At the beginning of every month, I start a new log file. Every morning, I start with the date and what time I started and then I'll write a brief sentence about everything I get done. And then of course at the end of the day, I'll put what time I'm leaving work.
This serves multiple purposes: I know how long I worked, what I've accomplished and spent my time on, and being a programmer this doubles as a sort of change log of what I've changed. The change log aspect has saved me HOURS tracking down issues already.
I've also started adding timestamps to all my entries. This has helped me pay attention to when I'm spending too much time on one task and also provides very clear indicators of when I've procrastinated.
Here's a sample entry:
April 2007
Monday 2
-Arrived 8:55 am
-checked email
-completed task #1
-talked to someone about upcoming projects.
-12:10 lunch
-12:55 - back from lunch
...
-5:56 - heading home.
Tuesday 3
TODO: updated webpage template
I've installed the Texter program from Lifehacker.com and set it up to put in the current time when I type "time" and hit tab. This is a very nice setup. The only kinks I have to work out:
- Texter sometimes doesn't work the first time. I have to delete "time" and type it again followed by tab.
- I still need to find a good free Mac program like Texter that works with Journler
- Both these solutions tie my info to one computer. I'd like to find a way to sync it up online, say with Google Notebook or Google Docs.
