Updated September 2026: the original 2019 post was a short note about coming back to this blog after a break. I have rewritten it into the practical version of that idea: why a work journal is worth restarting, and how to keep one going this time.
In 2019 I came back to writing after months away. The note I published then said little beyond "I'm back", and promised the details somewhere else. What I actually learned from that gap is more useful than the note was, so this is the version I should have written.
A gap like that has a cost that only shows up later. When appraisal season arrives, it is hard to remember half of what you delivered in the previous year. The work happened. The record did not.
Why keep a work journal at all?
A work journal is a dated, private record of what you worked on, what went wrong and what you did about it. It exists so that your memory is not the only evidence of your year when a review, a job change or a dispute arrives.
In an IT services job this matters more than it sounds. Opportunities, escalations and service requests blur into each other. By December, a proposal you rescued in March has become "some deck". Managers change, and the new one has no idea what you did before they arrived. A three-line entry written on the day beats any reconstruction you attempt later.
It also helps with the unglamorous parts of the job. When a client claims a requirement was never shared, or a manager insists you agreed to a deadline you did not, a dated note of who said what is far more persuasive than your recollection.
What should a daily entry contain?
Keep it short enough that you will actually write it. Five minutes and four parts is plenty:
- What I worked on: the request, account or ticket, in plain words.
- What changed: a decision, a new requirement, a scope shift, and who asked for it.
- What I delivered: the file, fix or document that left my hands.
- What bothered me: one line, honestly. Patterns in this line are the most useful thing the journal produces.
Numbers help when you have them. "Cut the deck from 40 slides to 18 after the onsite review" is worth ten times "worked on deck".
Where should you keep it?
Somewhere you own, not on a company laptop. If you leave or the device is reimaged, a journal on corporate storage goes with it. A notes app synced to your personal account, a private document, or a plain paper notebook all work. Leave out client names, confidential figures and anything covered by your employment agreement. Describe the work, not the client's secrets.
The one tool I would avoid is a public blog. My old posts here were half diary and half teaser, and neither half served a reader. A private journal lets you be blunt; a public post should be written for someone else's problem.
How do you keep going after a break?
Do not try to fill the gap. Start with today. Reconstructing six missing months is the task that makes people give up on the first evening. If a few big items from the gap matter for an upcoming review, write them as a single catch-up entry and move on.
Then tie the habit to something that already happens every day: shutting the laptop, the commute home, the last call. The entry is the last thing you do before you stop work. Missing a day is fine. Missing a week is the signal to shorten the format rather than abandon it.
What do you get back from it?
Three things. Appraisal conversations become specific, because you walk in with a list rather than impressions. Bad patterns become visible: the same manager behaviour, the same kind of late requirement change, the same account causing weekend work. And when you eventually decide to move on, updating your CV takes an hour instead of a weekend.
The lesson from a long gap is simple. The work carries on during those months; only the record stops, and that is the part you cannot get back later.