Our 2024 Vision: AI-Enhanced Journaling and Reflection
Journaling gives me clarity.
It brings perspective to my past, grounds me in the present, and helps guide my future.
Until recently, my 20+ years of journaling has been a self-directed, one-way conversation.
That changed a bit when we launched our Guided Journaling Library, which offers dozens of guided reflection practices from coaches, therapists, and personal-growth experts.
And it’s about to change even more with some of the new AI-powered features we’re building into Reflection.app.
By the end of the year, you will be able to ask your journal questions like:
- “Are there any specific things that tend to put me in a bad mood?”
- “Can you give me a summary of my year in 2023?”
- “What are some of my personal core values?”
- “What were a few of the most impactful books I read in the last 5 years?”
Eventually, you will have the option to pull in location, weather, moon phase, and health data, to be able to analyze a range of data inputs, beyond what you wrote about. To help you find patterns that would otherwise be impossible to track to help answer a question like:
- “What patterns contribute to my migraines (or anxiety, insomnia, energy levels, motivation)?”
There are many tools looking to help people on their wellness journey, but they mostly track what is happening in this moment, and often outside the body. They lack historical context, specifically about what was happening inside our minds at that time.
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” - Brené Brown
Integrating AI Into Your Journaling Experience
These new features pick up where we left off with Depth (our early AI experiment), bringing that experience directly into the app and beyond a single entry to your entire journal. We have already begun experimenting with these features internally, and we will be rolling them out in three phases:
Phase 1. Journaling Companion. This early implementation will be on the ‘entry’ level, ie. get questions to go deeper, get reactions on what you’ve written, chat about the entry to understand your biases, etc. People on our waitlist will start getting invites within the next couple of weeks! (Join the waitlist.)
Phase 2. Deep Insights. The second step will be engaging on the journal level, and this is where things get really exciting, ie. asking semantic questions about experiences that happened many years ago, getting to core values, behavior patterns, etc. This is where we’ll be able to provide a ‘window into the soul’ experience.
Phase 3. Historical Context. After both of those are live, we plan to build out support for importing from other apps, documents, and sources. Reflection.app has only been around for a couple of years, and we hope to provide these powerful introspection tools to people who have been journaling or note-taking on different platforms.
We have a fourth stage too, but we are not quite ready to share. For now, I’ll say - we are curious about what the Reflection.app experience could look like beyond the screen. ;-)
While we are excited, we are also taking our time to ensure a safe, secure, and meaningful experience.
As with all our efforts at Reflection.app, privacy is paramount.
All data is encrypted in transit and in storage, and only the authenticated user has access to their data. Any data sent to OpenAI or another LLM as part of the Depth experience will never be used for training purposes. Private, account-level, details will not be passed through with entry data. And importantly the user will always be in control - enabling Depth features will be optional, requiring an opt-in from our existing users. The AI integration can be managed both on the app level - but also on the entry level. Our users always own their data, and at any time can export their entries.
This exciting step both feels massive — and yet, a natural extension of our product.
How & Why We Got Here: A deeper look within.
Journaling allows me to put much of what I am carrying - mentally and emotionally - down for a few moments.
In these moments, the ‘putting-down’ of thoughts and feelings is cathartic — like a deep and meaningful exhale. Beyond that, it allows me to then take stock of what I am carrying in my mind — both consciously and unconsciously.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
Once I realize what I am working with I can begin to go deeper:
- Why was that on my mind?
- How does it make me feel?
- What do I want to do with these feelings?
- What actions do I want to take?
Sometimes that means exploring a challenging experience, or in lighter moments, feeling grateful for or proud of something that happened. The self-awareness and perspective I have gained from these explorations over the years changed the trajectory of my life. It’s guided me through some of my hardest times, and helped ground me with gratitude in the best of times. It’s also why I’m so deeply passionate about what we are building at Reflection.app.
“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one. Self-love sets off a ripple effect of love that changes the world.” - Marianne Williamson
With the launch of our Guided Journaling Library, I was able to tap into questions that I otherwise would not have thought to ask myself - opening me to new perspectives and reflection practices. My practice grew from being solely self-directed, to benefiting from the questions of others.
But still, the experience remained one-way.
Our First Experiment With Generative AI: Depth (Alpha)
In the winter of 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT and kickstarted a global curiosity and adoption of generative AI tools in just about every industry.
In the most basic terms, ChatGPT is a language model designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. It has all sorts of applications (both good and bad), but one thing is clear - it excels at absorbing large amounts of text and serving back an output based on that.
A few months after OpenAI opened up their API, our developer Bryan built an OpenAI-powered site that provides customized journal prompts based on a few words of input. We called it Depth. Simply write about how you feel and Depth would offer you three personalized journal questions to help you gain self-awareness in a whole new way. The landing page is still live, you can try it here.
Depth enabled us to offer journal prompts that are tailored to each person, and how they were feeling at that very moment. While simple in implementation, its relevancy made it a valuable and meaningful experience. We knew we wanted to build Depth directly into the app, but we also saw the potential to do so much more.
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” - Lao Tzu
Beyond getting questions to help facilitate deeper reflection, we were excited to be able to ask questions from our journal — opening up a two-way conversation with your past.
When we first started exploring ways to integrate AI across our app, infrastructure was limited, the costs were high, and the contextual accuracy degraded within larger inputs. But a lot has changed in the past year, bringing the things we dreamed about within reach.
A Brief Aside: The Role of Technology in Living More Full and Meaningful Lives
I’ve long questioned the role that technology plays in our desire to live more meaningful lives.
This is perhaps an unpopular belief - especially for the founder of a tech platform sharing their excitement of including new AI features - but I strongly believe that technology will not save us from our most human challenges. Artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality — these might be great things for the advancement of civilization but in many cases, they separate us from what it means to be human.
However, I do believe that technology can provide the tools to make communication - with ourselves and others - faster, clearer and more accurate.
I believe that thorough, nuanced, and honest communication is the foundation for understanding. And that understanding is the rich soil from which the seeds of love can grow.
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear. When you are truly present and loving yourself, that presence and love extend beyond your physical being, touching everything and everyone around you.” - Ram Dass
How To Start Your AI-Powered Journaling Journey
If you are interested in experiencing Depth within Reflection.app, you can sign up for the waitlist here.
If you have any questions drop a comment or a DM. I’d love to hear from you :-)
Special Thanks
Thanks Bryan and Isaac - two of the most brilliant, humble and hardworking people I have had the pleasure of working with. Thanks for making these dreams a reality.
Thanks to Kim and Massiel for keeping things rolling along smoothly for our users and team.
Thanks to my brother and co-founder, Mike - for always being my earliest strongest supporter. Along with our many early mentors, advisors and investors who share our passion for making tools that help people flourish.
Thanks to the thousands already using Reflection.app and sharing their feedback and experience and helping us grow.
Further Reading
Here are some thinkers and tinkerers at the forefront of the conversation.
ChatGPT for Radical Self Betterment by Dr. Gena Gorlin and Dan Shipper. Along with ChatGPT Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used by Dan Shipper. And generally, everything on AI by the team at Every.
Real Time conversations with my Inner Child by Michelle Huang - An early exploration of a two-way conversation with past journal entries using AI. Original Tweet Thread and the subsequent Business Insider Article.
The A.I. Dilemma (Video) a harrowing and thoughtful video about the potential dangers of AI by Tristan Harris at the Center for Human Technology. Not directly related to what we are building here, but I think any conversation about AI that doesn't consider the implications discussed in this video is incomplete.
Journaling gives me clarity.
It brings perspective to my past, grounds me in the present, and helps guide my future.
Until recently, my 20+ years of journaling has been a self-directed, one-way conversation.
That changed a bit when we launched our Guided Journaling Library, which offers dozens of guided reflection practices from coaches, therapists, and personal-growth experts.
And it’s about to change even more with some of the new AI-powered features we’re building into Reflection.app.
By the end of the year, you will be able to ask your journal questions like:
- “Are there any specific things that tend to put me in a bad mood?”
- “Can you give me a summary of my year in 2023?”
- “What are some of my personal core values?”
- “What were a few of the most impactful books I read in the last 5 years?”
Eventually, you will have the option to pull in location, weather, moon phase, and health data, to be able to analyze a range of data inputs, beyond what you wrote about. To help you find patterns that would otherwise be impossible to track to help answer a question like:
- “What patterns contribute to my migraines (or anxiety, insomnia, energy levels, motivation)?”
There are many tools looking to help people on their wellness journey, but they mostly track what is happening in this moment, and often outside the body. They lack historical context, specifically about what was happening inside our minds at that time.
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” - Brené Brown
Integrating AI Into Your Journaling Experience
These new features pick up where we left off with Depth (our early AI experiment), bringing that experience directly into the app and beyond a single entry to your entire journal. We have already begun experimenting with these features internally, and we will be rolling them out in three phases:
Phase 1. Journaling Companion. This early implementation will be on the ‘entry’ level, ie. get questions to go deeper, get reactions on what you’ve written, chat about the entry to understand your biases, etc. People on our waitlist will start getting invites within the next couple of weeks! (Join the waitlist.)
Phase 2. Deep Insights. The second step will be engaging on the journal level, and this is where things get really exciting, ie. asking semantic questions about experiences that happened many years ago, getting to core values, behavior patterns, etc. This is where we’ll be able to provide a ‘window into the soul’ experience.
Phase 3. Historical Context. After both of those are live, we plan to build out support for importing from other apps, documents, and sources. Reflection.app has only been around for a couple of years, and we hope to provide these powerful introspection tools to people who have been journaling or note-taking on different platforms.
We have a fourth stage too, but we are not quite ready to share. For now, I’ll say - we are curious about what the Reflection.app experience could look like beyond the screen. ;-)
While we are excited, we are also taking our time to ensure a safe, secure, and meaningful experience.
As with all our efforts at Reflection.app, privacy is paramount.
All data is encrypted in transit and in storage, and only the authenticated user has access to their data. Any data sent to OpenAI or another LLM as part of the Depth experience will never be used for training purposes. Private, account-level, details will not be passed through with entry data. And importantly the user will always be in control - enabling Depth features will be optional, requiring an opt-in from our existing users. The AI integration can be managed both on the app level - but also on the entry level. Our users always own their data, and at any time can export their entries.
This exciting step both feels massive — and yet, a natural extension of our product.
How & Why We Got Here: A deeper look within.
Journaling allows me to put much of what I am carrying - mentally and emotionally - down for a few moments.
In these moments, the ‘putting-down’ of thoughts and feelings is cathartic — like a deep and meaningful exhale. Beyond that, it allows me to then take stock of what I am carrying in my mind — both consciously and unconsciously.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
Once I realize what I am working with I can begin to go deeper:
- Why was that on my mind?
- How does it make me feel?
- What do I want to do with these feelings?
- What actions do I want to take?
Sometimes that means exploring a challenging experience, or in lighter moments, feeling grateful for or proud of something that happened. The self-awareness and perspective I have gained from these explorations over the years changed the trajectory of my life. It’s guided me through some of my hardest times, and helped ground me with gratitude in the best of times. It’s also why I’m so deeply passionate about what we are building at Reflection.app.
“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one. Self-love sets off a ripple effect of love that changes the world.” - Marianne Williamson
With the launch of our Guided Journaling Library, I was able to tap into questions that I otherwise would not have thought to ask myself - opening me to new perspectives and reflection practices. My practice grew from being solely self-directed, to benefiting from the questions of others.
But still, the experience remained one-way.
Our First Experiment With Generative AI: Depth (Alpha)
In the winter of 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT and kickstarted a global curiosity and adoption of generative AI tools in just about every industry.
In the most basic terms, ChatGPT is a language model designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. It has all sorts of applications (both good and bad), but one thing is clear - it excels at absorbing large amounts of text and serving back an output based on that.
A few months after OpenAI opened up their API, our developer Bryan built an OpenAI-powered site that provides customized journal prompts based on a few words of input. We called it Depth. Simply write about how you feel and Depth would offer you three personalized journal questions to help you gain self-awareness in a whole new way. The landing page is still live, you can try it here.
Depth enabled us to offer journal prompts that are tailored to each person, and how they were feeling at that very moment. While simple in implementation, its relevancy made it a valuable and meaningful experience. We knew we wanted to build Depth directly into the app, but we also saw the potential to do so much more.
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” - Lao Tzu
Beyond getting questions to help facilitate deeper reflection, we were excited to be able to ask questions from our journal — opening up a two-way conversation with your past.
When we first started exploring ways to integrate AI across our app, infrastructure was limited, the costs were high, and the contextual accuracy degraded within larger inputs. But a lot has changed in the past year, bringing the things we dreamed about within reach.
A Brief Aside: The Role of Technology in Living More Full and Meaningful Lives
I’ve long questioned the role that technology plays in our desire to live more meaningful lives.
This is perhaps an unpopular belief - especially for the founder of a tech platform sharing their excitement of including new AI features - but I strongly believe that technology will not save us from our most human challenges. Artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality — these might be great things for the advancement of civilization but in many cases, they separate us from what it means to be human.
However, I do believe that technology can provide the tools to make communication - with ourselves and others - faster, clearer and more accurate.
I believe that thorough, nuanced, and honest communication is the foundation for understanding. And that understanding is the rich soil from which the seeds of love can grow.
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear. When you are truly present and loving yourself, that presence and love extend beyond your physical being, touching everything and everyone around you.” - Ram Dass
How To Start Your AI-Powered Journaling Journey
If you are interested in experiencing Depth within Reflection.app, you can sign up for the waitlist here.
If you have any questions drop a comment or a DM. I’d love to hear from you :-)
Special Thanks
Thanks Bryan and Isaac - two of the most brilliant, humble and hardworking people I have had the pleasure of working with. Thanks for making these dreams a reality.
Thanks to Kim and Massiel for keeping things rolling along smoothly for our users and team.
Thanks to my brother and co-founder, Mike - for always being my earliest strongest supporter. Along with our many early mentors, advisors and investors who share our passion for making tools that help people flourish.
Thanks to the thousands already using Reflection.app and sharing their feedback and experience and helping us grow.
Further Reading
Here are some thinkers and tinkerers at the forefront of the conversation.
ChatGPT for Radical Self Betterment by Dr. Gena Gorlin and Dan Shipper. Along with ChatGPT Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used by Dan Shipper. And generally, everything on AI by the team at Every.
Real Time conversations with my Inner Child by Michelle Huang - An early exploration of a two-way conversation with past journal entries using AI. Original Tweet Thread and the subsequent Business Insider Article.
The A.I. Dilemma (Video) a harrowing and thoughtful video about the potential dangers of AI by Tristan Harris at the Center for Human Technology. Not directly related to what we are building here, but I think any conversation about AI that doesn't consider the implications discussed in this video is incomplete.
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