E-mail Journal

In a hurry? Who isn't? Create an e-mail journal. If you regularly communicate with friends and family through e-mail, those messages contain a hefty portion of information, thoughts and feelings that often go into a conventional journal.

Save all your e-mails as drafts before you send them along to loved ones through cyberspace. Once a week or once a month, print off your e-mails, three-hole punch them and place them in a binder. At the end of the year, you'll have a hardcopy journal of the places you visited, the people you've met, goals conquered, discoveries made and the heartbreaks and happiness that have accompanied you along the way.

Rather not deal with all the paper and storage? Cut-and-paste those e-mails into a Word file and keep them in a special sub-folder on your computer or portable disc drive. Again, you can group the pieces by week, by month, or just thread the whole thing together in one continuous document.

You can do the same thing with the e-mail responses you receive from others. Remember when people packed away stacks of letters in a cedar chest? This is a modern turn on a similar idea. ◦

E-mail Journal