Since starting my current position at FuelFWD, I’ve been working daily on two text files (in markdown format). Using these two files has given me a lot of focus and sense of accomplishment – I wish I did this in my previous jobs as well! I’m sharing the system with you, in case you might find it useful.
The first file is simple enough: it’s called todo.md, and contains, for each of the days I work, what I accomplished that day. The accomplishments are briefly described. For example:
Done 2025-01-22
- [ADMIN] Buy pingdom
- Catch up with X/Y on next steps for accuracy
- Review PR of Z to fix references.
- Improve cost overview
- Review alerts, open PR to reduce alert level of 401s.
- Writing data for example actions
At the bottom of the file, I have a Todo entry, with a few bullets of things I need to work on in the near future. This part of the file is always in flux.
Each work day has its new entry, which starts empty and ends up with 3-8 items. It is very rewarding, as well as focusing, to move things from Todo to the day’s entry.
The second file, readme.md, is a sort of open journal of work. Some days, there are no entries; other days, there are multiple. Each entry has a date, plus a title describing it. Some examples of what I’ve written in these entries:
- Notes of important meetings or discussions.
- Interesting snippets of code or data outputs for debugging.
- Count of my holiday days so far this year.
- Notes from knowledge transfers.
- Messages of some importance that go through Slack or email.
- Results of a research process.
Some of these are immediately shared with the team. All of these are for my internal reference.
Now, why text?
- It’s very light (I have about 1MB after nine months of work).
- It’s easily and quickly searchable.
- It’s a format that will survive decades, since it requires only a text editor to be opened and modified.
If you like text, I highly recommend this system to you. It will allow you to create a meaningful representation of your daily work.
Text is power.