Anyone here keep a log book at work? Just wondering what you put in it, everything without fail or are you more selective?

Keep trying, but my discipline is just not there. I swing between not keeping one at all, to even writing down phone conversation summarys.

Not much point, anything useful ends up written down in some form e.g. in an email, code or a document. Everything else lives as a post-it note until the glue weakens and it falls off my desk, but which point it’s probably out of date anyway….

Yes, and everything goes in it. Partly in case I ever have to prove when I did something, which may be important re patent applications, but should really get it countersigned.

A notebook, sure. The act of writing it down makes you more likely to remember it, whether or not you refer back to it.

I have wondered about keeping a log logbook though – time, duration, consistency, satisfaction… 😉

I work in R&D so a log book is priceless. I make sketches, circuit diagrams, code notes, test results, calculations, ideas etc.

I date everything because that can be useful in R&D if trying to prove an idea has been stolen in later years.

I have recently started making an electronic summary in OneNote. One of my gripes about keeping log books is that it is difficult to find old notes (when you use up to 10 log books per year). OneNote does a good job for documenting work, it is easily searchable and multiple users can add to it (if working on a project).

We use a web based log book at work – as everything we work on nowadays is fixed fee rather than time charge, it’s always nice to have a record of how much money you’re losing 😉

Second OneNote really handy, if I’m out on the road then its back to a paper notebook but when I get back in I just take a quick pic of the pages using a scanner app on my phone and put the images into a OneNote page and some keywords included for the particular day(s)