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A diary is a very useful tool to add information for and about your work effortless. Since the entries of your diary are records, there is no need to keep them up-to-date. You diary is an invaluable tool to remember bits of information that will otherwise get washed away by the tremendous amount of information you are confronted with every day. It also helps you stay focussed on your tasks and helps to incorporate the continuous improvement process into your daily work. Last but not least, it is also a communication tool with your team mates, since they can also profit from your discoveries and decisions.

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titleOrganize your Work

A diary allows you to plan for the day. Working on a plan helps you to get focussed and find important details about the tasks you want to accomplish. Although we know that planning is everything, the plan is nothing, in short iterations it is feasible to try to stick to your plan. This allows you to keep track on how you are doing in closing your tasks.

For every event on you working day, add an event document to your day. This event document will store every piece of information you regard to be valuable for later use. You may even tag these event documents with a subject, categories, and tags. This will make it easier to find related information or keep going on a theme of tasks that you work on over several days.

Note that you should not duplicate the information you already have in your JIRA. Your developer diary will automatically add the list of tasks you fixed on a particular day. If you find it easier to record information in your wiki than in your JIRA task, then create a new page in your wiki. Consider to choose the event doctype and link the new page with your JIRA task.

At the end of your working day, have a look at what you have done and run a short, personal retrospective. Describe what went well and where you can improve. Write it down and define actions to actually act on your insights. This organization of your work will be part of your improvement cycle and will enhance your happiness.

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titleTool of Learning

Your diary is one of your tools to learn and improve yourself. Get the things done that are meaningful to your life! It does this by

  • Supporting your planning activities to focus on what is to be done next
  • Logging and therefore remembering what you have done recently
  • Supporting your self-reflection to find obstacles to remove and personal work habits to improve
Quote External
authorOscar Wilde
sourceThe Importance of Being Earnest

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

You may also put this plan-do-check-act cycle you apply on a daily basis a little but further and start your working week with a short plan you scribble on your week document. Since you are planning for a couple of days, be quite coarse on these topics. But at the end of the week do not miss the chance to run a private retrospective on what you have done and where you can improve.

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titleGames make us happy
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idGames make us happy

Jane McGonigal tells us why games make us happy:

  1. There is a defined goal to achieve which provides you with a sense of purpose.
  2. There are rules you have to follow that are known in advance.
  3. There is a feedback system that instantaneous allows you to determine you current state of play.
  4. And finally you are voluntary participating: You accept the goal and the rules.

Source:

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template$[Name] (${Authors}, ${Publication Date})
documentPDAC:McGonigal2011
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titleWork can make us happy

If we align our daily work with this foundations of happy gaming, we have to

  1. define the goal of our work.
  2. know the processes and tools that help us to achieve this goal.
  3. have feedback on what we have already accomplished and what is left to do for us.
  4. make us realize that we have chosen to do the job.
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titleJob of a Software Developer

For sure this list cannot be matched easily to every job description. Therefore we assume that we focus on work related to software development and software developers in particular. Nonetheless the last one in this list is still not that easy to align with the software developer's daily work. But you can always vote with your feet if you prefer the chance of a change to the better against some form of security. This is certainly a personal decision and we do not want to focus on this one.

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titleDiary as a Tool

Instead we want to show that a diary is a valuable tool to achieve the first three by applying the following steps:

  1. Before your start working in the morning, define your goal for the day. State this goals in written form so you can access it quickly.
  2. Know your processes and have your tools prepared to be used.
  3. Have your work broken down into meaningful tasks. These can be checked once you are done with it. The list of accomplished tasks and the list of tasks that still have to be done, is the feedback system to guide you through the day.

The diary will surely not ensure that your work is more structured from the moment you start using it. But it helps you to envision your goal and will help you to find a way to a happy working day, step by step. The overview over events can also easily be used to be prepared for your daily stand-up meeting to communicate your work with your team mates.

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