The Daily Log

As a self-employed solo operator, one of the best things I do is keep a daily log. It began so I would remember when I did what, or what I committed to, but I quickly learned a side benefit was that as a solo operator, it is easy to have worked all damn day and feel you got nothing accomplished. Except you can look at the log and see that you actually did. 

I don’t know that the tools matter all that much—use whatever makes it easy for you to use—but for me it’s a Google doc that I just leave open all day. I keep the file open in a browser tab, and I enter things in it all day as bullet points. You could use a dime-store composition book if you wanted.

It’s just a daily record of what I did that day and things I want to remember. Last night, I cooked some amazing hamburgers for supper–That went in the daily log. I paid my electric bill – that, along with the confirmation number—went into the daily log. I agreed to meet someone for coffee at a date in the future. The date went into my calendar, but the conversation went into the daily log.

It gives me a synopsis of my day, and makes it easy for when I need to recall when something happened, whether that need is in the courthouse or the therapist’s office. But perhaps most importantly, it helps me keep perspective. I can look at my daily log from last year and see that today, a year later, what felt soul-crushing last year has been largely forgotten now. It helps me remember the small, otherwise unmemorable things in my day: That amazing hamburger, the good conversation with a friend, the action you took that seemed insignificant at the time but that changed the course of your year, in retrospect.

Because I know some folks will wonder about logistics: I keep each year in its own document called 2026_Daily, and I use the heading structure under Styles to organize the document itself. The document is broken up by week of the year (this is week 20, for example) and so each week is a Heading 2. And then each day is a Heading 3, and I enter items throughout the day as bullet points. This allows easy navigation via the outline view in the sidebar.

Every day I write today’s date at the top of the page, and so the days are in reverse chronological order. You can see a totally made up example of what this looks like here.