I use my developer diary (or journal) on a daily basis. It helps me to track what I have done, what I deem important at this time, and what I want to do next. It is also a tool to get my thoughts in shape through writing.

What is important to me:

1. Page per Day and Event I have a page in a wiki per day and one for each event that happend on that day. A event may be an idea, an issue to solve later, a link to an information, etc. By having each event as a single page with an URL, this piece of information is easy to share via messenger or email or can be mentioned from other places. Within the wiki I create a new page for the day in the morning and add child pages for each event I assume may be of interest in the future.

2. Document vs. Record Since our wiki stores information more reliably than my brain, I need to write it down. When I discovered the difference between a document (needs to be updated) and a record (needs not to be updated), the organization of information in our wiki got much easier. Records come in form of events and are part of the journal. Information that is central and important on the long run (most is not), is part of the wiki in form of a topic space.

3. Multiple Views with Tags I also tag most of the events. Since each tag also has its own page where all pages are listed where this tag occurs, I get multiple views on the journal. One form of tag is the "subject" that maps the event to a project/product I'm working on. Others (and there are only a few) simply categorize an event as an "issue" or an "idea". Some also have a tag related to a subject I'm currently working on. When I come back to the - for instance - "issue page", I can see, what I wanted to have fixed not today, but by "the end of the week". If I think to remember to have had a great idea last week - but fail to remember what it was - I head to the "idea page" (to see that it was usually not that spectacular as I thought in first place). The tagging may cost some seconds, but it makes it easier for me to track fields of interest (by text search) and find related information (by browsing).

4. Structure for Speed As others have mentioned, it is also important for me to get the information into the journal quickly. Therefore too much given structure may be an enemy. None the less I use a template/form to put information (such as the description or links to related resources) in separate, always the same (name and location on a page) sections. For me this is actually much easier than to start with a blank page.

5. Copy-Paste for Speed I also need to paste screenshots, files, and URLs quickly to a page. Therefore I choose a wiki that supports this over markup files in a repository (which are great for other use cases with other requirements as others already have mentioned on this page).

Not everything runs as smoothly as I want it to be. So there is always room for improvements ...

BTW: I'm one of the authors of the mentioned article about developer diaries (https://www.smartics.eu/confluence/display/PDAC1/Developer+D...).

user:	robre
created:	May 24, 2017
karma:	1