The lightweight version has only 3 sections:
1. The content pages.
2. The categories pages (build as the index of the journal).
3. The external references pages.
This is what looks like a typical page of my pocket personal journal. It's literally a repository of my ideas, my thoughts, quotes and book excerpts. There are only 5 features that I implemented in these content pages:
1. The page number.
2. A possible reference to an internal ( ->[x;y] ) resource.
3. A possible reference to an external ( [x;y]-> ) resource (see the section bellow for more information about this feature).
4. A date (in this case I used the date of the original Moleskine pocket diary; but you can explicitly write it near your entries).
5. Possibly Meta Data words at the top corner of your pages.
The categories page(s) is essential. The idea and his functioning is the same as in the analog blog system. You can see it as a dynamic index. You can create your categories when you start your personal journal; you can also create them when you need it. When you'll put a new entry in you journal that have the same semantic meaning as a category, then you'll only have to add his page number at the end of the category's line.
These categories pages will be in the first pages of your journal. Remember, this is a sort of index or table of content. When you'll need to find something, or check what you already thought about something, chec'k this section to quickly find what you want. It has the same utility as the Synopsis of Categories of the Roget's International Thesaurus. You can easily use it as a source of inspiration; a place where ideas emerge.
[Category's name]
· This is the name of a category. Use words with clear and rich semantic meaning to name your categories.
[x - y - z]
· This is the pages of your journal where you can find entries with the same semantic meaning.
I put the external references pages at the beginning of my journal (some pages after my categories pages). You can also put it at the end pages without any problems. This is the place where you'll put the external resources references referred by your journal's entries. In my case, it's usually a reference to a book where I wrote an excerpt of it in my journal. It could also be an internet URL, an address, a phone number, etc. The purpose of this section is to put references to resources that you don't want to rewrite every time you refer to them in your journal.
[x : y]
· This is the reference's identifier. X is the number, the ID, of the external resource's reference. Y is the page where the external reference is viewable. Then if you check the page content excerpt above you’ll see: [3;6]-> . When I read this in one of my content pages, I know that if I'm checking at the page 6 of my journal, I'll find the external reference #3 that refer to a resource (in this case it's a book called "Page after Page" that refers this journal's entry).
I used this lightweight version of the analog blog system since some months and I'm really satisfied by it. It's simple (much more than the original version) and effective (I use it often to find ideas to write about on this blog).
The whole aim of this is system to save time while using my journal as a personal source of knowledge. The axiom is that if I can't find the information I want; it's that I don't have the information. The personal journal concept is a way to backup and/or create the knowledge, the information; and this classification system is the way to find this knowledge, this information. The union of the two concepts is the foundation of my axiom.