[Everlag]

The referenced idea of a 'human log' is great[0]. I started doing something similar 4 years ago and it eventually evolved from per-project notes into a full diary. Being able to search for 'August 24 2016' and know exactly what I did that day is quite powerful.

I encourage anyone to take 10 minutes(or 30...) at the end of the day to write up what they've done. Just a text file with minimal formatting has scaled to 2.6MB of hand-typed text. Though, after a bit, I've tended to shard out specific long-running topics into their own files.

[0] https://neilkakkar.com/the-human-log.html

[mikekchar]

I have an admittedly crazy thing I do occasionally. I do 5 minute pomodoros. So it's 5 minutes of writing code followed by 1 minute of reflection. In that one minute, I'll write down what I did in the last 5 minutes (it takes about 10 seconds to write since it isn't much ;-). I'll also add a few TODOs that I'm hoping to do, or break down ones I've already got.

Now, 5 minutes seems an impossibly small amount of time, and admittedly this is a difficult technique. It's also very tiring (I can't do it day after day), but once you get good at it, it's surprising what you can get done in 5 minutes. You don't necessarily need to have written code -- just made some progress towards understanding something, etc.

Later, I'll go over my notes. I've got everything annotated every 5 minutes which means that it's ripe for thinking about how I can improve. Did I make a wrong turn somewhere that wasted me time? Was there a way I could have detected that? Did I decide not to do something test first when it would have been better to do so? Etc, etc.

I should point out that while I have a timer, I only use it as a suggestion -- I don't have any notifications for instance. It's just that if I glance down and notice my timer has gone (or is close), then I wrap up what I'm doing to get to the reflection stage. Similarly, if I'm writing TODOs and it's being productive, I don't mind doing it for 5 minutes or so. Finally, if I run into something really puzzling, then I just turn off the timer. Some problems need thinking time (though I have found that having only a few minutes to make progress often forces me to try something in order to get more information and that will crack the nut -- indeed, far more often than I would have ever suspected).

It's the only tool I've found that really helps me improve my technique. The other pretty cool thing about it is that I've found that this log helps me get in and out of the zone extremely quickly. Even if I've put it down overnight, I'm right back into it within a minute or so.

I am measurably much more productive with this method (like 2 or 3 times more productive), which surprised me initially (I thought I would be much less productive). The real downside is that it's draining. I can't keep it up for more than a couple of days at a time.

Anyway, very dissimilar to what you were talking about, but I highly recommend it for those interested understanding what they are doing and how to improve.

[Doubl]

If you're 2 or 3 times as productive for a couple of days then you can easily afford to take a day off. How much downtime do you need before you're able to repeat the pattern?

[mikekchar]

Yeah, a day off is definitely enough... It's a good point. I need to start doing fix cost contracting.

[crucialfelix]

I like this idea. I had private Twitter style note taking set up for a while for the same purpose.

I currently journal my day at the end, noting when I worked on the wrong thing and why.

It would be interesting to record the screen for a whole week day and then review and annotate for insight.

Some day traders used to do this. Athletes do it all the time.

[newshorts]

This is really interesting. I’m going to try it.

[isoprophlex]

This sounds revolutionary, I'm going to try this! Thanks for sharing.

[mtlynch]

I do this on a weekly basis. I used to just do it in a Google Doc, but earlier this year, I wrote an app so I could share my log entries publicly. I've been publishing my weeks since March:

https://whatgotdone.com/michael

I tried for a few months to make a business out of it, but there wasn't much interest, so I'm planning to open source the code in the next couple weeks.

A bit more about my motivation in creating this: https://mtlynch.io/status-updates-to-nobody/

[neilkakkar]

This is awesome (and lots of projects - I love it!)

[yitchelle]

This is really good. It reminds me of a bullet journal. Well done!

[satysin]

Indeed I have been doing this for all my work for over ten years now and it is one of my favourite things.

I use Day One as I also use it for my personal journal. Plain text is great but I do like being able to add rich content (screenshots for example).

As you say being able to look back and know exactly what you were doing on a particular day is a powerful thing.

I've found that over time I have become a lot better at succinctly explaining the problems I faced and how I made progress with them. It is invaluable, even just over the weekend, in helping me 'reload' my brain when I return to work. It also helped me in communicating more technical subjects to others less technical.

It's a brilliant way to unwind and finish the day. I usually only have to spend 5 minutes on it so it isn't like it is a huge commitment.

I highly recommend everyone at least give it a go for a month and see if it works for you.

[ThrowawayP]

And what does one do when one is struggling with burnout/depression/insomnia and the only legitimate thing to write down is "Not a whole lot really." for days in a row? (A problem a um, ... friend has, of course.) Risky habit to have under those circumstances.

[JohnBooty]

That might be the best time to take up this habit.

Write down everything you do and honor it as an accomplishment.

Getting out of bed. Reading an article about your craft. Brushing your teeth. Showering. Dressing. Reading somebody else's PR. Commenting on somebody else's PR.

Every. Single. Thing.

Attending a meeting. Having a hallway conversation. Answering an email or ten.

Not taking your own life. Surviving. Not doing other self-destructive things.

Chances are, if you are able to get out of bed (not always a given) you probably did a lot of "little" things. Those are achievements. And in your depression those things may have taken more effort than running a 5-minute mile.

Sure, the goal is to eventually accomplish more. That's fine. But honor the things you're doing.

And hey... good luck.

[taftster]

I think that's still a valuable log entry. You should be able to look back at your log and see the periods of inactivity, possibly being able to identify or correlate the time associated with other life events. Maybe you can work on finding ways to identify and exit those periods sooner.

I believe everyone has times of marginal productivity in their lives, maybe some more than others. But if you can average out ahead of the curve, what does it matter? Showing the fact that you've had a slow week but finished the month on a high note seems like a great capability.

And if an employer doesn't recognize this and can't measure your net output, then hopefully another employer can.

[tiglionabbit]

Then the journal could help you notice the problem and take action sooner.

I've had a lot of stress at work. Here's how I dealt with it:

I was once working for a boss who was really infuriating to deal with. To prevent myself from exploding at him, I would take a break, step outside in the beautiful sunlight, put in my earbuds, turn on some good music, and run. I channeled my frustration into exercise. I'd especially make a habit of doing this just before I ate lunch, which would stimulate muscle growth and make me happier and healthier. Somehow that stressful job got me into great shape.

I was once working at a place where all the policies were dysfunctional and things were constantly on fire. I dealt with this by pulling out my phone and using the Headspace app to think about nothing for a moment and calm myself down. When I got back to the work, I'd put on some "focus" music (music for programming, studying, etc) that would help me maintain my calm mood when implementing the fixes. I learned to distance myself from the problem and get people to talk to each other to work it out instead of having proxy arguments on other peoples' behalf.

I've had some pretty bad sleep problems as well. I got into the habit of playing videogames late at night, which really destroyed my sleep. It's really hard to sleep right after staring at bright screens and experiencing intense action. Now I have F.Lux or Night Shift enabled on all my machines and I avoid playing console games at night without wearing yellow safety glasses. Also, I've started adding concentrated lake water to my drinking water since a magnesium deficiency can make it difficult to sleep.

For depression, perhaps learn about Taoism?

If you really can't cope with the job, quit. It'll be even more stressful to try to find a new job while you're already working one. You can search for a new job using TripleByte, which saves a lot of time since you just have to do one coding test instead of 20.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[Aeolun]

In that case I guess you should start writing down the 3 good things for that day. Helped me, and it’s fairly positive, even if what you end up with is a string of: ‘Made it through another day’ entries.

[Haydos585x2]

When I'm in that sort of space I just write down really trivial things in my "Today List". I've been sick for a few weeks so my tasks have been: "have a shower", "make a coffee", "take a nap". I don't know if it would help with more severe cases but it at least lets me feel like I'm moving along. You probably completed a few distinct tasks you could write down.

[Everlag]

I've been there, I've got a bunch of entries that summarize to 'Bleh day'. For me, though it may differ for others, those entries are useful. They let me notice that something is off and help me figure out if there's a pattern.

I completely agree with taftster in a sibling comment.

[cjnicholls]

It may be more useful in that case to increase frequency of contributions to the log which will change your objectivity when logging. You may be missing all the small contributary things that lead to achieving a bigger task soon after.

[mikekchar]

I've had burnout a few times in my career. I think it happens to anyone who really enjoys their job. It's like being placed in front of a pile of candy -- just one more piece!

But burnout is an awful feeling. You aren't able to work. For me, I would stare at the screen for hours on end without being able to get started.

I found that 2 things helped me the most. First the pomodoro system. You are probably familiar with it, but just in case: you have a 25 minute session, where you devote yourself to nothing but concentrating on work. For me, it's unbelievably important to get my first pomodoro in as early in the day as possible. I also found that it is just as important that this pomodoro is coding: not reading mail. Not doing a status update. Not having a standup meeting. Not investigating some bug. I've got to write code as soon as I can in the day. That flips a switch for me. Very important, especially if you are burned out: show up for work significantly before your fist meeting of the day -- the meeting will suck the life out of you and you need some life to suck.

The next thing, strangely, is a TODO/log of what I'm doing. Being burned out means that everything is a barrier. Usually the barrier is too high, so you are stuck staring at it with no idea how to get over it (because normally you would just step over it).

When I first start a pomodoro, I write a TODO of what I'm going to do for the next 25 minutes. I find it's best to spend as little time as possible doing it. Just write down the first thing that comes to your mind about what you need to do. Write 3-4 items at least. Then start tackling the first one. Inevitably, you will find that your TODO was not good -- because you didn't spend time thinking about it. As soon as you realise what you need to do, update your TODO and then do it.

It's tempting to write the code and then write down what you did. I find that it works best to do it the other way around even though it breaks the flow. When you are burned out, flow is quite hard to maintain and any distraction is going to grab you hard. By focussing on making sure your TODOs are correct, it means that you can easily jump back in.

The biggest thing to realise is that you will often be punted out of the zone and will be staring at your screen. What you need to do is to say to yourself, "Just one more" -- which means, making an easy TODO for yourself and writing the code to fullfil it. Then "Just one more". Eventually you will get distracted. When you finish being distracted, turn on the pomodoro timer and say, "Just one more".

At first you may find it hard to do more than 4 pomodoros in a whole day. Don't worry about it. Just try to do as many as you can. Then the next day try to do more than the previous day. I have found that I can claw my way out of burnout pretty quickly like this. It doesn't take long before I'm enjoying my work again. After that, the productivity starts coming back and things start to feel easy again.

Hope this helps.

[neilkakkar]

Indeed! Thanks Everlag!

I think it's been the top productivity hack in my life.

Not only did it help me keep my thoughts in check, but it became a solid base for me to bundle other habits on top. If I keep a daily log of stuff (one I look forward to because it's super useful - not just a calendar) , all I have to do is add a new column for a new habit I'm tracking, and everyday I'm forced to put in a Yes or a No, which then snowballs into the "Don't break the chain!".

[aizatto]

I created something for myself to use https://www.logbook.my

I can both back date and future date entries.

I keep a tag called "Daily Entries" with a timestamp on the day of what I use, I can automatically add a timestamp with the shortcut "CTRL + T"

Future dating allows me to plan ahead as well.

I write an entry about a future event (ie a meeting) and prefill some information. Then when the meeting happens, I just open up the entry and start entering.

I've been using Logbook since 1st May, and personally now have 1139 entries, and 576 tags.

I've been recording:

- Recipes - Meeting notes - Shower Thoughts - Career timeline - Car maintenance - "Best Practices" on a variety of subjects - Many more

I also use timestamps a lot, and have a preference for how they are formatted so I created https://timestamps.aizatto.com

I hope some of these may help people here

[acemarke]

Yeah, I've been doing this since the start of 2013. Last thing I do each day along with filling out my time card.

I usually recap what I worked on, conversations I had, other project / teammate updates, where I left off, stuff I learned or fixed, and where I need to pick up the next day.

I used RedNotebook for the first few years, then switched to Boostnote because of its Markdown support and snippet syntax highlighting. One note per day, organized into folders by month.

It also is hugely valuable when performance review season rolls around. I can go through the whole year in a few minutes and remind myself of all the tasks I worked on, then summarize those in the "what I did" section.

[JustSomeNobody]

I started paper logging when I got my first programming job. At first it was just to write down things I needed to know; IP addresses/host names, bugs I worked on, etc. Eventually, I started logging more information about my thought process for why I designed something a certain way or how I tracked down a bug. These come in handy months later when the bug comes back and I can refer to my notes and talk to the team about it, or when I need to design something similar and need to give an estimate. Are there better places to put this? Sure, I guess, but this is mine[0] and I can write down what I want.

[0] Oh, in case anyone is curious. My logs stay with the company when I leave. I don't take any IP with me.

[jrochkind1]

Exactly what a traditional scientist's notebook is.

[bspammer]

I've been doing this for the last few months, along with taking a picture every day and attaching it to the text. I've found it has noticeably improved my short-term memory of events, which has always been a weak point of mine. I imagine it will also be a nice time-capsule to look at in 40 years.

I'd really encourage anyone to give it a try.

[nevster]

I kept a paper journal for work for years. I finally decided to go digital for search-ability and investigated all sorts of things like Day One, etc.

Ended up just adding a new "Work Journal" calendar to my google calendar.