From ft.com
By Isabel Berwick
Logging daily highlights can help track the patterns of your activities — and frustrations
I’ve kept a diary at various points in my life, but never thought about doing it in a work context. That’s going to change, after talking to journaling enthusiast Ollie Henderson. Ollie is author of an excellent guide to career transition (another good September topic), Work/Life Flywheel. He posted about his journal on LinkedIn and I was intrigued — so I asked him to share more details with Working It readers.
He got started, it turns out, for the same reason that those of us who love personal diaries keep at it: maintaining a record of our daily lives, before it is lost to unreliable human memory. Ollie told me that when he started a career pivot, in January 2020, he realised that “thousands of moments that had shaped a decade of my work and life were a blur”. Relatable.
He went on: “As I considered my next steps, I struggled to identify the skills and expertise I could offer to other businesses. That’s when I started my work journal. I started by listing things I was proud of, exploring how I wanted my work and life to evolve, and focusing on what I’d enjoyed in my career. Once I had some clarity, I shifted to ensuring I didn’t forget anything else, noting key moments down each day: achievements, challenges I was struggling with, breakthroughs, and interactions with colleagues, collaborators and clients.”
The practicalities of keeping a work journal will depend on your individual preference, but Ollie started with pen and paper. This fits into your life with very little extra effort (or “friction”, to use the techie term), which is key when you start any new work habit 🔑.
Writing down short entries in a notebook, whether that’s “as it happens” or during a few minutes of reflection at the end of the day, allows you to record small things that otherwise get lost. When you feel you’ve “done nothing” during a working week, the records (let’s hope) will tell you otherwise. Logging progress and achievement can be especially important for people who are self-employed with no manager to “mark the homework”.
I asked Ollie to send me a photo (names redacted).
Ollie’s work diary
One of the great things about diaries (of all sorts) is that they can show us long-term patterns of behaviour, preferences and problems that we can miss in the tumult of our day-to-day lives. As Ollie told me: “I find it fascinating to see which moments I note down, positive or negative, because the same themes keep popping up. What does it say when you consistently highlight how good it felt to present your ideas to your team? You probably want to do more of that. What does it tell you when your manager consistently drains your energy? Maybe it’s time to look for another job.”
Ollie has since taken his journaling digital, because he wants to be able to search and find useful data insights. He could not find an app that did everything he wanted so he’s building his own, with the help of collaborators. (Follow him on LinkedIn to keep up with his progress.)
None of us are going to be able to turn back time (sorry, Cher). Not to get too deep, but work journaling might help us to make sense of the transience of our lives. Final word from Ollie: “One profound impact is my perception of time. It can often feel like time is slipping away. Stopping to reflect on what you’re doing each day gives the sense of time slowing down. Marking important moments helps you differentiate one day from the next. It stops the sensation of life blurring into one.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c8ef6d82-1118-47d5-a472-d133eafff284
