A Vision for a Learning Journal

Amazingly, if you Google for “digital learning journal” you won’t find a consumer facing application or anything really. 

I’m not sure where I first learned about keeping a “learning journal.” It feels like something school taught me to do. Write down what I’m learning. Review it occasionally.

My sense is most people are using a note taking application as their learning journal. I expect most are unorganized and scattered. I know mine are! 

There doesn’t seem to be a purpose built learning journal for the knowledge worker. I want something to help me keep track of my day to day learnings and use the best of learning science to reinforce those learnings on me. This is how I want to get better at my job. 

A Vision for a Learning Journal 

I have a very specific vision in mind for a digital learning journal could look like. Here are my dream features: 

Table Stakes Note Taking 

Your basic note taking features that have existed since Evernote. I want an ability to create notes, delete notes, edit notes. 

I want an auto tagging feature. Most note taking has tagging built in, but with LLMs this should be a trivial task to automate. 

Distributed Practice 

I want the notes I take to come back to me. We have a forgetting curve. If I learn something, write it down in my learning journal, but never see it again, then I’m going to forget it. 

Spaced repetition is a form of distributed practice and is how we combat the forgetting curve. 

I have this in a very rudimentary way with my current learning journal DayOne. Every day I see the entries from the previous year on the same calendar day. I LOVE this feature. It helps me see the things I was learning a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, etc. and reinforces them. 

My vision is to take this idea and make it more robust. Show me things I’ve learned recently. Quiz me on them (see below). Help me remember the things I care about the most. 

Integrated AI Learning Tutor 

This the real game changer feature that couldn’t have been invented until the advent of LLMs. I want an integrated AI tutor that helps me learn. 

• Select text in my notes, right click and ask my tutor to expound, correct, or quiz me on the information. 

• Take everything about a topic and organize my notes into a study guide. 

• Create assessments and quizzes around a topic to help me really zero in on my mastery. 

• Track my mastery on different subjects based on my distributed practice results. 

This is the first inning of a vision I want to build over the next few years. Edtech tools are built for students. I want to build something for the knowledge worker. 

I’d love to hear your ideas!