How to complete your work log for Riipen Labs
Your work log is an important part of Riipen Labs. It documents how you spent your time, what you contributed, and how your thinking developed over the project.
Across the Lab, each student completes 15 hours over 3 weeks. The work log helps ensure that time is represented accurately and fairly, and it allows your individual contributions to be clearly understood alongside your team’s work.
Strong work logs do more than track hours. They tell the story of your effort, decisions, and learning.
Why work logs matter.
Your work log serves three key purposes:
It shows the work you personally completed within a team-based project.
It demonstrates how your thinking, analysis, and collaboration contributed to the final deliverable.
It supports program accountability and ensures project hours reflect meaningful work.
Solid work logs help distinguish your contributions from those of your teammates. This is especially important in collaborative projects where multiple people are working toward a shared outcome.
What counts as work in Riipen Labs.
Your logged hours should reflect all meaningful effort related to the Lab, including time spent thinking, discussing, refining, and deciding.
Examples of valid work include:
Participating in teamwork sessions.
Preparing for meetings by reviewing the company brief or prior notes.
Contributing ideas, analysis, or feedback during discussions.
Researching market context, competitors, or comparable examples.
Drafting your role-specific contribution.
Reflecting on tradeoffs, risks, or incomplete information.
Revising work based on peer feedback.
Updating the Decision Log or refining recommendations.
Integrating individual contributions into the final report.
Work logs should reflect both what you did and why it mattered.
Logging meetings effectively.
When logging time for meetings, avoid vague entries such as “meeting” or “group work.” Instead, explain what came out of the meeting.
Strong meeting entries describe:
The purpose of the meeting.
Your role in the discussion.
Key decisions, insights, or changes that resulted.
Example: “Team working session to review early research findings. Contributed analysis on customer risks, discussed two possible growth directions, and helped narrow focus to one priority area. Logged key takeaways for the Decision Log.”
Showing reflection and thinking time.
Time spent reflecting is valid and expected in Riipen Labs.
Reflection includes:
Thinking through incomplete or conflicting information.
Evaluating different growth options.
Weighing tradeoffs and risks.
Revisiting assumptions after peer feedback.
When logging reflection time, explain what you were thinking through and what resulted from that reflection.
Example: “Reviewed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) findings and reflected on feasibility concerns. Identified operational risks that influenced the final recommendation and shared these insights with the team.”
Connecting your work log to your role.
Your entries should clearly reflect your assigned role.
For example:
Research leads should reference sources reviewed, insights gathered, and how findings informed decisions.
Strategy leads should describe recommendation development and rationale.
Operations or technical leads should note feasibility checks, risks identified, or execution considerations.
Project leads should reference decision tracking, alignment discussions, and changes in direction.
Communications leads should log drafting, editing, and structuring the final report.
This alignment helps reviewers understand how your individual work supported the team outcome.
What strong work log entries look like.
Strong entries:
Use full sentences.
Describe actions and outcomes.
Show progress over time.
Connect work to decisions or deliverables.
Weak entries often:
Use one-word descriptions.
List tasks without context.
Log large blocks of time with little explanation.
Repeat the same description across multiple days.
Example of a strong work log entry.
“Spent 2 hours researching similar companies in the same industry and reviewing public case studies. Summarized key patterns in customer acquisition strategies and shared findings with the team to support SWOT analysis and growth direction selection.”
Final reminders.
Your work log is part of how your experience is understood and evaluated.
Clear, detailed entries:
Protect the integrity of your work.
Highlight your individual effort.
Make it easier to reflect during peer surveys and the HeyMilo AI interview.
Strengthen the overall credibility of your Lab experience.
Approach your work log as a record of your thinking and contribution, not just a time tracker.