I keep an org-mode file with 3 headings:
* week range
** day-in-week
*** major topic
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.
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.
I used Yammer for this in the past--just posted quick blurbs about that I did as I did it so that the team stay informed and I could remember what I had done.
I've considered using a logbook, something bound so that it's neater, but I have to say I just love having a single small slip of paper sitting there beside my computer as I work. It is a testament to focus - it is a physical talisman representative of singular focus.
It works really, really well.
http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-pers...
Wow, that sounds like an incredibly unjustified relationship, with only the superficial support of its counter-intuitive nature. In my experience, the opposite happens, the more you do in a day, the more you recognize and remember that you accomplished that day, and consequentially, feel that you accomplished. Which by the way, is exactly what the anti-todo list is, except with a mental list of remembered accomplishments, rather than manually recorded ones. The latter act should only be necessary if an individual has a particular problem recognizing what they've accomplished in a day; I don't think this is some deep insight or universal principle.
Of course, there are also days when it feels like I haven't accomplished anything because I haven't actually accomplished anything.
It would be awesome if you could notice trends in things I write such as People, Companies, etc so I can search by popular tags.
I have a text file which I keep open in vim, called "wip" which I have loose sections of content. Let's call them section 1, section 2 and section 3.
I list TODOs which I want to accomplish recently in section 3. When I start working on an item, I might expand on it and add additional sub-items, indented. I mark items I'm working on with a "@" and when they are finished, with a "". Sometimes I'm on several items at the same time (too many is not a good sign), I will add a few @@@@ to the start of a line I'm really* on, no biggie.
I mentally group my items into projects/types of activities like Project1, Project2. Each time I start working on Project1, I add a new line which says Project1 and the start time to section 2. When I stop working with Project1, I add the end time to that line.
Every morning, I run a little script which scans through section 2 in "wip" and extract out the time I spent on each project and inserts that at the bottom of section 2. I then copy section 2 and section 3 of "wip" into a new file giving yesterday's date as the filename. Then I go into "wip" and remove all the items marked with "" as well as section 2 and then copy section 1 into section 3 as well. Section 3 contains things that I want to do daily, such as stretch myself in the morning or to manually check if a specific service is up (enough till I automate them or build a habit out of it).
A great side-effect — the files that are created everyday becomes my work log. I can run scripts to generate how much time I've spent on a specific project or how much time I've work in a given year.
My wip file looks like:
section 1 - template TODOs
section 2 - projects and their start-end time
section 3 - TODOs (each like might start with a @ or and might be indented to various levels, seldom more than 2-3 levels). I don't keep the entire project here.
Overworked - "I still haven't done XYZ..." (fall asleep and work in the dreams as well)
Great - "I did so much today!"
Rhythmic - "Everything went as per schedule"
Bored - "Today was probably same as yesterday"
Lazy - "What did I do today?"
Loafer - " What is today?"
However, I violated the first rule of using the organization tool i.e. Trust your tool. Yet another post on hackernews and I got distracted into trying Trello, and what not for a promise of increased productivity.
Two little scripts I just whipped up that'll help you record the things you do throughout the day. I'm definitely going to try to use these as much as possible, it's kind of like a personal micro-blog.