Disclosure: I made this logbook and sell it on Amazon, so I earn a royalty when you buy a copy. The Amazon link is also an affiliate link: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You don't pay more. See the disclosure for details.
The Solo Builder's Logbook
Plan the week. Log the build. Ship it. An undated paper logbook for people who build alone, organized in six 4-week build cycles so each project's plan, weekly pages, build logs and retro sit together. No flipping from the front of the book to the back.
When you build alone, the plan, the code, the clients and a growing list of tool logins all live in your head. Before designing this logbook, I read through dozens of planner, password-book and developer-notebook reviews on Amazon. The top complaints were books too big to carry, monthly and weekly pages far apart, no page numbers, and cramped writing space. This book is built to fix exactly those.
What's inside
| Section | What it's for | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| Idea bank | Park ideas and score them on excitement, effort and money before you commit. | 3 |
| Cycle plan | One project focus, a ship goal, four weekly milestones, risks, and a sketch area for the architecture. | 2 per cycle |
| Weekly spread | Top 3 outcomes, Monday to Sunday, an hours tracker, income and a quick shipped / stuck / next review. | 2 per week |
| Build log + sketch | Session goal and first action, a margin column to flag blockers, done items and follow-ups, plus a dot-grid page. | 2 per week |
| Ship & retro | A launch checklist and an honest look back at the end of each cycle. | 2 per cycle |
| Accounts & Stack log | Logins, 2FA method, backup-code location, renewals and license keys for the tools you build with. 33 entries. | 12 |
| Notes | Dot grid for anything else. | 8 |
Designed around what planner buyers complain about
What it does
- Undated: start any week, and a skipped week wastes nothing
- Each cycle's plan, weeks and retro sit together
- Numbered pages, a contents page and a project index
- Printed marks on the page edge for each section
- Corner marks on every page for clean phone scans
- Weeks start on Monday, everywhere
Good to know
- Glued paperback: it won't lie completely flat
- Standard print paper: ballpoint, pencil or fine-tip pens work best; gel pens and markers may show through
- Keep it at home if you use the Accounts log, and never write crypto seed phrases in it
Paper first, digital later
Sketch the flow, plan the week and think on paper, away from the screen. When a page is worth keeping, scan it with your phone's document scanner (for example in Apple Notes or Google Drive). The corner marks help the app find the page edges, and the tags you write at the top make the scan easy to find later.
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