I have been thinking and working on my ideal journaling/daily reflecting setup for quite a while now. I really wanted to have it implemented in my Anytype space but as of right now, there are some obstacles preventing me from setting it up so basically I have put it on hold for when Anytype properly introduced some of the functionalities that have been missing. I will try my best to lay our my ideas and suggestion as simple and clear as possible while linking to external resources that inspired me.
So, journaling or having a daily reflect page can be quite simple as writing down some ideas that have gone through my head during the day and keeping track of my mood, which is totally fine by the way, or be as complex as capturing every aspect of my life that I need capturing. I donât think the first scenario needs much explaining but let me dive deeper into the second one.
My ideal daily reflect/journaling entry would include but not limited to ( As I go on, my needs keep changing, So I adapt these based on them):
- A block dedicated to offload my ideas, feelings, log, etc of the day.
- it can either be done through text, audio or video which Anytype supports all of them.
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I would like to have relations dedicated to track my energy levels, mood, feelings, etc which again can be achieved.
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I would like to have a section dedicated to showing my tasks and goals. Generally speaking I track my tasks and goals by assigning two relations (among others) to them: Due date and Target date. The former is for the ultimate deadline for that task/goal and the target date is for when I think can free my schedule to get it done. Again, these can be achieved since the introduction of âinline setsâ. I just create two inline sets and set their filters for that specific day and this way I have a clear overview of both tracking my task for the day in the morning and checking whether I could complete all of them by the end of the day.
So far so good. These are a couple screen shots form my current setups right now:
But from now on Iâm going to mention some of the shortcomings that I came across. You see I was watching and admiring Marie Poulinâs setup over at Notion and she had some serious advanced thing going on over there 
. I mean as she herself mentioned in the videos, itâs probably overkill for most of the people but nevertheless I think itâs better to have the functionalities and features to create an overkill setup rather than lacking those features. To be specific, I was inspired by these two videos: link1 and link2.
As you can see, she tracks a lot of stuff but I want to focus on the workout and supplement properties to be specific. You see, in notion one of the problems that people have is that their systems bugs down quite heavily as they add stuff to it and part of the reason behind this slowdown is that Notion users create databases and pages limitlessly without considering that they are creating a lot of duplicates. Since Notion doesnât have a graph view, this issue canât be seen visually and doesnât get brought up that often.
In anytype on the other hand, thereâs a genuine chance of avoiding this duplicate culture of just creating databases and pages regardless of the similarities. Let me give you an example. As I said at the beginning, I wan to track as much as possible with Anytype including my health and fitness. If I create a daily entry, like in her setup, I can dedicate a relation to workout, and link it to a specific workout object in my Anytype but here lies the problem. My ideal setup would let me:
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Track whatever I do throughout the day and that includes the fitness workouts that I planned for the day. I want to track which workouts I did for any specific day and the details of that workout, for example the no. of reps, sets, duration, etc.
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Also, I want to have an object/set for each of my workouts routines showing me on which days, I did what and again show me my progress in terms of no. of reps, sets, etc.
And after all these preliminary talks, letâs get to the problem. Take a look at this:
Here, I was forced to use a table in order to log my workout for the day. I canât do it with inline sets ( i will explain why not in a moment). But, as Iâve said I want to monitor which days for this week Iâve done this workout and what was the reps, etc for it. Again, I canât do it with sets and Iâm forced to use the simple tables again.
So, if I can use simple table to achieve this, what is the problem that I keep mentioning? Well, to put it simply, I have to create simple tables for each of these things that I want to track; So, I canât have an overview of all the things I do for the day. If we have multiple levels of relations, or âroll upâ and ârelationâ features of Notion, we can simply fix this.
Imagine, if we can link multiple relations together within a certain object. For instance, I create a workout relation which I can add the workouts that Iâve done for each day. But, I can choose to add/link other relations to the âwork outâ relations. You can think of this as a multi-dimension relations. I can assign ârepsâ, âsetsâ, etc. relations (which on their own are independent relations and they exist for each of the âwork outâ objects) to the âworkoutâ relation and have all the information I need at a glance and then I can use inline sets and filters to see specific information for the day.
This way if we consider the âpush-upâ object, which is a âwork outâ btw, once more we can see that we can add the multidimensional relation to each of the âsetâ,ârepâ,etc this time in the form of âdateâ which again we can set the filter so that we can see all the progress for each workout and for the whole workout set as a whole.
This has become a post by itself , I apologize for that. But for the last part, if we had formulas like Notion or Coda, Then we could write down formulas for doing certain things with all of these trackings and information. For instance, the average energy of a week, or the general mood for a month, etc.
One last thing:
The multi-dimensional relations that I described earlier has tremendous potential because usually the relations we create are not totally independent in our mind. I come back to my Oscars example once again because itâs sensible. If I have a relation for a specific actor called âawardsâ, then I can add âbest actorâ object to it. But if I have multi-dimensional relations, I can further add âYearâ and âmovieâ associated with that award for him too. This goes both ways for the award too. I, now can specify the people who have won âbest actorsâ by the year, their role and the movie. As of right now, I do this by simple tables:
Hello Anytype Community! 
What does your Sacred-Space look like? Share videos or screenshots of your regular journaling practice or similar activities. Maybe we can inspire each other with our unique approaches.
What tools or techniques do you use? Whether itâs apps, devices, music, or good old pen and paper, weâd love to know!
Tell us about your journaling pains. Are there any obstacles holding you back from fully enjoying the process with Anytype or similar software?
Whatever comes to mind, all feedback is welcome! Link your (or other members) feature requests with any suggestions as to how we might enhance the journaling experience.
