Remember Everything

We don’t have a chip implanted in our brain yet to remember everything — from the books we’ve read, the places we’ve visited, and the food we’ve eaten. The most practical method is to write them down. But do the people nowadays use their time to record their life events when they don’t even allow themselves to admire the dancing cloud in the sky?

Keeping a journal is a great way to remember your existence. As you write often, you’ll get to know yourself better. You learn to arrange your thoughts in a manner that others can relate. The sweet and bitter memories will remain as part of your stories.

One thing I’ve learned from keeping a journal is to keep the fragments and stories separated. What are fragments? They’re the records of your words, pictures, and places. Like I said earlier, you can’t write down everything. But you have those fragments spread all over the web.

Most of the services save a single information about us. Instagram saves our photos. Twitter saves our thoughts. Facebook saves our interaction with friends. Pocket saves our read items. Maybe we just need to put them into a single place for later use. Still, what purpose do those fragments serve?

They’re not journal replacement. Instead, they’re essential substances to help you keeping journal. When you think you have nothing to write, those fragments in your records silo, are ready for you to use as a story idea.

Journal is where you tell stories. From the photo of your favorite coffee shop, your tweet on the rain outside of bus stop, and your first visit to Disney Land. Don’t lose them. These are the records of your life.

Records With Evernote

It’s easy to save all those fragments with Evernote. But once again, why Evernote?

I keep asking myself this question as I walk back and forth in my room. I think the main reason is trust. Like how I trust Apple in creating an ecosystem where everything just works¹, I also trust Evernote to create an ecosystem that helps me remember everything.

Just having a silo is not enough. We need the help of IFTTT to save everything automatically. This means a new note is created whenever we’ve done something particular at Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Histories Notebook

All my fragments are stored in a notebook called Histories. You should always create a new notebook before starting to create IFTTT recipes. If you use iPhone, you can download the official IFTTT app to create and manage recipes.

While our fragments may differ, their type are similar. They’re either words, photos, or locations. Here are some ideas and recipes to help you getting started:

• Record Tweets: We tend to be vocal in Twitter. Save all your tweets, retweets, and favorites. You can review what you’ve said and favorited today with this recipes.
• Record Photos: Perhaps you use Instagram to take all kind of photos. Maybe you want to show the path you’ve taken daily. Maybe just a photo of your kids. Have a backup in Evernote.
• Record Read Items: Pocket lets you send saved articles to Evernote. It’s an effective way see what you’ve read on particular day.

IFTTT also supports many web services that you can use for your own recipes. Try to review which services you actively use and prepare a recipe to archive them to your dedicated notebook in Evernote.

We don’t have a chip implanted, but we still remember everything.