Most of my thinking doesn’t start at a keyboard. It starts while I’m driving, walking, or stepping away from a meeting—talking things through out loud, one imperfect sentence at a time. Over the years, I’ve learned that if I don’t capture those moments right then, they disappear. This post is a walkthrough of the voice journaling process I use today—from recording quick audio notes on my phone to turning them into connected, searchable thoughts in Obsidian, with a bit of help from automation and AI along the way.
Long story short, here’s my current voice journaling process.
Step 1: I voice out my thoughts and record them using the Voice Record Pro app on my iPhone.
I often do that multiple times during the day: driving, walking, in between meetings, taking a quick break…
Step 2: I “Save to Google Drive” either as soon as I get to my computer, or at least later in the day…
Step 3: I use my Process Journal workflow in Alfred on my Mac when I’m ready to work on my transcripts…
At this point, I may proceed with Step 4, Step 5, or both.
Step 4: I open the transcript in Obsidian and use its Local Graph tool to view additional connections to my daily note.
Step 5: I open the transcript in either Cursor or Windsurf and use AI to analyze, summarize, extract content, or perform other tasks as needed.
How this all works
This is how this all works as of this writing. I continually evolve my system, so I’ll provide an update if there are any essential changes.
When I “Save to Google Drive” a file from Voice Record Pro, it goes to a “Voice Record Pro” folder. I added that folder to the “Offline files” in the Google Drive app on my Mac.
I have set that folder on my local file system as a “Watched Folder” in MacWhisper…
…so it automatically transcribes into a Markdown file.
The original .m4a audio file and its .md file stay in the Voice Record Pro folder…
…until I run my Process Journal Alfred workflow:
That workflow…
- cleans up the markdown, removing timestamps that I don’t need, adding the date to the top of the file as a link to my daily note (e.g., 2025-12-15),
- moves the files to a “voice journal processed” folder
- copies the .md file to my Obsidian Vault (to the “_inbox/voice journal” folder)
I have a “Voice Journaling.code-workspace” file, which I open in Cursor or Windsurf. That workspace includes the “Voice Record Pro” folder in Google Drive and the “voice journal” folder in the Obsidian Vault. I have other “code-workspace” files that include my “voice journal” folder as the source to specific projects where I leverage that content.
