My process is to keep bullet points of my day as I accomplish things that (and this is important) he needs to know. Managers don’t need to know about every phone call, meeting, DB restore, etc. you do during the day (unless they feel they need to be and we call those people MICRO-MANAGERS. We don’t like them.) Track the important things and send the status report at day’s end. If you need to involve the Manager in anything else of a higher importance send a different email as the need arises; or hit them up on OCS, Twitter, or the phone for Pete’s sake.

Jeremiah – same here. I used to think it sucked. When I first started doing it, I was working for a company that made us do Daily Promises: the equivalent of these status reports every single day. It was mind-numbing.

Initially, it seemed like such an onerous task, but once I became used to doing status reports I found that they helped me to keep myself on track. Essentially, once a week, I’m telling my manager “You counted on me to do ABC and I did it. I’m now telling you that I plan on doing XYZ.” It helps me keep a good balance between what I want to do and what I need to be doing. I usually add a questions/comments/concerns section at the end. It’s almost always blank, but if something is in there it’s probably something that I’ve been bugging management about for a while.