A Crucial Habit I NEVER Considered As A Developer

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/TravisMedia . The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.
In this video, we'll look at an informative article that I came across recently on Medium that will change your career!.
In this article, a senior developer writes about a habit that he started that I think, in hindsight, would have really helped me in my software development career and ultimately WILL help you, if you implement it.
Timestamps
00:00 The problem
01:42 I came across an article
01:56 Brilliant
03:02 The vital practice explained
06:02 How to do it
Video Resources
The article - betterprogramming.pub/advices...
The doc - docs.google.com/document/d/1P...
*This video was sponsored by Brilliant
My Newly Launched Coding Community - imposterdevs.com
Updated Udemy deals - travis.media/udemy
** Career Path Coding Tracks **
Web Developer - geni.us/jBigBd
Software Engineer - geni.us/AbMxjrX
Machine Learning - geni.us/GporLlT
Python Developer - geni.us/tv2FJBU
DevOps Engineer - geni.us/MgHtJ
** My Coding Blueprints **
Learn to Code Web Developer Blueprint - geni.us/HoswN2
AWS/Python Blueprint - geni.us/yGlFaRe - FREE
Both FREE in the Travis Media Community - travis.media/community
My microphone - amzn.to/3sAwyrH
** I write regularly **
travis.media
** FREE EBOOKS **
📘 travis.media/ebooks
LET'S CONNECT!
📰 LinkedIn ➔ linkedin/in/travisdotmedia
🐦 Twitter ➔ / travisdotmedia
🙋🏼‍♂️ Website ➔ travis.media
#selftaughtdeveloper #career #productivity
** Some of the links in this description may be affiliate links that I may get a little cut of. Thank you.

[@TravisMedia]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/TravisMedia . The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

[@cody_codes_youtube]

This is probably the biggest thing I did right when starting my career. I made a video on it, but I kind of want to do it again and refine my message in the video. I have work logs for a decade and I refer to them ALL the time! I can’t advise this strongly enough

[@TravisMedia]

That’s awesome you started that off the bat. Share the video here if you’d like (new or old).

[@AliciaSykes]

1:37 "So what to do?" I was really expecting him to say, "Make another major incident" 😆

[@TravisMedia]

That’s hilarious 😆. I missed a good opportunity there

[@loweman25]

One of my former managers encouraged me to do this(which I promptly didn't do 😑). My struggle has been to time box this every week and NOT let the "next task" always take precedent over the work journal (or whatever you'd like to call it). Thanks for the video reminder and experience on this, Travis!

[@michaelakpan8060]

Thank you so much Travis... for this. I reallly started taking my software engineering journey seriously late last year and have not landed any job yet... But having this in mind will help me track down my progress as i move forward to become the software engineer that i dreamed.... 💯✅

[@AndrewBrownballroomdru]

Thank you so much. This is a brilliant idea and I can see how it will help me going forward.

[@twilkpsu]

Fabulous advice. I need to do this. BRAVO!

[@priyojitdeb1891]

hey Thanks Travis, this is exactly what I needed.

[@tayyib4tech]

Thanks for sharing this. I really appreciate this video 🎉. Happy new year 🎆🎈

[@chrisdaykin3899]

Excellent idea. I'm still learning, but I will be starting a journal this week. I will document the progress so far, as well as things I've built in the past.

[@catalinagalan]

Excellent advise!!!! I will definitely start doing it

[@byrayhanhossain]

I was thinking of journaling my progress,work and life in general but i try it to do daily and there is not much of data or things to write and i just stopped. But i never thought about this weakly approach. Thanks for sharing this.

[@saint-cyrmapouka4634]

Thank you for this great advice. I would prefer to use a calendar to record great realization as an event not in weekly basis but depending on the exact time it happens

[@dmha1655]

Thank you for this.

[@taylorwilkinson9272]

This is something I plan to start this year! Great video!

[@iamsavishka]

Wonderful idea... Thank you so much

[@wendiborden6590]

Thanks for this reminder! Have done this different times throughout my career but usually as late night "I'm upset about xyz and need to remind myself where I have done good". I absolutely need to make it a frequently recurring task and also add to the resume. Any tips on a good resume? I've been with the same company almost 11 years so my anxiety has made it pretty daunting 😢 Appreciate your videos, only recently found you and really like the way you break things down. I've always enjoyed hearing things from multiple points of view, even those tasks I have a good handle on.. always fun learning new tidbits!

[@favourolanipekun4297]

@Travis Media, please can you make a video on how software engineering apprentices can make the habit of documenting their progress with examples

[@mdhidayat5706]

Hi Travis, Definitely something I am doing. It allows me to keep track on features created and show management that I have done X amount of work for specific time period. It's easier to negotiate total comp when you have things documented. Also this work logs help me to reflect that I have done so many things and came so far, thus reducing my imposter syndrome.

[@ayoubahabchane]

Sweet! This resonates with my recent realization that I have to learn to advocate for myself and fight my tendency to self deprecate. And I've also gotten into note taking so this should fit perfectly.

[@BertusVerbrugge]

If you would add the hours used to complete the task in your dev log, you can also use your dev log to better time estimate future tasks.

[@waynesletcher7470]

Thankfully, I have done this. Hundreds of text docs, recording my progress. It is even more helpful, now that I have my own personal database of my of personal data for my LLMs. You mentioned in a previous video that you have a small group of about 26 coders that work on their projects, a junior dev community. I would genuinely appreciate the opportunity to join this group of junior Devs. I am self-taught, solo wondering the lands of code.

[@TrevorR_333]

This is why I started using Obsidian heavily as a student. Too often I forgot concepts that I just read about or watched a video about. Having a reference for the thing I just learned definately reinforces the concept in my mind. When I get my next job I'm definately going to be keeping a work log of some sort in my obsidian vault.

[@edwardo737]

Obsidian saved my life

[@y_m_2025]

Here is my input to your excellent video. I've been in IT consulting for last 24 years specializing in implementation and support of IBM EAM product. For last 3 years I have been documenting daily activity in a single notepad file. I simply put the date, under that I make entries for each activity done. then by the end of each week transfer that log into a weekly time sheet. Its a little effort but that creates visibility for my management and it did help me during performance evaluation.

[@asmi06]

As someone with 20+ years long development career and is doing dev job interviews for living, I can tell you that nobody cares what you did years ago for the simple reason that you aren't likely to do it the same way today as you've done it those years ago. This question is usually asked merely to get a discussion going, thus making interview seem more like a discussion and less like an exam, as discussion is thought to be less intimidating and more comfortable for candidate then a barrage of questions, especially when company's hiring protocol requires having multiple interviewers at the same time (to prevent interviewer's personal bias from affecting the outcome of the interview, making it more objective)

[@the7odmelmoney]

Thank you, Sir. I will begin to do this now. There are not enough characters in the commit comments; a perfect way to elaborate.

[@ppiriou]

Keeping a log of everything we do in a week is very valuable to monitor our progress!

[@jsricochet]

Thanks Travis :) The extra advantage a journaling even daily is then to be able to keep your client or your project manager posted with what you did. There's nothing worse than having to scratch your head at the end of the week because you have to fill in your Jira planning and don't remember how long task A or B took. I also keep a 'Captain Kirk' like journal of the errors I had to fix, or the functionalities I had to implement and how I did. Iincluding links to documentation, Stack Overflow pages or blog post articles that pointed me in the right direction. Because yeah, we forget things we don't practice at least once a month.

[@TravisMedia]

Great points here. I’m taking notes…

[@bram_adams]

When I'm planning on locking in for a deep work block for an hour or more, I simply record my screen with OBS. Makes for a great passive dev log. Its like Twitch streaming to yourself in the future!

[@joncoedisko]

I started doing this in my current gig. It has saved me countless hours of re-work, and has given me the tools I need to push back on a difficult colleague and win a key argument. Everyone, please do this!

[@ArunKumar-bp5lo]

i have seen some good notion template

[@mikkolukas]

0:41 "I committed some code, there were no issues and I went home for the day"

[@vitalyl1327]

Emacs org-mode is an insanely useful tool for writing lab/work journals.

[@leojohn6702]

I have an idea. Create that web dev log, and make it public on your portfolio. Make the employer, manager to approve each of your log milestone, and create a timeline. Advantages: You will let the future employers see your actual progress, The manager will be able to put their references on your portfolio so you will be able to show true facts to your future employer, Be creative. Employers love that. Showing this new portfolio feature will definitely give you some attention

[@KickAssAndChewBubblegum]

My answer not only wins the interview,it also establishes me as the Chad Alpha developer: "Upon the first day at a new job, I saw the codebase was vbnet and access db. Obviously, I rewrote it all in C# and hacked myself into admin and demoted everyone else. After successfully performing a hostile takeover of their repositories, I made sure I was the only one that coike collot to master in case anyone ever tried to commit some chucky cheese childrens code behind my back"

[@fsmontenegro]

Really nice suggestion. One minor caveat: careful about how you write what is presumably internal/confidential information about your job. By all means keep a journal but beware of intricacies of intellectual property and the like.

[@TravisMedia]

Great point

[@victormultanen1981]

Yes I want to write log of jobs.

[@user-yl6qs9nx6w]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🤖 *Introduction to the topic of keeping a work log/dev journal* 01:53 🧠 *Sponsor section on Brilliant for learning technical skills* 03:03 📝 *Main section on the benefits of keeping a work log/dev journal* - Helps with performance reviews by tracking accomplishments - Helps update resume by tracking projects and responsibilities 06:07 🗒️ *Example work log template and format* 07:16 📈 *Conclusion on documenting career to aid growth and promotions* Made with HARPA AI

[@osmosischibulink182]

I'm a novice to programming, software development and software engineering. However, I'm already into it via my Master's program with zero basic knowledge. Please I need someone that can coach me from zero to master. 🙏 😔

[@eleah2665]

Great idea but there must be a better way than google docs.

[@TravisMedia]

I agree. But it’s a good starting point 😀

[@favourolanipekun4297]

@Travis Media, please can you make a video on how software engineering apprentices can make the habit of documenting their progress with examples