Ask HN: The best app to keep a work diary

I recommend DayOne, both available for Mac and iOS. Recently I've begun recording done MITs in Rescuetime, because I don't want to make time for writing a log but do need to jot down 1-2 lines on accomplishments. You could also just use a text file, or Trello. Oh and DayOne has calendar and sync features.

A good text editor! Make macro to open a text file named with the date of the current week. Make another macro to insert the current day and time and a new line.

Timely is alright, though free tier only supports a low number of 'projects'. Depends how you want to use it I guess.

After many years of trying everything, a few conclusions have greatly helped: only PLAIN TEXT, cross platform and date stamp every line item (add to your dotvimrc or dotemacs or js bookmarklet)

mindmappers? - bought and tried them all cloud subscription notetakers - yep pretty much all

Best to have data close at hand - Oh nooos, everything is locked in that proprietary app I bought in the 90's or cloud service I threw 3 yrs in.

After years with orgmode and vimwiki, I went back to Firefox http://tiddlywiki.com/ + vim as editor with https://github.com/docwhat/itsalltext/

if you live in emacs then stay in orgmode or deft.el for speed if vim, vimwiki

rsync is my friend

I think Evernote might be able to do the trick.

You can put the notes under a notebook, and then there's an "Expanded cards view" which comes sort of close to a real calendar.

Example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k2skt4exf5eg66e/Screenshot%202015-...

Try https://github.com/rodrigoreyes79/ttlogger

Try https://github.com/rodrigoreyes79/ttlogger

Workflowy :) https://workflowy.com/

You can use either the app or the web version. Best TODO list I've seen so far (simplicity, ux, etc)

for plain time tracking im rather happy with https://toggl.com/

Moo.do - Organize everything in a tree:) https://www.moo.do/

I use plain text file.

I use the following format:

  ----

  2015 September
  Weekends/Holidays - 13,15,20,23
  Wasted days - 26,27
  Project{Name}/Component{Name}
  01 - what I did
  02 - what I did
  ...
  Project{Name}/Component{Name}
  14 - what I did
  16 - what I did

  2015 October
  ....

  ----

So, I have a breakdown of my worklog by days and grouped by months. Multi-month components/projects have an entry in each month. Holidays and weekends are noted down for me to quickly know why there's a gap in the middle of working on a component. Whole days wasted due to meetings are also noted down.

My first suggestion would have been DayOne but since your on windows that’s ruled that out! (or moo.do) I think evernote is your best bet - maybe using a digital bullet journal style?

Or just keep a bullet journal open on your desk and photograph the pages into evernote at the end of each day. (That’s what I do)

Please feel free to checkout Devarist, it's an app we built for exactly this purpose.

https://devarist.com

It's for capturing quick daily notes, supports Markdown, Screenshots, export, daily standup view...

I really like using a calendar for this. I use Google Calendar and iCloud in Sunrise, on my MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.

Events get a title that provide the project. They then get more detailed in the description. I also have a Google Apps Script that pulls this information into a spreadsheet so it's easy for me to report on my time.

What I like about this system is that it's pretty universal, fits into my current workflow, and it's flexible. Every platform has a calendar app, I don't have to do anything fancy to get my time tracker up and running on a new device. I'm already using my calendar to tell me what things I'm doing today, now I'm also using it to tell me what I did yesterday. Changing dates, times, and descriptions is easy, you just edit a calendar event, you can even do it on the train home when you realise that you've forgotten to update.

Surprised no one mentioned iDoneThis.com I use it to keep a log of accomplishments of the day. You get an email at a set time (4:30pm) is what I set mine to. For journaling I use a emacs journal mode. It lets you create a text file with the date stamp.

To organise notes it's org mode all the way.

I use plain old Notepad on Windows. "F5" inserts the date and time which I then edit a bit. I wrote a program to total the hours and such.

I started keeping a log years ago because sometimes it seems like I can't remember what I had for lunch. :-) It a lifesaver when your boss wants to know what you did last week.

Keeping a daily log comes in handy. A former colleague needed to know the details of a project I worked on a few years ago. I had him search my old logs and the answer was there (weird complier switch for using QT).

I use markdown text files and display them as a wiki with yellow cms on my desktop.

not too calendary though

if you type .LOG on the first line of Notepad, it will also put a timestamp (just like if you had pressed "F5") https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/260563

I use TimeTrap (https://github.com/samg/timetrap) for keeping track of my time and pen/paper (Bullet Journal) for my work journal. In TimeTrap, I give the name of my current task in the notes and that will point me towards specific notes in my notebook.

I've been using Yast https://www.yast.com/ for about 5 years now and I still love the simplicity.

Google Keep : http://keep.google.com/

I prefer a combination of two methods:

Can't beat a regular pen and paper for quick recording of the micro-tasks you do to answer the question of "what did I do today, what advanced, what didn't and why?"

For things that need to be referenced or searchable, a timestamped flat-file that you synchronize is the way to go, especially useful inside of your git repo

I just found out about orgmode and use that on a text file in sublime using this plugin https://github.com/danielmagnussons/orgmode

OneNote