Engineers Should Write the Working Diary
Efficiency, Time Management, Self Protection
For past several years, I wrote the working diary everyday. I do really love this way to control what I need to do everyday and how I schedule the tasks.
What is the working diary?
Basically, the working diary is composed by 3 major parts:
- TODO Pool
- Tomorrow’s TODO List
- Today’s Done List
TODO Pool can help you note everything you have to complete and you should also note every task with its priority and importance.
Tomorrow’s TODO List lets you set up goals you plan to achieve tomorrow.
Today’s TODO/Done List is the place includes what you have to do and what you finished today.
How to Use the Working Dairy?
When I get a task, I will put it in TODO Pool and give this task a priority tag(P0, P1, P2, P3) and importance tag(H, M, L). For example, your colleagues ask you a question about the project you participated two month ago. Just put it in the TODO Pool, you will remember it and schedule it into your plan and finish it, then your colleagues will be impressed and thankful. If you got a very high priority task(P0), you should move it into Today’s TODO/Done List.
In a working day, I would pick tasks one by one from Today’s TODO/Done List. After finished a task, I would also mark it as done in the same list.
In the end of a working day, I usually use about 10 minutes to check what have I done today / do there any tasks are unfinished? Then, I would move unfinished tasks and also pick some task from TODO Pool according to the priority and importance into Tomorrow’s TODO List. If it’s hard to determine how long it will spend for a task, you should break it down into several smaller tasks.
In the beginning of the next day, duplicate the working daily file yesterday and (1) remove Today’s Done List from duplicated file; (2) modify the title from Tomorrow’s TODO List to Today’s TODO/Done List.
Benefits
- More Efficiency
It’s kind of adding some gaming factors into your daily works. You know what’s your missions today, and you want to get them DONE. It is also challenges to me. In addition, when you see all tasks in today’s TODO list are all marked as done, you will feel so happy and it’s a self-fulfillment.
- Better Time Management
Because you don’t want to leave items unfinished in the today’s TODO list, you would like to do better task breakdown and also do time estimations better and better. You will know how many tasks you be able to achieve a day and you do really can finish them. Every time you watch your today’s TODO list, you would calculate the time and plan the task sequences in the rest of hours before you leave your office.
- Self Protection
I don’t know if you have the same experience, your colleague or boss or product manager and you have some agreement on a task. However, don’t know why you both don’t have a document or email to know what’s the decision, but now your boss come to you and say why do you do it in A way, I remember we have a decision to do it in B way. Yes, in this situation, if you have the working diary, that’s would be easier and help you to find the facts.
- Easier to Generate KPI Report
In the end of a year, usually you have an one on one meeting with your boss and talk about what you have contribute and what is your KPI. If you have your working diary, that would become very easy to write a KPI reports. Maybe this KPI report can make your bonus even more.
An Example of a Working Diary
Since medium.com doesn’t support code blocks well, I present it as a picture.
Conclusion
I have adopted this method for years and that’s very helpful for me as an software developer. Hope my experiences and this method can also benefit you. It’s very welcome to discuss with me and I am very glad if you try it and please give me your feedbacks. Thank you for reading this article.
