Keeping a work log without writing all day
If you write a work log while you work, a half-finished export and a next sentence you have not thought through both have to be set down first. You then open a note and write one line about what you are doing, the context in front of you breaks, and the habit is easy to drop. Hina’s menu bar already has the day’s records. About ten minutes before you leave, you can fill in the work log from them, without keeping a separate running account from morning to night.
Logging as you go breaks the work in hand
You may be in the middle of code, with a decision not yet written down, or halfway through a sentence of copy. Switching to a note to fill in the work log means finding the cursor, the file, and your unfinished reasoning again when you come back. The more urgent task usually pushes the log aside, the line stays blank, and the note looks as if you did no work all day.
By default, Hina records which apps you opened, how long you stayed in each, and how many times you entered input. Those records are made during the day on their own, and you do not have to do anything more. Titles and page paths appear only when you turn on Record window titles and page paths on the Privacy tab of Settings.
The Trail for order, commits for results, questions for intent
Open that day’s Trail in Hina and read from top to bottom to see how the apps followed one another. Document titles and page paths you can recognize show, in order, what you changed first and what you opened later. A day runs from 4 a.m. to 4 a.m. the next day, so work after midnight still counts as the same day, and you do not have to join the two parts yourself.
Local git commits in Hina are for checking what remains in the code. What you asked AI needs separate permission and is off by default. Once it is on, those questions can help you remember what you were about to do. A question asked near a given time does not mean the work was finished. You can open the blog repository to see whether that change is there, or check the client’s site to see whether the change has gone live.
Four lines are enough to continue tomorrow
A usable work log is four lines: what you did, what remains, where you are stuck, and the first step tomorrow. For what you did, use the Trail to write two or three named things, such as changing the export format in the morning, finishing the opening of a release note in the afternoon, and replying in the evening to a client email about the schedule. The column of app time, sorted from longest to shortest, can stay in Hina. You do not need to copy it into the log.
For what remains, check local git commits, files you changed, or text you already sent. Writing, discussion, and working out a plan often leave no commit, and you still write them down. A repository with no new commits does not mean those hours left nothing. Where you are stuck should be something you can open, such as the real file used for the export, which you have not yet brought over to check the format, or the second paragraph of the release note, still stopped at half a sentence.
Write tomorrow’s first step as which project to open next and which file to check. If you only write that you will keep going, or that you will look later, the sentence would sound right on any day, and opening the note tomorrow still will not show where to start. After you finish, you can copy that day’s daily report as Markdown, paste it into your own note, and put the four lines under the copied record.
Write it for yourself tomorrow
If these four lines are written as a daily report for your boss, the sentences lean toward being tidy and complete. An unfinished step is easy to describe as already moving forward. It reads smoothly, but tomorrow you cannot tell which file to open. What you leave for yourself can look rough. A blank line is more useful than a polished sentence, because tomorrow you need a concrete entry point you can pick up, not an account that already reads as finished.
The next day, look first at where you are stuck and the first step. If they match a file you can open, continue from there. If they do not, scroll up the Trail to see which file you stopped on yesterday.