UPDATE: this project was discontinued
I lost track of how many times I started a new daily journal, with or without some special journalling methodology. The benefits of journaling regularly are well-known. Many famous personalities and great people also kept a daily diary of some sort. And I don’t even need convincing, I really do like to write my thoughts, things that happened during the day, favorite quotes, or things learned.
It’s just that every single time I tried, I ended up not being able to keep the habit after a few days or weeks.
My most recent attempt was with the very famous Bujo. I read about and watched countless videos on how-tos and inspiration. Yes, even got some colorful pens and spent time decorating some of the most important pages. It was great.
Then it fell behind, like all my previous attempts did.
But this time I was especially frustrated with this. Why can’t I keep it going? I don’t usually have problems keeping up with new habits when I’m intrinsically motivated to do so.
So I thought that this time I would go to the bottom of this. What’s preventing me from continuing with this habit?
I realized it boiled down to very simple things:
- it takes too long to maintain/write
- it wasn’t available at the right time (when I have something to write, I don’t have it with me)
- there’s no easy and effective way to search for things that matter, with the exception of digital solutions. But those…
- … make me spend even more time in front of the computer, which I don’t want.
Being a developer gives me this great advantage: I can scratch (some of) my itches easily.
For many months I’ve been exploring digital assistants, the use of AI to facilitate interaction, and telegram to make them available everywhere and without needing a dedicated UI.
A couple of days ago it dawned on me. Why not use these same strategies to solve my journaling problem?
I took some extra free time during this weekend and the past few nights to brainstorm and launch an MVP for a different kind of daily journal. And so Hoxe was born.
How is it solving the above problems directly?
- I can write short messages (tweets, if you like) throughout the day
- I can write from the web app or Telegram using a dedicated bot
- If I don’t feel like writing, I can send a voice message and it gets transcribed
- I can attach a photo
- At the end of my day, AI picks up the messages and compiles them into one nice daily journal entry (with the added benefit of fixing spelling mistakes, or voice recording flaws)
- Each daily post gets its own semantic meaning (embedding), which allows me to search for specific stuff easily.
- Images also get “indexed” by AI, and text information is extracted.
I have a few more planned features to improve it, but I also prioritize keeping it simple and fast. Getting everything out of my way enables the journalling habit to happen more easily.
Looking forward to getting feedback from potential users!
