Work Logs

[bjarvis]

Does anyone out there keep logs of their daily work activities?


Thursday, November 16, 2006
8 AM - Arrival; 8:45 AM daily status conference call
- SOX: Evidence collection for Scott Atkins
- SOX: Tracing ID ownerships for Mario Wiley
- NIS+ retirement conference call, update reports & ticket submissions
- Standards docs update, review
- Documentation meeting with Greg, Anne, Jack & Chris
4 PM - Departure


I've been writing my general activities into a worklog every day since 1997 or so. I started when I became a contractor as a contracting mentor strongly recommended keeping these records in case some client should ever question an invoice. Since becoming a full-time employee in 2003, there's been a reduced need but the logs still are very useful, especially now during our annual performance review activities.

I keep my logs handwritten in dead tree format. It's much harder to search for past items, but the book is clearly owned by me: the employer can't possibly access it or begin to claim ownership over it if a dispute should arise. These are my records, not the company's records. Written in my hand, it can't be easily modified or forged. Since I started this for accounting & audit purposes, these factors trounce the potential usefulness of searchability. (Detailed procedures and commands or particularly unusual events get scribbled into my Palm if there's a chance I'll need to search for them.)

Anyone else do this?

Comments

[bearfinch.livejournal.com]

I keep a work "diary" book where I write down key information form day to day (i.e. problems with equipment, contacts and contact numbers, project time, etc), but somewhat less organised that yours. I find it very helpful to be able to look up information, especially if it's about something that I did years ago.

[emramesha.livejournal.com]

I have on the occasional contract archaeology job, but not any longer. I did find them interesting to look back at though.

[cuyahogarvr.livejournal.com]

Since I deal with a client base that can be extremely fickle, I have always kept a long hand log as a record of every question, comment, and or conversation that I have with a client. I don't want someone to ever come back and say that I said this when in reality I said that. Corporate clients are very easy to deal with, especially after years of taking care of them. It's the leisure clients who want the perfect vacation at the right price that can be challenging. The worst - a hyper ADHD bride! Ugghhh, just shoot me now.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

For each job, I keep a running log of everything I do, kind of like a bomb squad defuser keeping a running dialog going of which wires he's cutting.

The comparison is not entirely tongue-in-cheek. And the extended logs serve several purposes.

My staff calls these roman-a-clefs, "Allan's latest novels". On the other hand, about half of the people who make fun of them, come back to me later and ask me about some technique they spotted in there that they'd never heard of.

The novels also give clients a sense of worth; they feel better spending (large amounts of money per hour) for my services if they know what I'm doing.

Finally, when working with Novell, Microsoft, Symantec, SyncSort, HP, Dell, or IBM Support ... emailing them the log while we're on the phone saves lots of time and energy, and helps them to help me solve the problem faster, since they can see exactly what I've done prior to calling them.

If you like, I can mail you a sample log...

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

For more "interesting" server work, I usually execute typescript to maintain a transcript of my commands and results. Invaluable for truly ugly system recoveries.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

If I only worked on one server or system at a time, that would be wonderful. *sigh* Typically, I work on three or four systems at once, bringing them all into line for such network niceties as SSL, SLP, DNS, or eDirectory. Even the Linux boxes. It would be a pain to try to edit together three or four or more typescript logs...so it's easier for me to stop and record what I'm doing.

More than one client has looked over my shoulder at my log, and commented "Don't cut the blue wire!"

[jss]

> Anyone else do this?
Yes and no.

At my first post-college job, I kept a hardcopy notebook of every support call or trouble ticket I worked. Customer name, organization, system serial number, ticket number, and any notes on the issue. Useful at the time, less so a decade plus later so these have been shredded and destroyed instead of following me around the country whenever I move (MI TX IL MA MN so far).

I no longer keep a daily log of what I did on a specific day. I do keep an ongoing status report window open and send them off on a week-by-week basis to $manager just before I leave at the end of my week. It's a high-level list of what I worked on, who I sent mail to, that kind of thing. It doesn't include things like specific trouble-tickets because that's queryable in the ticket database. I have these weekly reports available on live spindle in case I need to go back, and can consolidate them into monthly or quarterly or even annual reports as needed, e.g. for an annual or semiannual review.

When I'm unemployed and there's much less data to go in them, I default to monthly, mainly to keep track of where I've sent resumes for which positions.

Since hardcopy isn't searchable, I keep mine in electronic (plaintext) form on a disk physically on my home network. I ssh from work to home to edit it, and send the edited weekly reports to $manager. (He doesn't see the "Home network changes" or "Jobhunt" sections, for example.) I'm reasonably confident I'm the only one on my team of (now) six to submit status reports of any kind.

[urbear]

I don't keep a formal log, but I do keep extensive handwritten notes. There's a twist, though... I use a Logitech IO pen and the special notebooks that work with it. That gives me both handwritten hardcopy and a somewhat-searchable backup on my PC. It's the ultimate in geekery, but it works for me.