I often find myself wondering what I did yesterday. I want to be able to reflect on the day before as I get ready in the morning for the day to come. I also don’t want to make work for myself so the effort has to be useful.
What would make a personal log useful?
Facts about the day to jog my memory
Looking at my calendar to see what meetings I had is a good clue about how my day was spent and who I met with.
Seeing the tasks I’ve captured and completed also helps.
Then there are life log things like where I went out to eat and how much time I spent looking at a screen. These are maybe not as useful to look at daily.
Notes and observations
I’d like to be better and inspecting my notes and thoughts. I write an enormous about of notes from meetings and tasks, but I don’t review them as readily. Reviewing them more readily would help me turn more of what I’ve learned into permanent notes.
Things I produced
Concrete things I’ve produced would be great to catalog to reflect on how it went and what I learned now that it’s complete. This includes writing docs, committing code, shipping a feature, closing a sale, or any other artifact.