[pnathan]

I approximately "invented" this after reading tons of productivity blogs and stuff.

I keep an org-mode file with 3 headings:

    * week range

    ** day-in-week

    *** major topic

And then I log what I did in the day. It is unbelievable how much you actually do some days when you feel like you did nothing but yammer and poke small problems.

edit: I've done this for about 47 weeks now. I keep a single file, synced out to a backedup location periodically. Anything worth writing about goes in here. My hope is that any professional conversation and act is captured here, ready for later searching and review.

I also keep a high-level TODO list at the top of the file when I'm pondering priorities and direction.

[minimax]

Do you use much of the other org-mode bells and whistles when you do this?

[pnathan]

Nah, not really. I really hit a comfort zone with this tracking system, so I haven't felt the drive to improve it.

The only thing that niggles a bit is that I'd like to check in/out on tasks sometimes. I know it's possible, but I don't have the urge to figure that out.

I use more of org-mode in other arenas: agenda preparation, PDF creation, and the occasional spreadsheet.

[minimax]

I have tried several times to get into org-mode and for whatever reason it just hasn't stuck. I'm going to give it another crack for daily logs.

[pnathan]

Honestly, you don't need org mode to do this. You just need a way to have a hierarchical folding tree (an outline) that takes text for both the headers and contents. I implemented a half-baked similar system in C# years and years ago - that worked really nice. I just use org-mode because I'm an emacs user and hey, it works well for me.

[npsimons]

The nice thing about org-mode is it's as involved as you would like it to be. Sure, the beginning is a bit steep, but if you're already using Emacs, it will be a breeze, and you can keep it light (as pnathan is doing). I've been slowly inching my way into using it over a long period of time; I have to admit, it's quite involved for me, but it never felt forced, it was always "cool, that works nice; but I wonder if I can X?" and with org-mode, you can almost always do X. Or not, if you don't want to. Unlike a lot of other "productivity tools" it's very flexible.