Ask HN: Do you keep work logs, and if so, how do you use them? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you keep work logs, and if so, how do you use them?

42 pointsarlindohall28 comments

It comes up every so often on HN "how to keep a journal" or "use this Vim alias to keep work notes". I'm curious, for those who keep a work log, do you review your notes? Or do you use them to optimize your working habits? And if so, how do you do this?

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I do loosely keep a log. I use a sublime plugin called plain notes (or simple notes? I don't know).

I used to think it's a great idea to log everything, but now I've resorted to trying to only add to the logs whenever I think I can benefit from the knowledge later.

It has definitely been very useful, I now have tons of notes on useful regexes I can use to search for very specific code patterns, tons of details about sql-injection preventions, optimizations, language features, etc...

I love the idea of working on a base of knowledge that gets sturdier and more reliable as more time goes on. It is a materialized kind of growth.

Oh cool, I use Sublime also. I actually made a slightly customized fork of this to help out: https://github.com/unqueued/sublime-notelink

Most people would probably want the more powerful extension[1] which also has wiki link navigation, but it also has some incompatibilities with my setup.

I use a wiki-ish repo. A Journal.md that is my primary work log, but I also make little subpages when I want to expand into something specific or reference something previous.

So, I might do [[2018-10-11_issue_cron-aws-replication-issue]]. If the issue is more complicated, I would just roll it into a more general [[issue_cron-aws-replication-issue]]. I usually don't need to do this, and I try to not let it grow to be too complicated. But having it be somewhat structured has been really helpful. The links can act as tags, and I occasionally use symlinks as redirects. My Git.md page has lots of things I've learned at this job in it.

I keep it synced with my private git repo[2], where the Markdown wiki syntax works seamlessly with the Gollum wiki[3]. This also works if you want to access your wiki hosted on a private github repo.

[1]: https://github.com/SublimeText-Markdown/MarkdownEditing

[2]: https://gitea.io/en-us/

[3]: https://github.com/gollum/gollum

I haven't needed my notes that often but on occasion I do and that's usually when I'm glad I took the time to keep a engineering journal.

I accomplish this with a jupyter-notebook inside a git version controlled repository. I'll usually write my notes down in markdown format. Markdown is nice for me because it forces me to write clean/formatted/organized notes versus just writing random stuff down in a word doc. Jupyter-notebooks work great for me because much of my scripting is done with python. So I can include snippets of python code if I want as well as share it with my friends/colleagues.

Our company has an internal server that hosts the atlassian tools such as confluence/bitbucket/jira/cruciable. Each of us in the software department have our own company bitbucket account. Therefore, I keep my jupyter-notebook hosted on my bitbucket account.

For personal use I have moved away from paper/pencil journals. I usually collect my notes in the same way or sometimes just in a text file that I organized in their own dedicated git repositories on my GitLab account. Usually it's a project per project basis. For example, I version control many things in my home directory on my Linux computer like my bashrc/bash_profile/vimrc/zshrc and files alike. This gets consolidated in a "My_Linux_Setup" with other notes of mine of what packages and libraries I need to install should I need to reimage my computer.

How often do you review these notes? And do you use any tools besides grep to search through them?

I keep several logs (I'm a product manager):

1. a "Weekly Notes" file where I track meetings or other notes that come up 2. a separate 1 on 1 file for each recurring 1 on 1 meeting that I have 3. a "Customer Meetings" file for tracking notes from customer meetings 4. a "[customer name]" file for notes from meetings with important/key customers 5. a Pomodoro Google Sheet file that I use to log my daily tasks and how much time I spend on them- each task is categorized and feeds into a "Summary" sheet that tells me how much time I'm spending on specific categories of activities month to month.

My usual workflow is to track meeting notes in my "Weekly Notes" file and review all notes in that file at the end of each week. I either delete information that's not valuable, move "valuable" information to specific files from #2-4, or create tasks in my to do list (which then feeds my Pomodoro sheet), so at the end of each week the "Weekly Notes" file is completely empty.

I work in aerospace where the computer systems are heavily locked down and I can't just install org-mode.

So I began keeping a bullet journal for productivity reasons. However I discovered it makes a great work log if you actually use it. I can flip back and find notes on exactly what I was doing on any given day.

Daily summary of things I did the day before in morning. Both work and personal.

So I can see what I did 3 weeks ago and gauge my progress over time, and critic myself effectively

Also throughout day I try and capture important details / thought processes as they happen (I try to do this every few hours)

I started using Notational Velocity (http://notational.net) years ago and still use it pretty effectively. I try to label things and keep them searchable. It's the repository for anything I might need to remember.

To be honest, I don't really review them but I do occasionally have to search back through them to answer questions like, "what was that feature I promised on that phone call?"

1 out of 10 notes ends up being useful, the others are pretty much trash.

Moleskin journal, quick list of items and mind maps of more complex topics.

Cheap, reliable and easy. I keep them available for 2 years and toss them in a box after that.

For personal learning: I use a personal wiki and update it ASAP whenever I learn something new, be it via a meeting, reference, news story, link. A collage of references. I use pmwiki but the wiki always-editable concept is more important than the software.

For meeting that are more formal/have deliverables, these are always minuted and shared. It's surprising walking away from a meeting with a seemingly clear conclusion the interpretation others can have several weeks later unless this is done. Stay on one page, literally. This could range from a photo of the agenda and notes made with highlights, to typed, depending on what's allowed/information security policy.

For notebook, I have a bull clip with loose paper which may include blank paper, templates, etc. When something's not needed, I shred it.

Whenever I work at a job I have a text file. Each day I write the date, and I use it as both a scratch pad and a log of bugs fixed with their IDs, features implemented, relevant meetings attended, etc.

The files tend to be pretty incoherent but very good for searching for relevant keywords and dates.

I usually keep a simple text file with names like 'notes.txt' or 'notes-project_reboot.txt', especially for projects that I work on intermittently. Many times these notes files disappear into the past, as these projects get abandoned.

But when I want to revisit a project that I'm going to prioritize, these notes projects are really helpful. They let me quickly get back into the mindset I had when I was last working on the project. They're usually a mix of technical notes, a really simplified collection of issues, and notes about where I might go with the project. When I do revive an old project, one of my first steps is usually to start up a new notes file and copy over only the most useful notes from the old file.

I took the idea of rapid logging from Bullet Journaling, and keep a plaintext rapid log in nvAlt. I use Keyboard Maestro macros to generate daily templates that I log under, one plaintext file per month. A KM macro also seeds the month file with a bullet key.

The two basic sections per day are "Agenda" and "Journal."

Agenda has planned meetings noted, things I bring in from tracking (OmniFocus or JIRA depending on external visibility), and things that carried over from the prior day (marked with a leading ~ so I know I've been carrying them). I indent notes beneath them.

Journal has anything that opportunistically comes up, including ad hoc meetings or new adds, notes and tasks not directly relevant to something in Agenda.

At the end of each day (or beginning of next because I'm rarely perfect about this) I'll copy unresolved tasks from the previous day to Agenda of the next, then mark it with trailing ~ once moved. Moving to a tracker is considered resolution, so ideally I either finish the task or track it within the same day.

Finally there's a Highlights section where I cherry-pick stuff to later put in a weekly status report. All together, you get something like:

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  2018-11-05 -- Monday
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Highlights:

  -	Met with Bob, etc. re: proceeding with Widget tests
  -!	Learned something surprising from Carol

  Agenda:

  o	1-2pm		Git and Onboarding w/ Alice
  o	2-3pm		Widget Tests
	  -	https://docs.google.com/notarealdoc
	  -	Requirements vs. Tests?
	  x	Reach out to Ted re: followup
	  *~	Schedule meeting w/ Bob
  c	3-4pm		Yak Shaving
	  -	Cancelled, moved to Wednesday

  >	Goal I brought in from tracking

  ~x    Task I copied from yesterday
  x	Write status report

  Journal:

  o	Watercooler discussion with Carol
	  -	Some salient thing I didn't already know
	  -!	Surprising or urgent note
	  <	Send followup document to Carol
   
  x	Sent helpful aliases for working with the code to Alice
  <	Some task I moved to tracking
  *	Some task I still need to resolve or copy forward
  *?	Some task I'm not sure I need to do, explore further

  -	Alice working on diagnostic information for whatsit module

The biggest challenge was not going too nuts with bullets while still putting together a dialect that was personally meaningful. At this point I can log pretty quickly in realtime, whether on plaintext in an app or in a field notes book I also carry around for capture.

I keep useful notes in one note. I don't log time anymore. Hallelujah! Was logging time from 2012-18 in various jobs and boy it sucks. The code quality reflects the clock watching too.

Written notes, but it's mostly write-only or for very short-term things. I still keep all my notes and from time to time open them just to relive great memories.

Some people really like emacs org-mode for this purpose.

http://orgmode.org/

Yup, my entire life is driven into org. Project schedules get driven in with specific tasks, the daily agenda view shows me what I’ve committed to, clock in/clock out, and biweekly reports for payment. I keep varying degrees of notes as I work through the tasks. The whole thing is kept on Dropbox with a my-org-config.el so that I can use the same functionality on my various computers.

For one project I keep notes in a git repository so I can grep them for stuff later. At the beginning of every month I create a 2018-11.md or whatever and keep the notes going there all month.

For another project I keep notes in a wiki. It's not as easy to search as git, but I still refer to it for things I did months or years ago.

At work, I use JIRA and labels to track most stuff for my team.

At home, I still prefer to use a notebook to write things down. If I upgrade my phone, have a harddrive failure, or lose a service, I do not have to worry about losing my notes.

I keep logs using Windows Notepad. I keep track of the time, what I’m working on and, at the end of the day, a note that says “Next:..” so I’ll be able to pick right up where I left off.

I have a program to add up the hours for me.

Once I became a consultant, I started keeping a log for each client.

Just press F5 in Notepad to insert the current date and time.

Yeah, I know. I think the cat showed me that when it walked on the keyboard. :-)

Since tha HN post a while ago, I have been using a simple event log (did file) with some did.sh and todo.sh scripts:

https://pastebin.com/5vQewzyY

It is MVP.

I keep logs on individual tickets I work on and separately also a daily wrap-up.

I blog. It's not perfect (doesn't contain everything that I learned) but it had helped "future me" out periodically.

I really like the taskwarrior for linux. Syntax like: task add xxx task list

Makes it super easy to do from terminal

I have never heard of any such practice before.

Seriously? I've kept daily logs (on and off) since around 2002 when I first discovered John Carmack's .plan files.

https://garbagecollected.org/2017/10/24/the-carmack-plan/

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