I know it’s kind of a weird thing for this post to do, but this one finally gave the push I needed to setup decent journaling software, so I can do better planning, and also have something to reference in daily stand-up meetings instead of trying to come up with a summary of the previous day on the spot.
Standard Notes had some annoyances (sync not working, license issues, too-strict page styles), so I switched to Notion. It also gave me a few more features:
File attachments
Page hierarchy
Web interface if I need it
Ability to share page links
Apparently I’ve been doing this consistently since I posted the original comment. My usual method is to write up a todo list and then add comments as a bulleted list under items and sometimes link to additional pages. At the start of each day, I copy the previous day’s journal entry, delete anything that’s no longer relevant, and then add anything new that comes up.
The major ways it’s been useful are:
When people ask me questions about things I don’t remember, I can look them up (if it was recent enough)
At the start of the day, I can quickly refresh myself on what I did and what I need to do (which makes it easier to get started)
It’s useful as a reference during standups
I think there are still things I could do better:
I don’t do enough retrospectives. A daily/weekly/monthly/yearly review and summary would be useful partially as an index to find things, something I could reference for performance reviews or resume material, and as just a feel-good “look at all the stuff I did”.
Right now this is the majority of my work-related notes and it would probably be good if I had subject-based pages and not just date-based pages.
Maybe I’ll try adding in more retrospective/summary stuff and see how that goes.
I know it’s kind of a weird thing for this post to do, but this one finally gave the push I needed to setup decent journaling software, so I can do better planning, and also have something to reference in daily stand-up meetings instead of trying to come up with a summary of the previous day on the spot.
Yep, having a default place to jot down thoughts is super useful.
Would you share, what is the state of your practice today?
Making any progress / hardships visible could be helpful to all of those who are thinking of starting out.
Standard Notes had some annoyances (sync not working, license issues, too-strict page styles), so I switched to Notion. It also gave me a few more features:
File attachments
Page hierarchy
Web interface if I need it
Ability to share page links
Apparently I’ve been doing this consistently since I posted the original comment. My usual method is to write up a todo list and then add comments as a bulleted list under items and sometimes link to additional pages. At the start of each day, I copy the previous day’s journal entry, delete anything that’s no longer relevant, and then add anything new that comes up.
The major ways it’s been useful are:
When people ask me questions about things I don’t remember, I can look them up (if it was recent enough)
At the start of the day, I can quickly refresh myself on what I did and what I need to do (which makes it easier to get started)
It’s useful as a reference during standups
I think there are still things I could do better:
I don’t do enough retrospectives. A daily/weekly/monthly/yearly review and summary would be useful partially as an index to find things, something I could reference for performance reviews or resume material, and as just a feel-good “look at all the stuff I did”.
Right now this is the majority of my work-related notes and it would probably be good if I had subject-based pages and not just date-based pages.
Maybe I’ll try adding in more retrospective/summary stuff and see how that goes.
What journaling software do you use?
I’ve been using Standard Notes. It’s basically just a networked text editor which can display structured text nicely.