Document Your Progress at Work

This used to be a practice at my workplace. When there was a new manager it was "abolished" because they felt bombarded with mails every week.

But what I mostly took away from it is that I should document the work for myself. I basically have one huge journal text file that gets a new entry every day. I see it as a complete empty whiteboard and scratchpad.

It's helped me so many times when I've had to look for how I did something in the past and was able to retrieve not only the command used but also the reasoning and context!

Related: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/

2019, 79 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665225

2023, 69 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826014

Shouldn't managers be asking for this kind of thing regardless? We do weekly standups plus weekly written updates on our quarterly goals.

I despise this sort of thing but I get it. Managers do need to keep tabs on their employees one way or another, and employees do need to shine the spotlight on themselves if they want to get ahead. Still feels like busywork though.