Record your work

I saw the pertinent video by Chris Albon on Don't do invisible work at '22's normconf. He evangelizes broadcasting your work to know what value one provides which helps with career progression. Given we are forgetful animals, we need to physically log work so that we know what to broadcast.

The following snip via this is a command-line (zsh) utility that lets you record work items:

rw() {
    WORK_FILE="${WORK_FILE:-$HOME/.work.log}"
    BACKUP_FILE="$WORK_FILE.bck"
    # head insert into backupfile
    echo "`date +'%Y-%m-%d'` $@" | cat - $WORK_FILE > $BACKUP_FILE
    # preserve simlink
    cat $BACKUP_FILE > $WORK_FILE
}

~/.work.log -> ~/Google Drive/.work.log symlinked off machine

Improvements:

  • have sections to log multiple work streams

  • sqllite instead of POT

  • optionally specify time spent in fractional hours from time of insertion