Journaling Probes

One of the most successful approaches to journaling is to have a set of questions that you would like to answer in specific scenarios. Given that journaling can be expensive in time and energy and give than the decay rate of unaided access to specific memories is very high, it is a good idea to prioritize and branch the questions so that you are answering what is most important to you and deepening your answers in ways that make sense given the context.

There are a very large set of things that one could capture. Let’s look at a number of these and then come up with a strategy for reducing that number to several “must dos” and a system of “if I have the time and energy.”

General Case Daily Life

People

Did I meet any new people?

Did I have any discussions?

Was I thinking about anyone today? Worrying about, missing, annoyed with

Meals

Where did I eat?

Who did I eat with?

Did I try anything new?

Media

Did I see any movies?

Did I do any reading?

Special Case: Photography

Who is in this photo?

Are they doing anything funny or unusual?

What was the event?

How did you feel?

What kinds of things were happening just before, during and just after the picture?

What do you wish you had a picture of?

Did I use any techniques?

Should I spend some time doing some cropping or other processing?

Special Case: Travel (Quizlet Set for randomized probes ->: https://quizlet.com/411039053/flashcards)

Did I encounter any behaviors that I found hard to interpret?

Did I have any funny language issues?

What is done differently here (as opposed to ‘home’)?

Did I try any new foods?

Did I encounter any new foods?

Who was I traveling with?

How did I get around?

Did I buy any souvenirs? Did I pass any up?

What was the weather like?

What did I wear?

Special Case: Reading

What new ideas were encountered?

What new words?

Did I look anything up?

Do I want to follow up with more research?

Anything that was different than what I expected?