I’ve recently had reason to revisit my engineering/work journals from the past few years, and they are a revelation.

Like school copy books, its fun to look back and see what WAS your life like back in 1992 – a pre-web, 486 based world.

As a less than assidious, often late-at-night blogger, will I burst into flame on the spot by suggesting – heresy – that this professional essential will be overtaken by private weblogs such as LiveJournal or desktop based ugliness such as outlook. Sit back and imagine that – your last 10 years of professional interaction in a .pst file.

In reality this has probably happened already ready happened; But with articles like this one from LifeHacker entitled Revert to paper in ’06 maybe there is still some ink left in the ballpoint.

In my case, the record of my professional life is timelined and recorded respectively over email, written word log, yellow post-its and electronic notes. I switched some months ago to Thunderbird and Evernote – the latter definitely being an acquired taste which I have still not acquired – but it did allow the import of outlook notes, and it’s free.

Regardless of the mechanism, routine reigns; Everything gets logged –  feelings,  interactions, hunches, ideas, worries, solutions….

But the electronic capture saddens me a litle bit; sure it’s easier to find what you IM’d about with a colleague 12 months back, but there is something more tangible about written notes, particularly those taken after an event.

Somehow they’re more crystallised and more rounded than the notes taken while the event is happening; like say tapping furiously during a phone call.

Thankfully, I can still read my own writing….