About interstitial journaling

About interstitial journaling

Recently (yes, I'm sometimes often late to the party), I stumbled upon the concept of interstitial journaling, which is basically combining notes, to-do lists, and time tracking.

I came across it while visiting web spaces of several people on the Internet who log everything they do, measuring the time involved in each task, to get a global image of how they spend their days, often with the goal to improve their productivity. Some people might also use this approach simply to stay better organised (or substract some chaos), without necessarily chasing productivity.

I guess that, with all the modern tech-world injunctions pushing us to be more organised and productive — and maybe because we're often tempted to be in control — we tend to inform our lives (in the etymological sense): shaping, moulding, giving structure to the raw material of our days. While I understand why this habit can be interesting and even rewarding, I don't fully get it.

Can’t we just see our lives as an erratic continuum, not something that needs to be logged, sliced up, or turned into data? And maybe even find comfort in that? In the same spirit, do we really need a smartwatch or device to tell us how well we sleep, or how many steps we take each day? Is it truly necessary to measure everything, just to feel like we’re doing things “better”?

To me, being unorganised, jumping randomly from one task to another, with unproductive or leisurely moments in between, is what makes us genuinely human. It’s less about being productive, and more about making space for creativity (or anything else).

As a naturally imperfect and curious human being, I've tried some of these approaches, of course. But I always end up going back to my nebulously simple life.

"No one understands anyone. Everything is chance, interstices — yet somehow, everything fits together perfectly." — Fernando Pessoa