Work Journaling
Log it before you forget it
The modern work day moves fast. We bounce from message to message, meeting to meeting, task to task. By the end of the week, we forgot what we did two hours ago, never mind Monday. Then comes your review cycle. You are expected to think back six to twelve months. You need to recall the things you accomplished, failed at, and growth you’ve made.
I can tell you, unabashedly, that I have never sat down at the keyboard to write my review and could think of one valuable thing to write. So when I started at Notion, I decided to approach this differently. I started a work journal.
Keeping a journal is not for everyone. People do not like pouring themselves onto a page. A work journal does not have to be that at all. While I do think it can also include that, that type of writing is generally best for a personal journal or daily pages. Simply think of a work journal as a log of all the things you do as a knowledge worker.
I have written about this topic in the past, but I wanted to revisit it now that I work for a company again.
This log can be simple or complex, but it should be as all-inclusive as it can be. This means including the accomplishments and failures. The kudos and the negative feedback. Things that seem small in the moment, but big as the weeks pass. These things add up, even if we can’t see it clearly now.
This journal does not only have to be for yearly or bi-annual reviews. It can just be for you and your career journey. There are a few rituals I recommend to make the little moments add up to bigger trends.
The Daily Log
Every day, start a new page in a notebook or a file on your tool of choice. Log all of the moments about your day. Most of them will seem insignificant, that’s okay. In the short term, it will help with the recall of information.
Weekly Reviews
Every week, during the last hour of your workday, go over your daily logs for the week. Find a one-sentence summary and write it down. If that’s all you do, it’s enough. But if you notice more to reflect about, go deeper. Write a paragraph or two. This process will look different for everyone and vary week-to-week. All you have to write is one sentence. The rest is extra.
Monthly Reviews
Like the weekly reviews, write one sentence about the month. This should be based off your last four weekly reviews. Not each day’s log—that is way too much work and time spent. This should be simple, yet insightful. Those four weeks might ebb and flow, but they will more likely than not have a trend. It might be energy levels, the temperature of a project, or something you’re consistently dropping the ball on. Whatever comes out of it, let it. This is valuable.
Yearly Reviews
These will likely be paced with your company’s yearly review cadence. It does not have to be; it can totally be just for you, but keeping it in sync will help with the rhythm. I do recommend writing one first in your system—be it that notebook or digital tool. After you wrote the unfiltered version, then head over to your company’s review system and write one as it is expected of you.
This process should feel natural after four to six weeks. It should feel like a body of work, the story of your career, the narrative behind your resume. Sure, it’s valuable for the next review cycle, but more so for your future.
I did not mention using AI at all in this process, and that is for a reason. AI can make this easier, but it is not going to be holistic enough. Even with the best agent, having access to all your things, it will be missing context. The full story will be omitted. Additionally, writing is reflective. Doing it all at once is hard, but doing it in small pieces is less friction and higher value.
Personally, I write most of this in my reMarkable. Every day, I title a new page the year, month, and date, then fill it up with all of the details and thoughts that surround my day. I then send the PDF into my Obsidian vault, in that day’s daily note. Then every week, month, and year I make a note in Obsidian to write my reviews. In the past, I have done this in Notion, but since most of my process is handwritten and exported to PDFs, I like to do the rest in Obsidian. Also, I am in Notion all day, so looking at a different tool is a nice context shift.
If you want to use the template I used to use in Notion, you can find it here. If not, just use a nice notebook and pen. Sure, you cannot add screenshots or links, but that’s less valuable than the narrative. When you are starting your next review, updating your resume, or thinking about your career after you retire, the story is what matters. Only you can write that story, so log it before you forget it.