I have been using plain old email as my first point of contact for all of my journalling, todo and personal information store. Each new topic gets a new email with a date in the subject line to remind me when it started or how overdue something is. Updates become replies on previous emails to myself. When a thread gets too wieldy, I review it and re-format or delete or promote it to git. I take time to analyze, introspect, cross reference and index stuff in my personal git wiki.

They key to journalling for me has been 1) consistency and 2) reviewing what was written. The oh-so-obvious secret to consistency is to reduce friction between the thought ('I should write this') and the act. I got rid of my friction by using a separate email account and a dedicated email app with just this account configured on it. And keeping the inbox small is a good incentive to keep reviewing what I write. I take my git repo seriously. I keep reviewing it anytime I get a chance or when I need to refresh my thoughts and memories.

This simple method has worked wonderfully well for more than a year.