While Discord is an excellent tool for communicating with students and making friends to prevent loneliness, it can also be used as a personal journal. Have you ever sent yourself a text or emailed yourself a photo? I am in the habit of sending myself a DM (direct message) when I need to remember an important task. And when I want to move a photo from my phone to my laptop, I will attach it to a message and email it to myself. It’s quicker than finding a cord to charge and sync my devices.
Discord works similarly, because you can easily set up a private server and organize it any way you like. Here are five quick steps to start your own Discord research notebook or diary.
Set up a server in 15 seconds
Log in to your Discord account.
Click on the green Plus button in the left sidebar.
Click on Create My Own.
Click on For me and my friends.
Click on Create.
How to set up a private Discord server.
That’s the quickest way to set up your own server. You can start writing right away, or you can take some time to customize it a bit. You might want to change the server name, or upload a photo for your icon. It’s all up to you!
Junk drawer or separate channels?
One thing I did to organize my private Discord research journal was add some new text channels. If you are the kind of person who likes to have everything in one place, you might not need multiple channels. You could put all of your notes, memes, and reminders into the default general channel. It might end up like a junk drawer, but you can use the search bar to find something specific.
My Discord research journal
I prefer to sort my notes a little bit, so I created a channel called research-notes and one called funny-stuff because those are the most important (and fun) categories for me. You could use different channels for each academic subject, plus a channel to collect news and another for recipes, or anything else that works for you.
One feature that makes Discord useful for storing links is the preview that shows up in the window along with the url. It allows the channel to function as a visual bookmark list, instead of just a list of text links.
Discord on every device
Since Discord works on mobile devices, desktops, and in browsers, it is extremely convenient. I have the desktop version installed on my Windows and MacOS machines, and the mobile app on my phone. There are versions for Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, and Mac.
Because I’m a tech junkie and use Discord for research, work, school, and to chat with my family and friends, I am always logged in. This makes it very easy to send myself a note anytime, and retrieve it on any of my devices. It saves time having my server available on any device, and I don’t need as many sticky note reminders on my monitor.