your life, in the little things.

what is life logging?

life logging is keeping a record of your everyday life. in footnotes, you choose the moments to capture in words, photos, video and voice. a few ordinary details can tell you more about a day than a long summary.

this is deliberate capture. footnotes does not automatically track every activity or turn your day into a location history. you decide what becomes part of your life log.

scroll through your own timeline.

a notebook brings your notes together in time. scroll back to a morning, a trip or a familiar afternoon, and find the photographs beside the words and recordings that went with them.

a photograph remembers one part of a moment. a video up to 8 seconds keeps a little of it moving. a voice memo keeps how it sounded. a sentence keeps the thought you had while you were there. add a song to keep what you were listening to and the mood that went with it.

a daily log that leaves room for the day.

keep a photo from your walk, a voice note after a conversation, or a few words before bed. come back to a note when there is more to add. you do not have to turn each small thing into a separate story.

make notebooks for the parts of your life you want to return to: days at home, places you visit, a garden, a year of being somewhere new.

some timelines are better together.

share a notebook with friends or family and keep a timeline of the things you experience together. collect everyone's view of a trip, or let the ordinary details of life travel between people who live far apart.

a notebook for each part of you.

if you keep a finsta or separate Instagram accounts for your hobbies, use different notebooks for those little worlds instead. a cooking diary, your garden, outfits you liked: keep each as its own timeline, for yourself or shared with close friends.

capture first. find it later.

if you have adhd, or just do not enjoy filing notes, begin with one notebook. dates and times put your captures in order. scroll back through the timeline, or search within that notebook for words from your writing. you can make more notebooks whenever a separate space would help.