding of actions and goals - everything that happens during the day (experiences, reflections);
5. analysis and conclusion - summing up, looking at yourself from the outside.
6. Enter actions in bullet points.
7. Cross out things that have already been completed.
8. Make adjustments and incorporate new circumstances.
9. At the end of the week, summarize the general analysis and conclusion. Emphasize important situations for yourself.

This algorithm brings a feeling of confidence and satisfaction.

Impressions from books read and films watched

Diary entries can be literary and creative in nature.

People who enjoy reading or watching movies will find it useful to keep a journal about the work they read or see. To do this, you can assign each story its own page, on which you can express your opinion and impressions about the plot, character or situation. It would be interesting to model the continuation of a story or chapter. It is worth emphasizing for yourself the interesting thoughts of the author and actor. This is especially useful if a person emphasized his motivation in the work.

Such actions will make the process of reading or watching a movie more exciting.

It is worth dedicating a separate page for a list of books and films that have already been watched. This will give you an idea of ​​what works you would like to get acquainted with in the future.

Joyful moments of life

Moments of a surge of positive emotions can be recorded in a personal organizer. Vivid impressions have a positive tendency to influence the human condition. Daily recording of such events helps relieve fatigue and perceive life optimistically.

You can keep such a diary with multi-colored pens, assigning a rating on a ten-point scale to each color on the first page of the journal. The circumstance that caused these experiences should be given a name or illustration. Under them, describe the event and your feelings from it.

Favorite dishes

You can save your favorite recipes in a notebook, notebook or organizer. For ease of use and quick search for the required recipe, it is worth dividing by type of dish:

• cold snacks;
• hot appetizers;
• salads;
• poultry, pork or beef dishes;
• side dishes;
• baking, etc.

Each section can be highlighted with its own color or bookmarks of different colors.

Traveler's Notes

In your personal travel diary, you can record your impressions of your stay in each city. Keep a list of monuments, museums and other similar places that you want to visit. Mark the features of sights already seen. Record the costs of accommodation and food, which can then be compared and analyzed, and draw a conclusion on the cost of traveling to a particular city.

You can create such a diary in a notebook or organizer. At the beginning of the page, indicate the name of the place you are visiting, then a list of attractions and impressions about them. At the end of the page, indicate expenses and summarize the trip. At the end of the note, come up with one phrase or word that summarizes the trip and impressions. You can also add the name of the next city that is worth visiting. This will act as motivation for your next trip.

Quotes and everything that inspires

Phrases and thoughts of book authors, movie actors or idols heard or read can be written in a personal diary according to the alphabet or topic. For example: phraseological units; quotes about love; motivating text, etc. For each extract, you can write down its perception, decoding in your own understanding.

This method of recording information will help you use appropriate phrases when writing compositions, stories and essays. Makes them rich and interesting.

Short posts are also valuable!

You don't need literary talent or a love of detail or introspection to keep a journal—even sketchy entries can be valuable. Emperor Nicholas II kept a diary from the age of fourteen and always did it in a sparse, factual manner - regardless of what was happening around him - war or revolution. The last entry was made on June 30, 1918, a few weeks before the execution:

“Alexey took his first bath after Tobolsk; his knee is getting better, but he cannot straighten it completely. The weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from outside."

The last entry in the diary of Nicholas II. June 30, 1918 State Archive of the Russian Federation

What is the best thing to write down?

You keep a diary for yourself, because there are no restrictions on what you write there. Desires come true, pleasant moments that lifted your spirits, compliments, even a great time spent in idleness - write everything that gives you pleasant feelings. For example, you overcame some of your complexes, learned something new, signed up for a gym, increased your profits, forgave your offender, helped your neighbor, left your comfort zone, prepared a new dish.

In your diary, thank people who have done something good for you, thank yourself for being such a great person. Let this be a diary of success and gratitude - it will help you become not only more confident in yourself, but also friendlier, and will attract new interesting people into your circle.

Success Diary Template

If you still don’t know how to keep a success diary, where to start, you can take this example as an example:

Template in Google Sheet Gradually, you will become comfortable in recognizing your merits and will be able to easily notice the positive moments in life, without relying on any success diary templates.

Use an Observation Journal

There is no need to wait for something extraordinary to happen in your life. It's enough just to look around. Biologist Boris Golov spent his entire life observing birds and recording his observations in a diary:

“May 3, 1938 Grishkov forest. I scared a jay out of a hollow. It is possible that there is a nest there. Last year there was a jay nest in the same hollow. 2 buzzards fly very low over the forest. A black kite flew by."

Diary of Boris Golov. 1938 © “Prozhito”
Leningrad post office employee Ilya Melgunov followed the life of the ficus:

“February 5, 1971 Ficus is sick again. Leaves are falling. 9 leaves left. Today I took the ficus out of the pot and washed the soil. I planted it again, not so tight for the roots. <…> February 18 The ficus has only 3 leaves left. I expect that either the last ones will fall, or they will get better. I suspect the cat - maybe she went into the ficus pot.”

Talk to the diary

It is difficult to establish who was the first to turn to his diary as an interlocutor.
We can only say that this practice became popular at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries and arose under the influence of the epistolary genre. At this time, many authors notice that an interesting and trustworthy interlocutor can be not only a pen pal, but also a diary. Diary of Magdalena van Schinne. Cover of the 1990 edition © Uitgeverij Verloren
In October 1788, the Dutch girl Magdalena van Schinne, instead of writing and sending a letter to her friend, simply wrote down on a piece of paper:

“Oh my paper, you are the only one who will hear my ideas, feelings, worries and joys. Here I can pour out my soul completely; with others, even with my best friends, I want to learn to hide my feelings, or at least I don't want to tell them about myself anymore. You are my only confidant."

Since then, the diary has repeatedly helped people out in situations where they lacked a reliable and understanding interlocutor.

Brainstorm

Use a process to develop creative solutions to problems. Write down all your ideas and use them to solve any problems in your life. Don’t forget that even if one of the methods is not useful now, it may well play into your hands a little later, in a different situation.

Save files and audio recordings that may be useful in your field of work. Add special tags that will help you understand your bookmarks, as well as comments about why they are important. For all these tasks you can use the Evernote application:

Share your experiences with your diary

A diary helps you turn feelings, experiences and doubts into text on paper, which means you can look at them from the outside. Sometimes you need it to take a breath, make a difficult decision, or understand something important about yourself.

On December 1, 1923, Soviet Komsomol member Valentina Sokolova wrote in her diary:

“<…> Now I think only about the future. What will become of me? Will I always feel out of place? After all, this is flour. I thought that I loved adventures and suddenly everything shook. What to do? For what? And will anything come of it? Will I really be the odd man out? Let’s say I solved the last question last year and it seems correct. Now what should we do?

Diary of Valentina Sokolova. 1923 State Archive of the Perm Territory

How to sign and properly format a personal diary: tips and ideas

For adults, busy and working people, perhaps the design of the diary is not so important - most likely, they would settle on an expensive diary with a thick, stylish cover and elegant pages. But how can a girl or teenager create and fill out pages inside the wish list? Surely young ladies want something enchanting, sparkling and joyful - styles, ideas and photos of filling out a personal diary or diary can be viewed on online blogs, the social picture network Pinterest and similar resources. Or just come up with something of your own.

In general, the design of a diary depends on:

own desires and ideological vision of the new “friend”; creative skills (calligraphy, drawing skills); available free time, which, without prejudice to study, work or family, can be spent on making notes.

Thematic pages and stories are a super idea; everything from scrapbooking to stickers and Chinese calligraphy will be used here. For a trip to the sea, the page can be painted with soft blue watercolors, pearl beads and decorative colored sand can be added, the “forest page” can be perfumed with eau de toilette with a woody aroma and decorated with pine or spruce needles - there is room for imagination.

Many people, already at the beginning of their journey, think about how to design the last page of a creative diary: perhaps someone will like the idea of ​​a stylized door to the future, their own poem, or simply a beautifully executed inscription “To be continued...”

There are no special rules in design either - the only important thing is that the diary pleases its owner .
For young girls with free time, magazine clippings and scrapbooking elements, materials for appliques, a set of colored gel pens and felt-tip pens, text highlighters, glue sticks, self-adhesive rhinestones, decorative tapes and paper, etc. will be useful. Girls' favorite pictures are cute cats, cute bears, butterflies, flowers and angels.

Or draw, paste photographs, magazine clippings, tickets and anything else that is important to you to keep

A diary is not always exclusively a text that you wrote yourself.
Essentially, this is an archive of your impressions, into which you, like a herbarium, paste everything that you do not want to forget. Anonymous diary. 2000 © “Prozhito”
So, a fan of St. Petersburg “Zenith” in 2000 pasted portraits of her favorite football players, drawings and a photograph of the Depeche Mode group into her diary.

“August 3, 2000 Yesterday I was at Zenit with the girls. It was cool. Zenit - Spartak Alania 2:1. Zenit is a champion!!! How cool it was. In the 7th minute, Radimov scored a goal into the top corner so beautifully from a free kick.”

Playlist for parties for football fans and more

Songs that Zenit fans, truck drivers, and teenagers listen to and sing in their yards

If you think that the recordings are too personal and could fall into the wrong hands, use a code

Portrait of Samuel Pepys. Painting by John Hales. 1666 © National Portrait Gallery, London
The author of one of the most famous diaries in history, London official Samuel Pepys, used a mix of Spanish and French to make it difficult to read fragments about his love affairs.

“On February 17, 1667, Mitchels and his wife paid us a visit, we drank and laughed a lot, after which - it was a beautiful evening, the moon was shining - Mitchels and I went boating. To my chagrin, I saw how all the way ella huddles a su marido and hides manos, quando yo trying to take one de los - so that evening nothing happened to me con ella. When we landed on the shore, under some plausible pretext I sent my hubby back to the bateau, hoping to snatch a couple of baisers from her; I took her by the hand, but ella turned away, and quando I said: “I can’t tocar te?” — with a slight modo she answered: “Yo no I like it when they touch me.” I pretended not to notice this, after which I politely said goodbye, et su marido andar me almost to the mi casa, where we parted Per. Alexandra Livergant."

And the Soviet schoolboy Oleg Chernevsky used a homemade cipher made of brackets, semicolons and other symbols.

Encrypted diary of a Stalin-era schoolboy

What Oleg Chernevsky wrote about in 1937–1938