If it's not documented...

It’s December 18, so not only is it almost time for Christmas, it’s time to start my new day planner. I love my little pocket day planner with its crisp white paper and gold leaf edged pages and world maps. I especially love the maps, which are absolutely useless for navigating but they're pretty. 

I usually track everything in my day planner. I have weekly to-do lists, a book list, a very unsophisticated spending and saving tracker, and almost daily records of small daily details. Except that recently, I haven't been tracking anything, so the last few  weeks of pages are pretty much empty. 

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I worked for a biotech company a long time ago. We manufactured diagnostic devices and reagents; and when I say “we," of course I mean the company and not me. But I also mean that we the company actually manufactured those things, right onsite. The company had about 400 employees in administration, operations, finance, sales and marketing, R&D, and manufacturing. Manufacturing and QA/QC were the biggest combined departments. This is apropos of nothing, except that it was only about 25 years ago, and the world has changed so much in that short time. I can’t imagine a company like this existing today. It was like working at a small paper company in Scranton.  I have so many stories about that job. One day, I’ll write them all down. 

Well, here’s one. The reagent manufacturing labs and manufacturing floor operated under what is called Good Laboratory Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices - GLP and GMP. These are official terms, which is why they are capitalized. And not being a scientist or a manufacturing engineer or a QA/QC professional, I’m not going to explain in any more detail except to say that the terms refer to a series of rules and procedures governing absolutely everything that happens in a GLP lab and a GMP manufacturing facility. Everything is written down, step by step - both before and after the fact. 

Our QA/QC director used to talk about accurate and complete documentation all the time. “If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen,” she would say. It was her catch phrase. She was so well known for that saying that it spread company-wide, and we said it about everything. 

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Wait, maybe this is why I’ve been lax with my planner - if I didn’t write 2025 down, then it didn’t happen. 

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What I like to say is that if it’s not documented, it won’t happen. I used to be the secretary for our kids’ summer swim team, and one of my responsibilities was to write the weekly email updates. In the first half of those updates, I would recap the most recent meets - because if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen. In the second half, I would let everyone know what was happening in the coming week: Spirit wear and suit order deadlines, Wednesday night B meet, Saturday morning A meet, Friday night pasta party, social events - summer swimming is a lot, and if it’s not documented, it won’t happen. Sometimes, I felt like I was writing things into being, as though the act of writing a thing out was what actually made that thing happen.

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I have two planner options for 2026: a Gallery Leather pocket size planner similar to the ones I’ve had for the past few years, or a very pretty Rifle Paper Company planner that my son gave me. The Gallery Leather has my beloved maps, and it also has a good number of extra pages for my additional notes and lists. I don’t love the color, though. I ordered what I thought was hot pink, but it turns out to be just pink, somewhere between bubble gum and carnation. The Rifle Paper one is prettier and it’s a gift from my son, but it’s an odd size and it only has five or six extra pages and no maps.  I have a week to decide between them. The recent documentation lapse is not the only thing that is making me feel unmoored, but it’s definitely a factor. The rest of this year is a wash, documentation-wise, but I’m going to start fresh in 2026.