An interstitial journaling app for a more mindful workday

What is interstitial journaling?

In her Ness Labs explanation of interstitial journaling, Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes a practice created by Tony Stubblebine: brief, timed notes between activities that combine observations, intended actions and a record of the day.

The entries can hold progress, a distraction, an idea or how you feel. A planned break offers a chance to look back and choose what comes next; noticing an unplanned detour offers another chance to pause. The practice needs no particular software.

What to keep in the log

Your next action: use plain text such as “Email the revised estimate to Jo.” When you return to the entry, add what happened or save a follow-up. For deadlines that need an alert, put them in your task or calendar app too; a memoir entry does not schedule that action.

Ideas and reading for later: paste an article URL into an entry with a reason to revisit it, or write down a question without following it immediately. A consistent phrase such as “Read later” gives you something to search for when you have time.

Your state of mind: add a mood to an entry and name the situation behind it. “Worried about presenting the estimate. I need to check the assumptions first.” gives your later self more context than the emoji alone.

Time and context: memoir keeps the entry timestamps alongside your writing. Read them together to reconstruct your day. The interval between two notes can include unrecorded activity, so it is not a measurement of uninterrupted work.

Follow one piece of work through the interruptions

The same task runs through this example. The notes preserve a stopping point, catch a detour and make returning to the work concrete. Use your own words; you do not need to fill in a form.

Make the practice fit the way you capture

When typing is inconvenient, save a voice note about the decision you just made, or record it from your Apple Watch. A spoken handover to yourself can belong in the same journal as your written notes.

If the context is visual, attach a photo of your own whiteboard or add a sketch to the entry. Include the project name in your writing so you have a familiar word to search for later. The photo guide and sketch guide explain the controls.

Use the record when you return

Before reopening a piece of work, read its last entry. Search for “proposal” or another project word to recover the stopping point, saved reading and decisions you recorded. This is where the log becomes useful beyond the moment of writing it.

At the end of the day, leave a closing entry with any unfinished action you want to carry forward. Later, the journal preserves your own account of the workday alongside its moods. Reflection can show recorded mood trends; it does not grade your productivity or automatically turn these notes into a project report.

Try one transition first

At your next break, open memoir and write a short handover to yourself. “The draft needs a clearer opening. I will try the customer example next.” Save it, then see whether that note helps when you return.

Read the Ness Labs article for its explanation and Roam Research walkthrough. The instructions on this page adapt the practice to memoir; Roam commands and linked task lists are not memoir features.

You can also try the interstitial journaling tool in your browser. Copy any writing you want to keep into memoir; the tool does not sync with the app.

Keep a reusable structure: time, what I finished or noticed, where I stopped and what comes next. The template directory gives a completed example; the browser log adds a timestamp when you submit each note. Neither workflow monitors your tasks automatically.