How to Interstitial Journal in One Minute
Beat Distraction, Keep a Work Log, and Feed Your Future AI Minion
Why Interstitial Journal
Context switching between tasks makes it hard to remember what we were working on. Productivity tanks, but we can’t all shut ourselves away in the corner office.
Interstitial journaling is a 15-second logging habit to manage this. It's a tool, not a diary.
It's a practical log to help you come back to what you were doing, keep track of your days, and (optionally) feed into AI later on.
This is the foundation of my productivity system.
It can help get you out of a rut, and is super easy to try.
What to do: The Basic Unit - A Single Log
Do this every time you switch activities.
Pause: Whenever you feel bored and want to open your phone to scroll. Whenever you have to go off, When you are starting a new project or just fixed a problem.
Note: Jot down what you are doing, and how you are feeling. Document your success, jot down how you fixed this problem (it may come up again).
Plans: Write down what you are about to do next. (Optional) You can format this as a TODO.
Tips: Workflow Powerups!
Use a snippet-expander (I use Alfred) to make the timestamp creation super fast. For me (tt,,) expands into a HH:MM timestamp.
Do this in your Daily Page in Obsidian / Logseq. So your daily page becomes a single launch point for you to easily create without thinking of organization, and you can come back to find things.
Have special queries for tags that stretch across pages (In Obsidian, you can use dataview rollups or tags) e.g. #FleetingNotes for a casual zettelkasten system.
Do an AI-assisted weekly review. Take the daily pages for a week, drag them all into Google AI Studio (Free) and give it this prompt.
## journal-weekly-review
I have given you my journal entries. Help me do a weekly review.
1. Summarize what I've been doing in the past week in two categories "Life" and "Work".
2. Extract out ideas, insights, favourite resources, wins and challenges into separate sections.
3. Give me a response from the perspective of a life coach.
## Format
Use sections and nested bullet list in markdown formatting, with bold titles. If adding emoji, preferentially set it at the start of the line. Use emoji in section headings. Use emoji as visual signposts. Keep the section heading unbolded. Use a more neutral informal conversational writing tone. Aim to be more direct and plainspoken. Avoid analogies, avoid metaphors and avoid figurative language. Vocabulary-wise use common, accessible language. Avoid jargon or overly academic terms. Avoid shortening to acronyms unless I use the acronym. Aim to be more succinct, if a sentence does not provide value, cut it.
Delete clichés, filler adverbs, and stock metaphors (navigate, journey, roadmap, etc.).So, why does this one-minute habit actually work?
It's a "save point" for your workday. Context switching muddles us up. This little log entry properly closes the old mental tab, freeing up headspace so you can actually focus on what's next. Because after some time, you know that you can let go of the previous task and depend on this to remember for you. You can look at your last entry and know exactly where you left off and what you were thinking. You can jump right back in without that "Wait, what was I doing?" feeling.
It makes your day feel less like a blur. You know that feeling when you get to 5 PM and have no idea where the day went? It's because your brain smooths over all the little moments. This log creates small, concrete memories, making your day more tangible so you actually remember what you did.
You're building your own personal library of experiences. Every entry is a piece of data about your work and your life. Later on, you can feed this into an AI to get summaries of your week. For those who care about privacy, you can use a local-only note system. The value of collecting your ideas, and memories + putting things into your own words helps you understand better.