
Ask HN: Do you have a project logbook? - nmenglund
When working on non-trivial tasks, I always keep a text document open to log my work (Word, SQL or Markdown depending on the context). I sometimes save the document when I&#x27;m done, but it invariably ends up in a project&#x2F;client directory and seldom being read again.<p>I&#x27;m looking for a way of writing, archiving and searching my logs - a personal, taggable blog of what I did a specific day - so I can both go through my work chronologically (&quot;What did I do that day or week?&quot;) or by project (&quot;What did I do last time I worked on that project or for that client?&quot;). It must necessarily be fast and very responsive, and embedding images by drag&amp;drop or copy&amp;paste would be great, but otherwise the needs are pretty basic.<p>What do you use to log your work, and how do you organize your logs?
======
woebtz
Workflowy ([https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)) is my goto for
keeping lists, planning, and tracking my work/project logs.

For work, I have a section structured as such: Work > {CLIENT} > {YEAR} >
{MONTH} > {DAY, HOURS, SUMMARY}

e.g. A day's entry might look like:

8/13/2014, 6.75h, One-liner summary of the big ticket accomplishments today *
11 - 12,30, 1 - 6,15 * [x] #ASAP Task 1 description * [x] Task 2 description *
[x] Task 3 description * [x] Meeting with @client @coworker1 * Notes from
meeting... * More notes...

I track my hours worked in shorthand and format {DAY, HOURS, SUMMARY} because
I dump and parse the data at the end of the month to generate my invoices.

SQL, Markdown, or code snippets is a little trickier, but you can hang multi-
line text as a sub-node using SHIFT+ENTER. In general, Workflowy offers a ton
of great keyboard shortcuts and pretty decent search capability. Media
attachments would need to be as URLs AFAIK.

I've been using it for 2-3 years and if they ever decided to close shop, I
would seriously try spinning up a similar service.

------
dennybritz
I have a "log file" for each week, broken down by day where I keep track of my
TODOs and check them off. I put little notes next to the todos that describe
what exactly I did, but not in much detail. But I can easily go back to
12/05/2011 and see exactly what I did that day. I usually plan one week in
advance, but I only put task details there once I actually figure them out.

"What did I do last time I worked on that project or for that client?" is more
difficult. I'm a fan of using blossom.io + Slack (slack.com) for large
projects or startups. Usually there is only one such project I am working on.
If you have lots of different project then these tools may cause too much
overhead...

------
proussea
I'm using a desktop wiki : [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

I use it in a messy way, but it's what i want : take a note quickly.

I create a page by day with the calendar and there is a full text search tool
for when I need to find and old note I also like the task plugin : you put a
todo mark in any page and you have an icon to regroup all the "todos". I put
some keywords sometimes, to help to remember later or when i'm using the
search tool.

There is a picture plugin, but it's just keeping a link to the real picture,
so it's lost when you move it.

I know there is the same kind of tool for vim, but i didn't try it.

------
MalcolmDiggs
I've just started playing around with Harvest (getharvest.com); it might be
worth checking out if you're already using some kind of task-manager (because
they integrate with tools like Asana). Makes it easy to see what you did,
which projects it was for, and to bill the client accordingly.

------
darkphoenix
Wiki on a USB stick :D
[https://www.dokuwiki.org/install:dokuwiki_on_a_stick](https://www.dokuwiki.org/install:dokuwiki_on_a_stick)

Get synkron, configure it to mirror your wiki to a harddisk as backup and
you're set.

------
squiguy7
At my job we have a JIRA server running. It is a big enterprise piece of
software, but you can log stories and tasks pretty well. If it were up to me I
would use something else, albeit I am not sure what that is.

------
buyfromfarm
When I was on my own, I used Google Doc to keep track of daily logs in a loose
way. I am getting a team so I switch to asana. It has been for 3-days I am
fine with that.

------
lie07
Workflowy works great but sometimes it gets tricky (depending on how you'd
like to format things).

~~~
alpisv
Weavi (weavi.com) would be a great choice to organize lots of things.

