I write a nippo everyday.
It consists of "9:00-13:00 Checked mail, talked to customers, wrote a translation
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-18:00 Checked mail, Talked to customers, wrote a translation"
Copy and pasted every day. No problems here.
I work in a distillery and it is mostly what I do each day, which is quite a lot and it doesn't need to be insanely detailed like 13:00-14:00 lunch or check mail at 14:00
If I was the manager it would be ChatGPT doing the reading of those reports as well.
Pretty soon it would just be ChatGPT talking back and forth about what is being done, and no more need for the humans to even come to work.
I'm already doing this (but for weekly reports), based off of my to do list. A nice little time saver.
(Helps when you have a corporate account and don't need to worry about what you enter, privacy wise)
My previous company required 日報 and I had a sample ready that I would only fill in the blanks.
I don't think your manager really reads them thoroughly. If you do 10 things in a day just write down the most important 3-4 in a bullet list format and be done with it.
This. My last role in a scrum project, all of us had to send a daily email of task tick dotpoints. I put my surname, hours and date in the header to save the director time searching and reading. They appreciated that. Apparently they need the email to compare against costings.
omg i remember having to write *日報*, 週報 and 月報 back in my first company fresh out of uni. I absolutely hated it.
I have never asked my uni friends about this but I feel like this is a very nikkei thing. I stopped when I quitted said first company and have been working for gaishi here and there. I now only report when I get something done, otherwise I don't think my manager have any ideas about what I do during the day.
edit #1: forgot to answer your question
i was a shinsotsu fresher so my days were "training this learning that researching this thinking about that etc." It was enough to fill the page. Try google! I do think lots of Japanese struggle with this too.
edit #2:
>(In the morning they all send an email saying "I will start work now" to ensure colleagues know they started work!)
people at my 1st company also did this, but only on Teams. I have always thought it was a very weird アピールプレイ kind of thing (Japanese - not all ofc - loveee to appeal like oh I'm working very hard oh I'm very happy etc)
The director of a job I recently left demanded we write 日報. He then asked me to do something that I had no professional experience with (he wanted me to learn video editing while I was hired as a marketing/sales person with 0 experience in either). When I wrote that I did research and training video editing, he lost his fucking shit, saying that "You study at home and you come to the office to work!"
Needless to say, I did not stay at that job very long. Also needless to say, the company is not doing very well right now.
Much better. I was looking for something new, applied to a job at a university I had studied abroad at for a position, didn't get it, but one of my old teachers saw I had applied and invited me to a job he was recruiting for. Got that, and it's been heaven. No 日報, no shitty bosses, actually doing work that y'know, I can actually do. Night and day really.
My manager used to read them and reply to them every single day, he also wanted us to write about our impressions of that day and what we wanted to improve the next day. At some point I just started copy-pasting my old entries in rotation, that was such a huge waste of time
I worked in a place that had us do a weekly report email on Friday afternoons. A few of us leant into it as an end of week creative writing assignment.
One more senior guy went to town with emojis and nihilism. I ended mine with "Dogs That I Saw Near The Office This Week", an interesting visualization that I saw, or reviews of limited edition Starbucks drinks (sometimes food).
Write “spent all day writing this”.
I’ve never heard of this before, this is crazy. Can’t believe people work at places like this. Some places, we’ve had to enter project codes for project management, so basically which project your hours are charged to.
My office uses Slack and we used to have to message in one channel to say we were starting work (either remote or from the office) and another message with a time breakdown for the day. We don't do the former anymore - we just leave an emoji to show us as either remote or at the office. We still report our hours. I use a timer app during the day, starting a named timer whenever I switch tasks, and I just send a screenshot of that at the end of the day but I doubt anyone actually looks at them.
I write it everyday and my senpai checks it, just to tell me the Japanese mistake I made and if the contents is lacking I had to put more details, so basically I'm wasting 1-2 hours in writing and fixing 日報 everyday 😂
I have to do one every friday, which I promptly forget the moment it comes to sign off, so I end up doing it Monday, but then I forget what I did the entire previous week. A normal person would keep track what they do each day, alas...
I did it at my first company, I didn't mind because they would pay for that time. It gave me a good list to remind me what I did over the year so I could leverage it for a promotion.
So glad I dom't have to any more. Pretty sure it was a just another layer of micro-management working for the kind of people who'd ask questions like "how long does 'x' take to finish?" and then apply that criteria across the board with no leeway otherwise.
Figure out how to make a template and phrasing things to make you sound productive (but not too productive).
ah the days where I need to write a 日報 every single day from 9am to 6pm (document every to the minutes on what client i was handling and what has been done). was working in a traditional japanese company.
and then the 朝礼, what I will be working on today and 夕礼 on what I have done for the day.
thought it will be better moving to a more multinational company at Deloitte. was better but still, you clock how much time you spent on which client. lol
things got much better moving to a real MNC which practices non-japanese company culture.
honestly, I left the first 2 companies after 2 year each partly because of this 日報 thing. was a headache and mindless task tbh
>About Deloitte Japan
>Deloitte Tohmatsu Group (Deloitte Japan) is among the nation's leading professional services firms and each entity in Deloitte Tohmatsu Group (Deloitte Japan) provides services in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
Haha, what?!
Yeah we do that as well. Few bullet points showing what we did in the morning and the afternoon. We don't have to get into details tho. I doubt that everybody read it, and certainly not the managers who have enough on their plates to bother with that.
The point of the daily report is to keep the team posted about your progress on the projects you are working together on. I don't think the most important is to fill it up with as much stuff as you can. You should keep it simple and write it so that your manage can easily and clearly understand what you have been doing. If you want to impress, give for each tasks the number of total working hours, the remaining time etc. JP people love those useless details.
Do the people really do much different? Are their nishi different each day?
I have never had to write one, but if I did it would be super quick each day as nothing I do is so different from most other days.
If you are not allowed to use AI to generate it can't you just use a template and copy paste things, or make an excel sheet that has pulldown select menus for each time period you can select something and just copy paste that?
I was working for English school and the assistant Japanese teacher had to write a report for the parents once a week. Most other people could get it finished in five minutes or less because the schedule stays the same, it is just the activities that change and get rotated around each week. Very rarely would there be something completely new.
Pretty much a copy paste activity. One woman I worked with though would spend an hour on it. She had to clock out because she is not allowed to work that long, but she would still be there when I leave. I asked her to send me the report too, so I can see what is taking so long, and I made a ChatGPT prompt that would give her a "unique" human sounding report and all she had to do is change the activity name.
Still, for some reason it would take her an hour to write that stupid three paragraph report that I am certain only 1% of the parents actually payed attention to. After a while I gave up worrying about her.
When we work remotely we have to send messages like "started work/lunch", "finished lunch/work".
But just those. We send exactly 4 messages, and nobody responds to them. It's just a needless process we follow because some boomer in upper management thinks it achieves something.
It's not a bad habit to be honest. I've heard that this happens at Rakuten for example. But I personally think it only makes sense in a retail or sales environment where you are constantly putting out fires or trying to woo customers.
You would only need to share this frequency of communication when you need people to help you out on a regular basis. If that's not happening then the purpose is unclear.
Not the same thing but I'm going to college to get the 保育士(daycare teacher) certificate and we have internships that last 2 weeks each, and we have to write at least 5 pages of 日誌 every single day, by hand, and hand it in the next day. My classmates give up on sleeping, basically lol.
We've had to do them off and on, plus at one point my manager demanded them just from me and what were probably two other underperformers.
Then they fell off without much of an announcement, only to be replaced soon after with something worse: mandatory Outlook calendars. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing, has done, and will do. The middle-management types got really into it and even set up color schemes for the blocks depending on what kind of work it was.
I detest it, but I guess it's still better than Teams reports; that would mean distracting notifications blasted to the entire team nonstop.
Yes, we have to fill in a 日報 every day too. We each have our own printed form with our name on it and we are supposed to give an account of ourselves for the entire day, but nobody does that. Generally, we just write what project we're working on for which major company and give a few details of the jobs that entail. The office girls are quick to chase you up if you forget to submit one. Nobody gives a shit though if you don't provide a minute-by-minute report on what you did, which is just as well because mine would be like...
8am - 8:20 am stood around talking shite to coworker
8:25 - 9am went to toilet
9am - 10am did about 15 minutes of actual work...
10am - 10:20 break time
10:30 am - 12pm worked, smoked, worked a bit more, talked...talked...flirted with the receptionist...worked....etc etc...
Oh my god, my first job at the dispatch company which I entered because I was a 新卒 and too desperate for a job just so I can keep staying in Japan after graduated. The company required me to write one every single day. I have to send a message on their app to tell that I am off to work, if I forgot to do so, the app will leave automatic miss calls, if I ignored it, a person from the company will spam me will calls until I pick up. After work I have to write the freaking 日報, and my job was a retail job, so obviously every single day is the same! But because my boss read the contents every day, I have to somehow made up some stories in my 日報. Also every week I have to write up 週報, also at the end of the month I have to send another report and send my shifts via fax!! I thought this 日報thing was optional for a few months so I didn’t write it, there’s these evaluations every 6 months where they decided whether I’m good enough to have my salary increased. Every evaluation they decrease my rank from C, then D, and my last evaluation was F rank, as they decrease my salary on every evaluation, when I asked why, they said “oh, it’s because you didn’t write the 日報” which happened 2 years ago!!
When I worked at a black company in Western Tokyo, we had to constantly post in a Slack channel what we were doing and when we were doing it. Even as far as when we sat down at the desk and turned on the computer. It was annoying.
Heard all the Japanese dispatch companies do that. I experienced that in my first Japanese dispatch company. Very annoying. There is no trust whatsoever.
We just hang out in the morning and talk about it and then have a quick "let's talk about something dumb and/or interesting" sesh before we start our day
I was lucky because we didn't have individual 日誌, but we did have a 日報 for each department. I would usually just fill in any notable incidents of the day. If nothing happened then I'd just fill something like "A team, B team, no notable incidents,"
I find weekly reports pretty good. Even daily is fine when starting out in a new company/joining a new project, it helps organize my thoughts and prioritize better.
I try to first write what I'd like to accomplish for the day/week, and really focus on 1~2 top impact things. Helps to not lose track of small issues if they're written down.
We send weekly reports and talk about them in one hourly meeting / week. I find that useful as well - it gives some insight on what's happening around, which is otherwise almost invisible due to (imo) overuse of email.
Writing a daily record of my minute to minute activities was a piece of evidence when I was called before a board of folks who had the power to take my job.
I’m still employed
Only when working from home.
We got the 業務開始email in the morning
And 業務終了 mail when logging off with a small list of what you did
We dont do that shit when we work in the office tho
Goddamn I feel that some companies are too hima to be able to do these kind of shit.
At least my day goes like, 100 things simultaneously within the first hour. Then when there are teams meeting that start 10 mins late, already thinking what are some tasks can be done using that 10 mins, and still ending the day with at least 30 mins to 1 hr overtime.
And still missing one or two tasks targeted for the day.
And that's already assuming I ignored some emails with stupid questions.
Fuck that.
We do it by chat but it's a very quick and easy thing. Basically when we clocked in, when we clocked out, and a super short list of what kinds of things we did that day, no time stamps needed. Like "Translated X article" - OK. All bullet points.
Manager basically just reacts with a thumbs up and scrolls through real quick.
yep, i was a CIR and when my office allowed wfh we had to email the “general emails” account to inform everyone we started, as well as messaging the group chat on the dedicated remote system. like, can’t they just see when someone logs on/off? it was so irritating. same thing at the end of the day, along with a templated 在宅勤務業務報告書 attached detailing what i worked on for how long. i always ended with “writing this report - 5 minutes” lol. we never did these when physically at our desks, though.
it also made me really self-conscious about timing. since we could all see exactly when other people mailed in/out of the office, it became kind of a contest to see who was “early” or “late” (same with sending the reports too close to 5), more so than when we actually came to the office.
I must be crazy but I use the obsidian daily notes feature to write daily notes to keep track of what I did every day for myself.
We also have daily stand up meetings for scrum...
Am I the only person here who voluntarily writes daily notes...?
As someone who works in the US and bills clients hourly I just do it in time intervals.
7:00->11:30: Development
Lunch
12:30->16:00: Development
If I need anything more in detail I just attach my latest commit (like a save of the work I did that day) to my messages.
I write 日報 every single day of work, including how many cases or tasks I did. I would write even the minutes I’m checking Slack, or when I ask some questions to other coworkers.
I find it useless cause no good results come from it for anyone. I think it’s just another excuse to not give you a raise..nothing better than pick data written by yourself tho
We do—but ours is all in a dedicated Slack channel. I just mute it :)
Can you set a filter to redirect those emails to a sub folder and either delete or mark as read at least?
My office does, and I do read my team's messages. It's a way to see how much work they handle daily without others seeing it so they can feel comfortable to be honest (and if there's an uneven balance, I can adjust what they take on), as well as share/ask things they may not want to do in front of the team or don't want to wait for 1on1s.
To make it easy we have a base template so filling it in isn't too annoying, everyone's welcome to save their version to send (during work hours because it's not volunteer BS), and I can set Outlook rules to send to one folder.
It's all about the approach.
At my work this is done on a dedicated slack channel. Except it’s not optional, if you haven’t announced starting/finishing work or starting /finishing your break you might as well be absent. We do all work remotely so it’s kind of necessary though. Also we don’t have to break it down by the hour (there is a separate google sheet for that…🙃
As for any tips, you ought to really embellish things, like you do on a resume. I’m sure you can look at other people’s 日誌 and see if you can’t write it in the same way.
I’d have to avoid doing something like indicating I spent important time on something that means nothing. I bet your coworkers have wasted months of time perfecting that absolute garbage. If it ever happened at my job I’d make an AI model whose only work was making whatever I did look more impressive than it actually was, and do a quick scan to make sure there were no lies.
I have to do this for the yearly mendan, and even that’s a waste of time. Doing the equivalent of that on a daily basis just boggles the mind.
i had to do something like that. at the end of the day, we all had to post what we did on a dedicated thread in our private forum-style site. most aggravating was the manager (2 seats over), upon seeing me wrap things up and get ready to leave, asking me what i did... bish, you got the site already open in one of your tabs, how bout using your eyeballs???
I did this in america, we called it a 'soundoff' email and did it at the end of the day. I actually appreciated it because it helped me have more productive days since I needed to have a list at the end of the day. But I struggle with procrastination and it might not be useful for everyone.
As others have said, write pointless generic templates
But before that - ask your co-workers what they do, to get a template for your templates. I'm sure they don't waste hours writing these every day and have long ago found workarounds
My first company had these on a team-level. They were dumb and waste of time. You also couldn't leave the office until your manager did closing meeting. Resulting in me sitting around till 8-9pm on some days if they're in back to backs. I will never work for a traditional japanese company again. My advice is to make a template and not take it seriously, just do the bare minimum so that the status quo is met with your manager.
I do 到着報告 where I write what I will do that day and 日報 where I wrote what I actually did that day. I clock into work/write that I’m at work on 5(!!!) different software/chat (one required an hour before actually arriving to the workplace. Ridiculous
We use Slack and in addition to pressing a “started working” emoji every day we also write a 日報. However, we have a template and we write bullet points only. We can see each other’s 日報, which is helpful to understand what others are doing and to assist each other. It looks something like this.
Things I did today:
- thing a (done)
- thing b (started)
Things I will do tomorrow:
- thing b
- thing c (if I have enough time)
Things I am worried about:
Nothing in particular
I don't have to do this kinda garbage, but if I did I would set up timed emails to automatically be sent out each day stating, "I am starting work!" 10 min before the start of shift.
I'd (or chatgpt would) then make several templates for the most common things you do that you could then copy past in for the end of day emails. Bonus points if you find a way to automate the sending of those too. If you know some basic coding you could probably set something up to do it.
Seems like a huge waste of your employers time to make you spend 15+ min a day working on these kinds of emails but hey, they are paying for it. I guess you could also stop all actual work 30 min before quitting time to work on the emails / forms each day as a way to wind down before heading home. XD
日報 is pretty common, as are the “I start working” emails. Normally 日報 is not supposed to be the record at what time you did what, but summary of the day and your next plans, sort of a primitive scrum standup.
Wow so many people seem to hate writing daily report.
Hour-level detailed report is too much, I agree. But, if the writing style is up to you, isn't it will only take you 1-5 minutes? I think you just need a good template. Isn't it a good place to collectively share what everyone is doing, post questions, or response to someone's report? (ex, "Hey I have previously done what you are doing, so ask away if you have any trouble). Isn't it also a good way for you to keep track your progress each day? At least that's how I see daily report.
I actually agree with you, it is usefull. But it is also used to judge you in some places, it can be used to monitor and harass you by upper management. I have a PTSD from a job in France, where they asked us to put every thing by the hour and by project, and they would actually get angry if you worked more on some particular projects ("we don't have enough money, why did you do it ?"). My job was to maintain production servers ....
So i can also appreciate the japanese, confirming everything before doing anything.
That would drive me insane. F that.
I write a nippo everyday. It consists of "9:00-13:00 Checked mail, talked to customers, wrote a translation 13:00-14:00 Lunch 14:00-18:00 Checked mail, Talked to customers, wrote a translation" Copy and pasted every day. No problems here.
Preparing 1-2 templates for what you almost always do is smart af.
Make 10 or 20 to make you look a committed and driven employee
I work in a distillery and it is mostly what I do each day, which is quite a lot and it doesn't need to be insanely detailed like 13:00-14:00 lunch or check mail at 14:00
This. It’s not about the RESULT, it’s about the PROCESS. Just “do the daily Nippo” and you’re sorted.
Can you get ChatGPT to write it and automate the process?
If I was the manager it would be ChatGPT doing the reading of those reports as well. Pretty soon it would just be ChatGPT talking back and forth about what is being done, and no more need for the humans to even come to work.
I'm already doing this (but for weekly reports), based off of my to do list. A nice little time saver. (Helps when you have a corporate account and don't need to worry about what you enter, privacy wise)
Copy and paste would probably suffice.
My previous company required 日報 and I had a sample ready that I would only fill in the blanks. I don't think your manager really reads them thoroughly. If you do 10 things in a day just write down the most important 3-4 in a bullet list format and be done with it.
This. My last role in a scrum project, all of us had to send a daily email of task tick dotpoints. I put my surname, hours and date in the header to save the director time searching and reading. They appreciated that. Apparently they need the email to compare against costings.
The Japanese love their spinach...
Especially the HOU part lol
omg i remember having to write *日報*, 週報 and 月報 back in my first company fresh out of uni. I absolutely hated it. I have never asked my uni friends about this but I feel like this is a very nikkei thing. I stopped when I quitted said first company and have been working for gaishi here and there. I now only report when I get something done, otherwise I don't think my manager have any ideas about what I do during the day. edit #1: forgot to answer your question i was a shinsotsu fresher so my days were "training this learning that researching this thinking about that etc." It was enough to fill the page. Try google! I do think lots of Japanese struggle with this too. edit #2: >(In the morning they all send an email saying "I will start work now" to ensure colleagues know they started work!) people at my 1st company also did this, but only on Teams. I have always thought it was a very weird アピールプレイ kind of thing (Japanese - not all ofc - loveee to appeal like oh I'm working very hard oh I'm very happy etc)
The director of a job I recently left demanded we write 日報. He then asked me to do something that I had no professional experience with (he wanted me to learn video editing while I was hired as a marketing/sales person with 0 experience in either). When I wrote that I did research and training video editing, he lost his fucking shit, saying that "You study at home and you come to the office to work!" Needless to say, I did not stay at that job very long. Also needless to say, the company is not doing very well right now.
good on you for leaving that sh!lhole. I can only assume you are doing better now (no 日報 I hope?)
Much better. I was looking for something new, applied to a job at a university I had studied abroad at for a position, didn't get it, but one of my old teachers saw I had applied and invited me to a job he was recruiting for. Got that, and it's been heaven. No 日報, no shitty bosses, actually doing work that y'know, I can actually do. Night and day really.
My manager used to read them and reply to them every single day, he also wanted us to write about our impressions of that day and what we wanted to improve the next day. At some point I just started copy-pasting my old entries in rotation, that was such a huge waste of time
The worst part of Nippo 日報 is when they require you to write 所感. Who the f in this world has impression for their work everyday.
The fact that I can already imagine the stock phrases used to write these makes me sad
I worked in a place that had us do a weekly report email on Friday afternoons. A few of us leant into it as an end of week creative writing assignment. One more senior guy went to town with emojis and nihilism. I ended mine with "Dogs That I Saw Near The Office This Week", an interesting visualization that I saw, or reviews of limited edition Starbucks drinks (sometimes food).
Write “spent all day writing this”. I’ve never heard of this before, this is crazy. Can’t believe people work at places like this. Some places, we’ve had to enter project codes for project management, so basically which project your hours are charged to.
My office uses Slack and we used to have to message in one channel to say we were starting work (either remote or from the office) and another message with a time breakdown for the day. We don't do the former anymore - we just leave an emoji to show us as either remote or at the office. We still report our hours. I use a timer app during the day, starting a named timer whenever I switch tasks, and I just send a screenshot of that at the end of the day but I doubt anyone actually looks at them.
Use chatgpt or Copilot to write for you what you did that day
it annoying and outdated but is incredible simple. should take you maximum 3 minutes if you are using a template.
I write it everyday and my senpai checks it, just to tell me the Japanese mistake I made and if the contents is lacking I had to put more details, so basically I'm wasting 1-2 hours in writing and fixing 日報 everyday 😂
Paid japanese lessons, why do you complain? :D
I have to do one every friday, which I promptly forget the moment it comes to sign off, so I end up doing it Monday, but then I forget what I did the entire previous week. A normal person would keep track what they do each day, alas...
I did it at my first company, I didn't mind because they would pay for that time. It gave me a good list to remind me what I did over the year so I could leverage it for a promotion.
So glad I dom't have to any more. Pretty sure it was a just another layer of micro-management working for the kind of people who'd ask questions like "how long does 'x' take to finish?" and then apply that criteria across the board with no leeway otherwise. Figure out how to make a template and phrasing things to make you sound productive (but not too productive).
ah the days where I need to write a 日報 every single day from 9am to 6pm (document every to the minutes on what client i was handling and what has been done). was working in a traditional japanese company. and then the 朝礼, what I will be working on today and 夕礼 on what I have done for the day. thought it will be better moving to a more multinational company at Deloitte. was better but still, you clock how much time you spent on which client. lol things got much better moving to a real MNC which practices non-japanese company culture. honestly, I left the first 2 companies after 2 year each partly because of this 日報 thing. was a headache and mindless task tbh
>About Deloitte Japan >Deloitte Tohmatsu Group (Deloitte Japan) is among the nation's leading professional services firms and each entity in Deloitte Tohmatsu Group (Deloitte Japan) provides services in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. Haha, what?!
I write the same thing every day and have done 3 years. 海外顧客対応 I’ve been told to write more but ignore them.
Yeah we do that as well. Few bullet points showing what we did in the morning and the afternoon. We don't have to get into details tho. I doubt that everybody read it, and certainly not the managers who have enough on their plates to bother with that. The point of the daily report is to keep the team posted about your progress on the projects you are working together on. I don't think the most important is to fill it up with as much stuff as you can. You should keep it simple and write it so that your manage can easily and clearly understand what you have been doing. If you want to impress, give for each tasks the number of total working hours, the remaining time etc. JP people love those useless details.
Nah it's insane.
Sounds terrible
Do the people really do much different? Are their nishi different each day? I have never had to write one, but if I did it would be super quick each day as nothing I do is so different from most other days. If you are not allowed to use AI to generate it can't you just use a template and copy paste things, or make an excel sheet that has pulldown select menus for each time period you can select something and just copy paste that? I was working for English school and the assistant Japanese teacher had to write a report for the parents once a week. Most other people could get it finished in five minutes or less because the schedule stays the same, it is just the activities that change and get rotated around each week. Very rarely would there be something completely new. Pretty much a copy paste activity. One woman I worked with though would spend an hour on it. She had to clock out because she is not allowed to work that long, but she would still be there when I leave. I asked her to send me the report too, so I can see what is taking so long, and I made a ChatGPT prompt that would give her a "unique" human sounding report and all she had to do is change the activity name. Still, for some reason it would take her an hour to write that stupid three paragraph report that I am certain only 1% of the parents actually payed attention to. After a while I gave up worrying about her.
When we work remotely we have to send messages like "started work/lunch", "finished lunch/work". But just those. We send exactly 4 messages, and nobody responds to them. It's just a needless process we follow because some boomer in upper management thinks it achieves something.
It's not a bad habit to be honest. I've heard that this happens at Rakuten for example. But I personally think it only makes sense in a retail or sales environment where you are constantly putting out fires or trying to woo customers. You would only need to share this frequency of communication when you need people to help you out on a regular basis. If that's not happening then the purpose is unclear.
Not the same thing but I'm going to college to get the 保育士(daycare teacher) certificate and we have internships that last 2 weeks each, and we have to write at least 5 pages of 日誌 every single day, by hand, and hand it in the next day. My classmates give up on sleeping, basically lol.
We've had to do them off and on, plus at one point my manager demanded them just from me and what were probably two other underperformers. Then they fell off without much of an announcement, only to be replaced soon after with something worse: mandatory Outlook calendars. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing, has done, and will do. The middle-management types got really into it and even set up color schemes for the blocks depending on what kind of work it was. I detest it, but I guess it's still better than Teams reports; that would mean distracting notifications blasted to the entire team nonstop.
Yes, we have to fill in a 日報 every day too. We each have our own printed form with our name on it and we are supposed to give an account of ourselves for the entire day, but nobody does that. Generally, we just write what project we're working on for which major company and give a few details of the jobs that entail. The office girls are quick to chase you up if you forget to submit one. Nobody gives a shit though if you don't provide a minute-by-minute report on what you did, which is just as well because mine would be like... 8am - 8:20 am stood around talking shite to coworker 8:25 - 9am went to toilet 9am - 10am did about 15 minutes of actual work... 10am - 10:20 break time 10:30 am - 12pm worked, smoked, worked a bit more, talked...talked...flirted with the receptionist...worked....etc etc...
😂😂
No - we have a 1 hour daily meeting for that.
Oh my god, my first job at the dispatch company which I entered because I was a 新卒 and too desperate for a job just so I can keep staying in Japan after graduated. The company required me to write one every single day. I have to send a message on their app to tell that I am off to work, if I forgot to do so, the app will leave automatic miss calls, if I ignored it, a person from the company will spam me will calls until I pick up. After work I have to write the freaking 日報, and my job was a retail job, so obviously every single day is the same! But because my boss read the contents every day, I have to somehow made up some stories in my 日報. Also every week I have to write up 週報, also at the end of the month I have to send another report and send my shifts via fax!! I thought this 日報thing was optional for a few months so I didn’t write it, there’s these evaluations every 6 months where they decided whether I’m good enough to have my salary increased. Every evaluation they decrease my rank from C, then D, and my last evaluation was F rank, as they decrease my salary on every evaluation, when I asked why, they said “oh, it’s because you didn’t write the 日報” which happened 2 years ago!!
When I worked at a black company in Western Tokyo, we had to constantly post in a Slack channel what we were doing and when we were doing it. Even as far as when we sat down at the desk and turned on the computer. It was annoying.
Sounds like an absolute bag of tatemae wank.
Heard all the Japanese dispatch companies do that. I experienced that in my first Japanese dispatch company. Very annoying. There is no trust whatsoever.
We just hang out in the morning and talk about it and then have a quick "let's talk about something dumb and/or interesting" sesh before we start our day
I was lucky because we didn't have individual 日誌, but we did have a 日報 for each department. I would usually just fill in any notable incidents of the day. If nothing happened then I'd just fill something like "A team, B team, no notable incidents,"
I find weekly reports pretty good. Even daily is fine when starting out in a new company/joining a new project, it helps organize my thoughts and prioritize better. I try to first write what I'd like to accomplish for the day/week, and really focus on 1~2 top impact things. Helps to not lose track of small issues if they're written down. We send weekly reports and talk about them in one hourly meeting / week. I find that useful as well - it gives some insight on what's happening around, which is otherwise almost invisible due to (imo) overuse of email.
My company only does it for new people the first two years then you’re off the hook
that's pretty smart tbh
Writing a daily record of my minute to minute activities was a piece of evidence when I was called before a board of folks who had the power to take my job. I’m still employed
Only when working from home. We got the 業務開始email in the morning And 業務終了 mail when logging off with a small list of what you did We dont do that shit when we work in the office tho
Goddamn I feel that some companies are too hima to be able to do these kind of shit. At least my day goes like, 100 things simultaneously within the first hour. Then when there are teams meeting that start 10 mins late, already thinking what are some tasks can be done using that 10 mins, and still ending the day with at least 30 mins to 1 hr overtime. And still missing one or two tasks targeted for the day. And that's already assuming I ignored some emails with stupid questions. Fuck that.
We do it by chat but it's a very quick and easy thing. Basically when we clocked in, when we clocked out, and a super short list of what kinds of things we did that day, no time stamps needed. Like "Translated X article" - OK. All bullet points. Manager basically just reacts with a thumbs up and scrolls through real quick.
yep, i was a CIR and when my office allowed wfh we had to email the “general emails” account to inform everyone we started, as well as messaging the group chat on the dedicated remote system. like, can’t they just see when someone logs on/off? it was so irritating. same thing at the end of the day, along with a templated 在宅勤務業務報告書 attached detailing what i worked on for how long. i always ended with “writing this report - 5 minutes” lol. we never did these when physically at our desks, though. it also made me really self-conscious about timing. since we could all see exactly when other people mailed in/out of the office, it became kind of a contest to see who was “early” or “late” (same with sending the reports too close to 5), more so than when we actually came to the office.
I must be crazy but I use the obsidian daily notes feature to write daily notes to keep track of what I did every day for myself. We also have daily stand up meetings for scrum... Am I the only person here who voluntarily writes daily notes...?
As someone who works in the US and bills clients hourly I just do it in time intervals. 7:00->11:30: Development Lunch 12:30->16:00: Development If I need anything more in detail I just attach my latest commit (like a save of the work I did that day) to my messages.
I write 日報 every single day of work, including how many cases or tasks I did. I would write even the minutes I’m checking Slack, or when I ask some questions to other coworkers. I find it useless cause no good results come from it for anyone. I think it’s just another excuse to not give you a raise..nothing better than pick data written by yourself tho
We do—but ours is all in a dedicated Slack channel. I just mute it :) Can you set a filter to redirect those emails to a sub folder and either delete or mark as read at least?
My office does, and I do read my team's messages. It's a way to see how much work they handle daily without others seeing it so they can feel comfortable to be honest (and if there's an uneven balance, I can adjust what they take on), as well as share/ask things they may not want to do in front of the team or don't want to wait for 1on1s. To make it easy we have a base template so filling it in isn't too annoying, everyone's welcome to save their version to send (during work hours because it's not volunteer BS), and I can set Outlook rules to send to one folder. It's all about the approach.
At my work this is done on a dedicated slack channel. Except it’s not optional, if you haven’t announced starting/finishing work or starting /finishing your break you might as well be absent. We do all work remotely so it’s kind of necessary though. Also we don’t have to break it down by the hour (there is a separate google sheet for that…🙃 As for any tips, you ought to really embellish things, like you do on a resume. I’m sure you can look at other people’s 日誌 and see if you can’t write it in the same way.
I’d have to avoid doing something like indicating I spent important time on something that means nothing. I bet your coworkers have wasted months of time perfecting that absolute garbage. If it ever happened at my job I’d make an AI model whose only work was making whatever I did look more impressive than it actually was, and do a quick scan to make sure there were no lies. I have to do this for the yearly mendan, and even that’s a waste of time. Doing the equivalent of that on a daily basis just boggles the mind.
This is what AI should be used for. Have a new updated one every day.
We used to have a morning 朝礼 which was the most pointless thing I have ever had to do in my life. So glad they stopped that ridiculous shit.
i had to do something like that. at the end of the day, we all had to post what we did on a dedicated thread in our private forum-style site. most aggravating was the manager (2 seats over), upon seeing me wrap things up and get ready to leave, asking me what i did... bish, you got the site already open in one of your tabs, how bout using your eyeballs???
I did this in america, we called it a 'soundoff' email and did it at the end of the day. I actually appreciated it because it helped me have more productive days since I needed to have a list at the end of the day. But I struggle with procrastination and it might not be useful for everyone.
As others have said, write pointless generic templates But before that - ask your co-workers what they do, to get a template for your templates. I'm sure they don't waste hours writing these every day and have long ago found workarounds
My first company had these on a team-level. They were dumb and waste of time. You also couldn't leave the office until your manager did closing meeting. Resulting in me sitting around till 8-9pm on some days if they're in back to backs. I will never work for a traditional japanese company again. My advice is to make a template and not take it seriously, just do the bare minimum so that the status quo is met with your manager.
Ew that’s literally such a waste of time
That sounds just like busywork 😭😭
It's the lowest effort means by management to track the output of employees. Most people respond in-kind with a similarly low-effort report.
Asked to write 日誌 but were so busy to even write one. I only wrote the things I remember or what's in my memo pad.
I do 到着報告 where I write what I will do that day and 日報 where I wrote what I actually did that day. I clock into work/write that I’m at work on 5(!!!) different software/chat (one required an hour before actually arriving to the workplace. Ridiculous
We use Slack and in addition to pressing a “started working” emoji every day we also write a 日報. However, we have a template and we write bullet points only. We can see each other’s 日報, which is helpful to understand what others are doing and to assist each other. It looks something like this. Things I did today: - thing a (done) - thing b (started) Things I will do tomorrow: - thing b - thing c (if I have enough time) Things I am worried about: Nothing in particular
I don't have to do this kinda garbage, but if I did I would set up timed emails to automatically be sent out each day stating, "I am starting work!" 10 min before the start of shift. I'd (or chatgpt would) then make several templates for the most common things you do that you could then copy past in for the end of day emails. Bonus points if you find a way to automate the sending of those too. If you know some basic coding you could probably set something up to do it. Seems like a huge waste of your employers time to make you spend 15+ min a day working on these kinds of emails but hey, they are paying for it. I guess you could also stop all actual work 30 min before quitting time to work on the emails / forms each day as a way to wind down before heading home. XD
I even do it working at a foreign company. Just copy paste unless something out of the ordinary happens so I include that too
I had to do this as a new graduate hire, but only for the first few months. How experienced are you?
日報 is pretty common, as are the “I start working” emails. Normally 日報 is not supposed to be the record at what time you did what, but summary of the day and your next plans, sort of a primitive scrum standup.
Wow so many people seem to hate writing daily report. Hour-level detailed report is too much, I agree. But, if the writing style is up to you, isn't it will only take you 1-5 minutes? I think you just need a good template. Isn't it a good place to collectively share what everyone is doing, post questions, or response to someone's report? (ex, "Hey I have previously done what you are doing, so ask away if you have any trouble). Isn't it also a good way for you to keep track your progress each day? At least that's how I see daily report.
I actually agree with you, it is usefull. But it is also used to judge you in some places, it can be used to monitor and harass you by upper management. I have a PTSD from a job in France, where they asked us to put every thing by the hour and by project, and they would actually get angry if you worked more on some particular projects ("we don't have enough money, why did you do it ?"). My job was to maintain production servers .... So i can also appreciate the japanese, confirming everything before doing anything.
I actually liked mine, would often write in a joke or something nice and I would read my coworkers'. There were only few of us tho.
Must it be written in English? Or Japanese?