Journaling through a new job: what the first 90 days look like on the page

The first three months of a job are the only time you'll ever see the place clearly. You notice what's strange, what people avoid saying, which meetings are theatre. Six months later you won't notice any of it, because it'll be normal.

That's the argument for writing during the first 90 days specifically. You are, briefly, an outside observer of somewhere you now work.

Week one: write down what's strange

Keep a running list of things that surprise you. The tool nobody uses. The approval that takes eleven days. The person everyone routes questions through who isn't on any org chart.

Some of these are things you'll eventually fix, and the list is your evidence. Others turn out to have good reasons behind them, and knowing which is which is most of the first year.

Separate 'I'm new' from 'this is bad'

Early on, everything hard feels like a red flag, because you have no baseline. Writing the two apart helps.

For each frustration, write one line on what would have to be true for this to be reasonable. Sometimes you can't construct that line, and that's information. Usually you can, and the frustration turns into a question to ask instead of a grievance to carry.

Track the competence dip

Everyone who changes jobs goes through a stretch of feeling much worse at their work than they were three months ago. That's not decline, it's context loss. You knew where everything was at the old place.

Note what you couldn't do this week that you couldn't do last week either. When the list starts shrinking, you'll have proof the dip is ending, which is far more convincing than someone telling you it takes six months.

Keep the receipts as you go

Write down what you actually shipped, decided, or unblocked, with dates. Not for a performance review necessarily, though it makes that painless. Mostly because memory is terrible at this and it's the first thing to disappear under a busy quarter.

One line a week. What I did, what it changed, who noticed.

Start your own private journal tonight.

Innera keeps your stories encrypted on your device. Free to start.

Download on the App Store

Free to start. Your stories stay encrypted on your device.

Write what you promised yourself before you took it

Most people leave a job for reasons. Not being listened to, working weekends, a manager who took credit. Then they arrive somewhere new and, within a year, drift back into the same shape.

So write the reasons down now, in month one, while they're vivid. 'I'm not going to answer messages after 8pm.' 'I'm going to say when I disagree in the meeting, not after it.' Read it in month nine. That comparison is uncomfortable, and it's the most useful thing this practice does.

Prompts for the first 90 days

• What surprised me this week, good or bad?
• What am I pretending to understand, and who could I ask?
• What did I get done this week that mattered to someone?
• Which frustration is because I'm new, and which is actually about this place?
• What did I promise myself before I took this job, and am I keeping it?

Keep it off company hardware

This should be obvious and often isn't: notes about your manager, your doubts about the role, or whether you'd leave don't belong in a work document, a work laptop, or a work account. That's true even at a company you trust.

Innera keeps every story encrypted on your device, which is the right place for the honest version of what your first 90 days were actually like.