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Note taking has become such a core part of my process, no matter what it is. You’re always learning (or at least, ideally, you should be), whether it’s at work

Note taking has become such a core part of my process, no matter what it is. You’re always learning (or at least, ideally, you should be), whether it’s at work or engaged in a hobby, and I find it invaluable to record the things that I learn and in which situations I learn them, because I’ve noticed that even if I “learn” something now, I probably won’t remember in a week, much less in a month or a year. At some point I grew tired of googling for a certain command usage in Linux yet again, or the solution to a certain sort-of-rare problem that crops up every couple of months but it would be a waste of effort to memorize what it is. So I started recording it. I have tons of text files filled with solutions, command usages, tips on possible problems/bugs, issues I’ve run into and what caused them, etc. I’ll even take notes on what programming practices seem to lead to issues and my thoughts about it, as well as resources I can find about it about better practices that avoid the problem. Programming, using Linux, learning Starcraft 2, learning guitar, learning a new programming language. I’ve reached a point where if I have to google something a second time, it gets written down. Hell, I think it makes more sense to turn your question around - why aren’t you keeping any notes? Human memory is abjectly terrible, and becomes worse the more time passes until it’s less a “saved image” and more of a drawing of a painting of a polaroid of an image of a memory, filtered through years of experiences and growth.

hliyan 7y ago
Writing notes is part of my thinking process too. Sometimes people would find me staring at a list of just 3-4 items on a piece of scrap paper, or a whiteboard with just three boxes connected with arrows (usually representing a part of a system) and ask me, "That's just 3-4 items, why do you need to write it down?" For some reason, getting it out of your head into a physical medium helps to reason about it better.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  100% agree as I mentioned in another comment. The act of writing or verbalizing allows you to assimilate knowledge in a way that is just completely absent otherwise. Sometimes I simply CANNOT get something clear in my mind until I write it down as clearly as I would if I were writing a README for public consumption.
xwowsersx 7y ago
Keeping some notes on things you google over and over again kind of makes sense, but honestly I find that it takes just as long it not longer to find it in my notes than it does to just Google it. Search is so fast and accurate, why do I really need to write it down when I can pull it up in my browser? For deeper topics, I totally get it (as in some of the examples you provided), but for snippet things like that, I just don't see the advantage of keeping it in my notes. Hell, the few times I've done that, I forgot it was even in my notes and just Googled anyways. Even bookmarks end up being ignored and I search again rather than finding my bookmark! I completely understand the inclination though and (perhaps self-contradictorily) I myself use Raindrop to save and organize things I find online. But I rarely end up doing anything with them. I guess the point is that writing things down makes sense to me when either a) the act of writing itself is beneficial or b) it's more involved than a Linux snippet or the like...something that ends up more like a personal README. I do hear your points though and genuinely like to hear about other people's process so thank you for sharing.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  I really, really, really don’t agree about how long it takes to Google. I’ve actively compared how long it takes. There’s no comparison. Emacs with fuzzy search is insanely fast and I can find anything within seconds. And google - it really isn’t that fast. You end up trawling through anywhere from 1-5 different sites looking for the exact right piece of information and the right context, then you need to scroll through them, evaluate the different answers because they end up answering different things, then you try different solutions because you don’t remember which one was correct. It all adds up. I spent this year learning how to use Docker and I feel this was the perfect use case. A lot of obscure incantations to do things and the documentation is ... well, extensive. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and exactly where it is, it can take what feels like forever to find what you need, when you just want to keep working. Instead, I can refer to my notes within seconds for the exact pre-crafted commands that do everything I need, plus supplementary information about pitfalls and issues I’ve run into. And the longer it takes, even if it’s just 10-20 seconds longer (and it’s usually minutes longer), the longer it takes to get back into what you were doing before. I try to keep context switches as minimal as possible, and google simply isn’t precise enough compared to a hand-crafted knowledge database with the right tools. Hell, since I use Emacs for nearly everything, I can pretty much switch to my notes immediately. I’ve reached a point where it really annoys me when I have to google, because I know how long it can take to find a workable solution.

hliyan 7y ago

Writing notes is part of my thinking process too. Sometimes people would find me staring at a list of just 3-4 items on a piece of scrap paper, or a whiteboard with just three boxes connected with arrows (usually representing a part of a system) and ask me, "That's just 3-4 items, why do you need to write it down?" For some reason, getting it out of your head into a physical medium helps to reason about it better.

xwowsersx 7y ago
100% agree as I mentioned in another comment. The act of writing or verbalizing allows you to assimilate knowledge in a way that is just completely absent otherwise. Sometimes I simply CANNOT get something clear in my mind until I write it down as clearly as I would if I were writing a README for public consumption.

xwowsersx 7y ago

Keeping some notes on things you google over and over again kind of makes sense, but honestly I find that it takes just as long it not longer to find it in my notes than it does to just Google it. Search is so fast and accurate, why do I really need to write it down when I can pull it up in my browser? For deeper topics, I totally get it (as in some of the examples you provided), but for snippet things like that, I just don't see the advantage of keeping it in my notes. Hell, the few times I've done that, I forgot it was even in my notes and just Googled anyways. Even bookmarks end up being ignored and I search again rather than finding my bookmark! I completely understand the inclination though and (perhaps self-contradictorily) I myself use Raindrop to save and organize things I find online. But I rarely end up doing anything with them. I guess the point is that writing things down makes sense to me when either a) the act of writing itself is beneficial or b) it's more involved than a Linux snippet or the like...something that ends up more like a personal README. I do hear your points though and genuinely like to hear about other people's process so thank you for sharing.

jplayer01 7y ago
I really, really, really don’t agree about how long it takes to Google. I’ve actively compared how long it takes. There’s no comparison. Emacs with fuzzy search is insanely fast and I can find anything within seconds. And google - it really isn’t that fast. You end up trawling through anywhere from 1-5 different sites looking for the exact right piece of information and the right context, then you need to scroll through them, evaluate the different answers because they end up answering different things, then you try different solutions because you don’t remember which one was correct. It all adds up. I spent this year learning how to use Docker and I feel this was the perfect use case. A lot of obscure incantations to do things and the documentation is ... well, extensive. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and exactly where it is, it can take what feels like forever to find what you need, when you just want to keep working. Instead, I can refer to my notes within seconds for the exact pre-crafted commands that do everything I need, plus supplementary information about pitfalls and issues I’ve run into. And the longer it takes, even if it’s just 10-20 seconds longer (and it’s usually minutes longer), the longer it takes to get back into what you were doing before. I try to keep context switches as minimal as possible, and google simply isn’t precise enough compared to a hand-crafted knowledge database with the right tools. Hell, since I use Emacs for nearly everything, I can pretty much switch to my notes immediately. I’ve reached a point where it really annoys me when I have to google, because I know how long it can take to find a workable solution.