Oct 8, 2025

On Resonance Journaling

Tool to curate your life.

"Curate your life!"

That's what Resonance Journaling means to me: to curate my life, to see what I love and what I hate, to rediscover myself.

Basically, it's a place (usually a notebook) where you log everything that you resonate with. It maybe book quotes, conversations, film dialogue, pictures, life experiences, self-made aphorisms and so on. It doesn't matter how small, or how big, you log it down.

And at the end of every month, you come back and read your entries. You'll find out more about your tastes, your dislikes, and find familiar patterns throughout. You'll know what kind of person you are, what makes you, you.

Noticing what you resonate with makes you more vigilant towards the new stuff that you might resonate with. So instead of taking movie recommendations from TMDB or trakt or that friend, you'll end up stumbling over something yourself that you'll know you'll like.

Resonance acts as a bridge between discovering new ideas, thoughts, "stuff" and revisiting your favorites. Resonance journaling is very similar to writing a Codex Vitae, except that you write pretty much everything here. You can also use it as a grounding or mindfulness practice. I use it to maintain a balance between my work-y, "disciplined" self and the softer, more creative self.

The first time I heard about rtesonance journaling was on this episode of The Mug of Insights podcast by one of my favorite, and inspirational creators, Robin Waldun. And I was very intrigued by the idea. Coincidentally, I had just realised that I've got to be more grounded, stable and happier. So I thought I'd give resonance journaling a try.

I used to be an avid commonplace book fan, with a collection of about 7-8 commonplace books from over 2 years. But recently, I rarely touched my notebook. Mostly because the way I capture ideas have changed (Anki, blogs/YT, e-reader annotations for the win!) and I don't really want to invest on a sunk-cost.

So I turned my commonplace book into a resonance journal. The same leather cover, the same physical entity, but different vibes. Now I look at it as if I am writing my own future.

Let's see where that goes, how much mileage I get from this. I am pretty excited to find out what my taste buds look like.

Also Robin's been making more content on using resonance as a means to be more attuned to life and as a tool to become a better reader. So check him out!

Good luck exploring, nerds!