I've been doing something kinda similar for a long time, more like a work diary than a ship's log. I don't write down times or non-work things I'm doing, but I

I've been doing something kinda similar for a long time, more like a work diary than a ship's log. I don't write down times or non-work things I'm doing, but I do keep a running log of everything I work on, including what part I'm working on, what I'm trying to get it to do, what solutions I'm trying, thoughts on them, any appropriate bug IDs, changeset IDs, etc. It's meant to be for my eyes only, so no worries about not offending anybody with what I really think of their code or appearing to be sufficiently productive to management or other such things. I find it very useful for stuff like reminding myself what I was working on yesterday, last week, etc, what I was doing on it and why, and that sort of thing. Being able to search for class names, bug IDs, and changeset IDs is pretty handy too for getting more insight into why I did something, even if it was a while ago. I think it helps keep me more productive too, since I don't want to have to look back on what I did yesterday and only see a couple of sentences.