Do you keep one ? How does it look like ? What do you write in it ?

I found tghe idea floating around but I'd love some ideas about how to do it !

Hi, sorry for the brief reply, but not too well actually..

1. MS Word doc.
2. Writing this is the last thing I do before bed each night.
3. What all I achieved goes in. Including new thoughts, ideas, conversations, readings, writings etc etc. All academic related stuff.
4. All that confused me/bothered me in the day and didnt achieve.

Thats it. makes sense actually to keep one...

Hi,

I'm about 2 months into my phd and i have kept a 'journal' from day 1 as I did this for my masters and found it really useful. mine is basically just a plain notebook, and every morning i write down what i want to achieve that day, e.g. read a certain paper, complete an experiment etc. then during the day i add pretty much anything that pops into my head, such as ideas, other things i need to do, emails i need to send... then at the end of the day i go through it and check off tasks i have completed.

sounds pretty time-consuming but once you're into the habit its pretty easy, you don't have to write much and it can even be just a few words jotted down to remind you of something. i find it much better to have all my scribbles in one place rather than on loads of random bits of paper!

i also use it to write down anything that hasn't gone so well (or things that have!), things that annoyed me etc as i find writing these things down really helps.

Two years in and didn't keep one but convinced its the only way now ... even if you stop 5-10 minutes earlier and type in main events of the day & what is left to be done. Can always be handy for progress reports.

I have the template open always on the PC and can update on the fly.

ok, I'm the worst person to give any advice on this, because I am really bad with anything that requires a routine... but I wanted to suggest something anyway. It would be very easy to create an online blog, that you can access from anywhere in the world. You don't have to make it public, you can lock it to others, or just allow some parts of it to people you work with etc. Here is how you can set up one (apologies if you already know how): (up)

https://www.blogger.com/start

I use a whiteboard with tasks to do, ideas etc. Its very satisfying when you wipe something off!

Not at home????

Lab-based PhDs normally have to keep a journal; it officially belongs to the sponsor of the research and they retain it for future reference. Mind you they won't be able to read a word; my handwriting is so bad even I can't understand half of it anymore.

Thanks for the replies ! I want to start one too, since I need more focus. But Ill go for a paper-and-pen one, since in the evening the comp is ussually ocupied by DH.

This might come in useful too: ;-)

http://journals.cafepress.com/item/compost-phd-journal/22208977

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This might be useful to someone:

http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/sss/ilscommunity/researchanddevelopment/ResearchDiary.pdf