Do you keep a journal or diary of your day to day professional activities?
how do you do it? Pen and pad? word documents? dedicated software or tools?

I've been writing down a summary of my day since I started working as a developer.. for 13 years now. Ouch! Yet, I've never kept or archived any of them. I actually either surrendered them to my employers or destroyed them. Now, I regret it. They would have been good reads for self-reflection and just to measure the progress.

One of the reasons not to keep them around is the space, they take up a lot of it.
I'm wondering if there's a better way. Pen and notepad are a must for me, I like to draw and doodle. Doing it on a tablet or laptop is not the same thing.

When I heard about the reMarkable tablet, I got excited. It was the closest to pen and paper you can get, but the price tag and the battery are just unreasonable. $800 CAD for a tablet that is just another Kindle with a pen and runs for 2-3 hours on a charge, no thanks! Maybe if the price drops to $200-$300 I'll consider it again.

While at college, I've used Livescribe pen. It is a digital pen that records what you write and you can view it in a digital form (PDF or image). This was really great, but you had to have special notepads for it. That was a downer!

Now with smartphones and image recognition, I don't mind taking a photo of my notes and have them digitized.However, when it comes to journal notes, they are only good if you can search them. So, I'm not sure if this is the way to go.

What are your thoughts and experience?