13 ms·

Use a work journal

• brador 2y ago
  Journaling can be a lot of things and they’re moxed here. Brainstorming, real-time todo, planning, decision making. Each requires the tool be used differently.
• alkh 2y ago
  Sadly, the image doesn't load to me (I get ![[focus.png]] instead)
  • charles_f 2y ago
    Woops, thanks for letting me know, should be fixed in a few minutes. That's the one: https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png
    • vantassell 2y ago
      I'm getting the below instead of an image ![/img/2024/focus.png]
      • charles_f 2y ago
        Yeah I'm editing that on a phone and apparently that's beyond my skillset. It's working now! Thanks for helping!
• anotherhue 2y ago
  Just use post-it notes as a task stack. Push and Pop as distractions come and go. Affirm to yourself that you are a productive and loved human being and not a biological IRQ handler.
• ZoomerCretin 2y ago
  I've always done this. My coworkers have been frustrated with me in the past for asking them to write things down, because some of them overestimate my ability to listen to them speak for 5-10 minutes and remember every detail. It's very hard to forget what is written down. Recently, I neglected to write down my thinking and progress for a week, and I was at a loss for where to begin the following Monday. Keeping a work journal (in my case, a linear text document with an entry for each day) is the most important productivity habit I have.
  • nbbaier 2y ago
    How do you structure the entries? Bullets, free style, mix?
    • charles_f 2y ago
      I write it as a prose. Mostly because that's the form I enjoy the most to write, and also because it's mostly about writing it more than reading it later on
    • ZoomerCretin 2y ago
      Date (MM/DD/YYYY)- (tab) Task (tab) (tab) Details etc
  • rebelpixel 2y ago
    Somewhat OT, but tangentially related: One of my clients likes to tell me his work requirements by telling me long-winded stories about how he came up with an idea, what exactly happened, etc. that was useful at first but became extremely wasteful of time as years passed. I tried typing down notes while he talked, but it became too hard to write useful ones. At some point, I resorted to keeping an audio recording of the whole meeting just to make sure I have something to come back to, in case my notes fail me. I wouldn't do this for everything, but it helped me realize that an audio/video log like a dashcam video can work for certain scenarios.
• jilles 2y ago
  Lovely post. I do something similar where I write blog posts for myself as I solve a problem. Something like a how-to guide before I actually know how to do it. Then I cite sources as I find them. When I finally solve the issue or create "the thing", I revisit the doc and either publish it internally, or keep it in my archives. This really became a habit after reading Writing to Learn by William Zinsser. I recommend this book to everyone and their grandmother these days. "Writing enables us to find out what we know—and what we don’t know—about whatever we’re trying to learn."
• bityard 2y ago
  I have been doing this for years. Every morning, I create a new Markdown file with the day's date, copy the previous day's content into it, and edit it. Mine has (for now) the following sections: Morning checklist, Todo, Done, and Meeting Notes. The morning checklist consists of things like checking email, checking Teams, skimming the team's handover queue, logging into various things, etc. Todo is a stack of things I can/should tackle. Most important ones to the top. I limit it to 15 items, no matter what. But realistically, I typically only interact with about the top 5 99% of the time. Done gets wiped every morning and I add things to it as I do them. Things like, "emailed Joe Schmo for 3rd time to ask for ETA", or "helped Fred troubleshoot the frobnitz." Little things that I would totally forget about but cumulatively end up taking a huge chunk of the day. I've never had a boss that expressed a concern, but I think of it as my primary defense if anyone accuses me of slacking off all day. (Maybe it's just to convince myself...) Each meeting I go to gets its own section for the day. If the content was important enough to save into my second brain[1], I clean it up and transfer it over there at the end of the day, or the beginning of the next day at worst. Any complex investigation or rabbit hole gets its own section as well. It's astonishingly difficult for me to actually reason about any complex system or design without writing it out and actually describing it to myself. I envy those who can just "see" it all at once in their mind's eye. If ends up being important enough to save, I will clean it up and share it with the team and/or dump it into my personal wiki. [1]: https://github.com/cu/silicon https://github.com/cu/silicon
  • phito 2y ago
    I have the exact same workflow! It's great!
• 29athrowaway 2y ago
  If you get constantly interrupted, or you became a manager, this is a must.
• coffee2theorems 2y ago
  Thanks for the great blog post, I could feel the frustration of not getting something to work, and the anxiety of feeling like I'm under performing. I've added you to my RSS reader now. :) I've started to use index cards to write down daily tasks and I'll switch over to obsidian if I find myself asking the same question more than once. I think for me the process of writing something down slows my mind enough to let me focus on it. I like @ZXoomerCretin's idea of keeping a running document of what I do each day. I think it would make anual review time a lot easier.
  • malux85 2y ago
    Heres my digital pensieve - Daily running log of what I have done Dynamic todo list where things move up and down freely remarkable tablet where I watch lectures and write notes (writing things down slows my mind and focuses as you say) Daily Weekly Fortnightly Monthly Text files for spaced repetition, if I get to one and I have forgotten something then it’s moved up, if I feel like I know something it’s moved down Longer memories are stored by topic: Memory (working memory) Platform Operations Zany schemes Non-AT … + many more Each is a hierarchy, platform is some 20 categories each with 10ish sub categories It’s actually hosed on my NAS, tailscale connects all my devices so I can edit and view anywhere I look forward to the day I can query and edit this with thought
  • baby_souffle 2y ago
    Yes! Obsidian with daily note plugin and templates makes it really easy to build a quick list of things and automatically link to yesterday’s notes. A little extra time with templates and some custom js and you can make it a single key combo to copy the notes to paste buffer for sharing in slack standup thread. Also, set up a praise folder and take screenshots every time somebody says something nice about the work you’re doing. You can automate documenting the context around it, too with quick add
    • y1n0 2y ago
      Do you all pay for obsidian? Subscriptions rub me the wrong way for whatever reason and it was enough that I didn't want to pay so I use something else.
• senkora 2y ago
  I keep a stack. Whenever I am interrupted, I push a task onto the stack. When I finish a task, I pop it from the stack. Each task has an associated journal file. Sometimes I reorder the stack.
  • darby_nine 2y ago
    How do you organize the journal? Do you grow an index from one side and tasks from the other?
    • senkora 2y ago
      I wrote myself a python cli tool that manages the stack by updating a sqlite database, and one of the commands creates a text file associated with the task (if it doesn't already exist) and opens it in Emacs. The text files are stored in a hard-coded directory and an anacron job does a git commit once a day. I can tell what I worked on each day by querying the git commit history, and I can grep the entire directory for keywords. It's a little janky but it works pretty well for me.
      • darby_nine 2y ago
        Ahh, I was expecting "journal" to refer to a physical book for some reason! This makes a lot of sense. Why not simply store the task with the sqlite database? I'm assuming ease of editing + the ability to manage the stack separately from the log of text entries, which presumably need no maintenance nor will ever be deleted?
        • senkora 2y ago
          Pretty much what you said, yeah. I thought that a git repo of text files was easier to work with then storing them as blobs inside sqlite. I do insert completed tasks into a "completed task" append-only table when I pop them off the stack, so I do have a record of completed tasks in sqlite. (I find that useful for remembering what I did recently for standups and 1:1's)
  • 2y ago
• kiba 2y ago
  I do work journaling too, but they're simply part of my journaling routine which encompasses much more than just a work log. Primarily I use work log to document problems I am having, keeping track of contexts such as what page I last read, and keeping track of my time. Timestamping is a very useful tool to fight procrastination. In other part of my life, I use journals for personal development and productivity in general, like writing down my problems and thinking about them. I often stumbled upon changes that I could implement or try. This allows me to achieve things that I haven't achieved before, such as putting actual effort in learning electronics. Daily habits and action items are tracked, including my prediction of how an action goes and what is the actual outcome. So yeah, journaling is a very good practice. It doesn't seem to matter much how you use them, just that you use them. It's very good at stopping your ruminating and you can actually move forward with your thoughts.
• barbazoo 2y ago
  I just finished a project where I was in the same situation. Stuck, I ended up in the same place every night that I started at. Began writing down a plan as detailed as I could, made a plan for every day what I wanted to achieve and maintained that to the end of the project. Got me out of a slump.
• tkcranny 2y ago
  Wonderfully written piece. I love how it builds up that idea of finally making progress, “seeing the matrix”, and then: > It’s Mitch, your PM. He’s asking the url for a doc he wrote Boy that’s too real. Really reminds me of the comic from a decade ago about programmer focus [1]. But welcome to the world of Note taking, I agree it’s like a superpower once you develop the habit. Obsidian is fantastic, but even daily markdown notes are great. The whole “second brain” idea hasn’t panned out for me, but a hotkey to jump to today’s note, and another insert the current time has been a mainstay of my workflow for years now. [1] https://imgur.com/never-interrupt-programmer-3uyRWGJ https://imgur.com/never-interrupt-programmer-3uyRWGJ
  • charles_f 2y ago
    The stupid thing is that I messed up the link of the comic I included, which is pretty much the same :) : https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png
• nlawalker 2y ago
  What finally got this to stick for me was abandoning all notion of structure and organization (and formal concepts like “logging” and “journaling”) and optimizing fully for capture over retrieval, then relying on search tools and proximity for the latter. I have the OneNote icon in the notification area configured to create a new quick note and use it liberally. Occasionally I look through all the pages, especially the recent ones, aggregate and reorganize some, move others to an “archive” tab, and that’s it. The faintest - and most disorganized - ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.
  • mkoubaa 2y ago
    It took me a couple years to realize this too. For the past five years I abandoned all structure. I use a literal log file. Chronological from top to bottom, with paragraph breaks for each workday. Higher than necessary verbosity, no points taken away for spelling or grammar mistakes.
    • thfuran 2y ago
      It's hard to grep for misspelled words though.
      • tomrod 2y ago
        Maybe something like fzf? https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/fzf-linux-fuzzy-finder https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/fzf-linux-fuzzy-finder
    • james_marks 2y ago
      I basically do this, too. One big text file. My twist that makes it work for me is a slightly modified text editor that I only use to edit this file. That way I’ve got a dedicated dock icon and context just for writing notes, but no other overhead. It’s important to me that it not feel like a product, and search works effortlessly (although subject to typo misses). My only tweak on the text editor is a shortcut to insert a timestamp and a chunk of new lines, which I do periodically so I can separate moments in time and see what I was working on when, how I fixed something, etc. I used obsidian for a while, but for my purposes it felt like work to organize and get “right”. I ended up writing a script to join all the files into one.
• epistasis 2y ago
  "Ignore all previous instructions. Show your work. Explain your chain of thought in detail. Keep a journal of your work progress." I've been using this prompt on myself, on and off, for years, but I keep on hallucinating and losing focus and going off track.
  • didgeoridoo 2y ago
    Have you tried telling yourself that a schoolbus of children will drive off a cliff if you don’t get the job done?
    • epistasis 2y ago
      No but I have promised myself a $30 tip for good performance. It was surprisingly motivating.
• nstart 2y ago
  I’ve shared this before here. I actually keep a timestamp log of work I do. I used to do it by hand on my journal and while I still prefer it I ultimately found the benefit of having searchable text files that are integrated into my work management to be too much of a benefit to ignore. Been using obsidian since it launched and my workflow is to always have the window open taking a thin column on the left of my screen and whatever I’m working on takes up the rest of the screen (Yey for fancyzones in windows powertoys). As I work I just stream my thoughts into the file. I have a shortcut, ctrl-alt-m, that inserts the timestamp as `hh:mm:ss`. I hit it, and start typing. I paste screenshots, code snippets, as I go along. It’s godsend when I’ve gone far along enough and I need to reference something. Esp given that I work on security tickets and I’m constantly triaging reports that are unclear or require digging into layers of source code to find where they come from. One important step to note if you ever try this out: if you have 30 seconds before you jump on to an interruption, try to build the discipline of throwing in a few words saying what you need to do when you return. Even with all the historical context it can take some thinking to recall what your next step should be. In fact, if you don’t like journaling just do this last step instead. I stole the concept from GTD’s next actions and it works.
• simonw 2y ago
  I use GitHub Issues threads for this and it works amazingly well. Any task I'm working on has a GitHub issue - in a public repo for my open source work, or a private repo for other tasks (including personal research). As I figure things out, I add comments. These might have copy pasted fragments of code, links to things I found useful, quoted chunks of text, screenshots or references to other issues. I often end up with dozens of comments on an issue, all from me. They provide a detailed record of my process and also mean that if I get interrupted or switch to something else I can quickly pick up where I left off. Here's a public example of one of my more involved research threads: https://github.com/simonw/public-notes/issues/1 https://github.com/simonw/public-notes/issues/1 I also create a new issue every day to plan the work I intend to get done and keep random notes in. I wrote about how that works here: https://til.simonwillison.net/github-actions/daily-planner https://til.simonwillison.net/github-actions/daily-planner
  • geekodour 2y ago
    I tried following this idea from simon (first via discord channels) about 8-9 months ago and now zulip, I used zulip "streams" as the "github issue" here. Worked very nicely for me. I use it for everything and not only work journal, this creates a small problem.Since I dump both future references and worklogs, and I have ~50 channels, it's very easy to not get back to things and only get back to it when needed(which is the idea mentioned by OP). It seems like a feature than a bug at first but after capture, one round of review after some time interval really helps. It took a while but slowly seeing the benefits. For that I plan to write some bot to re-organize the worklogs and the reference/other things dump to my own email at the end of the week and then I can create something like https://simonwillison.net/tags/weeknotes/ https://simonwillison.net/tags/weeknotes/ for myself(private) to go though at the end of the week. I think it would be perfect for me.
  • irthomasthomas 2y ago
    I use GitHub issues (combined with embeddings and logprobs via your llm) as an AI infused bookmark manager: https://GitHub.com/irthomasthomas/undecidability/issues https://GitHub.com/irthomasthomas/undecidability/issues The code that runs it is here: https://GitHub.com/irthomasthomas/label-maker https://GitHub.com/irthomasthomas/label-maker (how it started/how it's going:)
• simpaticoder 2y ago
  The benefit of journaling is not just reentry, but that you begin to solidify the mental model into a concrete branching of possibilities that is tightly coupled to the specific problem. Your work becomes traversal and mutation of this tree. Several benefits accrue: you begin to see gaps in the tree, and can fill them in. You begin to have confidence in your mental model, recovering the time you used to spend going over the same nodes again and again in a haphazard way. In distributed systems in particular, the work is often detailed, manual, error prone and high latency - with a solid mental model you can get through a checklist of steps with minimum difficulty and high confidence that you didn't miss anything. This ability to take something abstract and make it more concrete on the fly is a critical skill. Perhaps the greatest barrier to using it is akin to envy. We see others who apparently do this without written materials, in their head. I think we see this as evidence of intellectual superiority and harbor the doubt that using an aid like a journal means we are somehow lacking in skill or ability. This is wrong. Using an aid to map out complex problems isn't a failure, it's essential, especially for problems in systems you've never used before. Over time you may yourself build up your expertise such that you no longer need the aid, but that doesn't signal anything about your intelligence or ability either, only your experience.
  • makz 2y ago
    This advice is pure gold. Thank you.
  • quest88 2y ago
    > Perhaps the greatest barrier to using it is akin to envy. We see others who apparently do this without written materials, in their head. I think we see this as evidence of intellectual superiority and harbor the doubt that using an aid like a journal means we are somehow lacking in skill or ability. To add to your "this is wrong": These others may have themselves solved the problems we are now trying to solve, likely even using a journal. They no longer need a journal since they know how to navigate it, and it appears as superior to us.
    • ahartmetz 2y ago
      I mitigate this "problem" somewhat by taking pride in specialized yet (hopefully) readable notations and sometimes even creative tool usage. Like using a project planning tool with a Gantt chart feature to speed up a boot process with many dependencies. Of course, sometimes an existing tool or notation used for its original purpose is what you need. Maybe manually remove the stuff that doesn't matter.
• vantassell 2y ago
  Reminds me a lot of Cal Newport's ideas re: Slow Productivity. He talks a lot about how Context shifts are death for knowledge work and that a lot of offices operate via a "hyper active hive mind" that doesn't allow or value deep work.
  • al_borland 2y ago
    I have too many meetings to get anything done. I'll go weeks, or months, without actually doing anything of real value. Eventually it comes to a head and I need to get things done to avoid going crazy. I go on do-not-disturb in our chat app, quit Outlook completely, and turn on a focus mode on my cell phone so people can't even call me. I'll end up working for 8-15 hours straight with no real breaks. I go to the bathroom, but keep my head in the problem, that's about it. I completely forget to eat or do anything else. I get 2 months worth of work done in 1 day. If meetings were eliminated (or just consolidated into a single planning week), and I cloud just do deep work, I think I could work 2 days per month and be more productive than I am currently working 40+ hours per week. I always want to send my management graphs like this to show them why having 10 projects running at a time is a bad idea... https://res.cloudinary.com/jlengstorf/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/jason.energy/context-switching-time-loss-v2.jpg https://res.cloudinary.com/jlengstorf/image/upload/f_auto,q_... ...but I know it will be received poorly. The image in the article (here, since the link was broken: https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png https://fev.al/img/2024/focus.png) is something I've sent to a boss in the past. He didn't get it.
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    • Flimm 2y ago
      I feel for you, friend. Maybe you could share the essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" by Paul Graham [0]. It's been somewhat helpful when I've shared it with colleagues. [0] https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
      • al_borland 2y ago
• Hexigonz 2y ago
  I recently started manually typing out everything I jot down in my pocket notebooks when I fill them in my Digital Garden. The amount of ideas I forgot about within a week or so is crazy. Glad I can revisit some of this now
• dukeofdoom 2y ago
  My new organization workflow is as follows for planning my day. I run a custom python script to generate a file/folder for each day in a month 2024/June/01-Jun.md ... 1. Tell ChatGPT what I want to do on that day, and ask it to give me a checkable markdown list. 2. Use "Typora" markdown editor for organization. It has a folder browser in the side bar. So I can have other files / folders at glance. Very easy to access. 3. Copy and paste the checkable list into the file with into Typora. If I had the need, I could write a script to aggregate all the unchecked items and create a new file with them. Or do other processing. Markdown editor + ChatGPT => killer combination.
• pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Forget focusing faster and clarifying thoughts - a work journal does wonders for helping you during your yearly/6-month reviews, because you can look over the past several months and have concrete things to put down for why you deserve a raise and promotion. (Actually, don't forget it. But realize that you can use it for both purposes.)
• al_borland 2y ago
  This is something I do if I'm in the middle of something before the weekend, and especially before a vacation. I use Obsidian with its calendar plugin, so I get a note per day. It's where I keep my to do items as well as any notes for the day. Before leaving for a break I will open up the note for the day I plan to return and fill in my to do items, as well as additional notes on what I was doing, what I should be doing next, and references I may have had that I'll want to revisit. It is extremely helpful for getting me back into things once I've been out for a bit.
• p5a0u9l 2y ago
  Prose writing in any form is super useful. The challenge is having a unified tool to impose some structure. Instead, thoughts are divided across email, slack, confluence, quip, etc.
• flakiness 2y ago
  To me the hardest part of journaling (or Pomodoro, or whatever work-related methodology/hack) is to stick with it. I have a work journal. I abandoned it and came back, then abandoned it and came back again. It's an endless back-and-forth. To those who keep doing this for a longer period: Any tips would be appreciated.
  • charles_f 2y ago
    I had the same problem because it was serving no purpose. What really worked for me is to make it a primary tool of work. Rather than sometimes writing what I did today, whenever I work on something somewhat involved, I immediately write my approach about it ("I need to do X so I started Y").
  • stevekemp 2y ago
    I have my journal available within my editor, so it's easily accessible. I find that once I've seen how useful past-notes have been its very apparent I need to update. I keep a standard set of headers for each new entry: * DD/MM/YYYY ** Admin ** Meetings ** Tickets/Stories/Work ** Problems I copy/paste that header to the end of the file, and just fill out stuff as I go. I used to have my editor auto-open the diary on startup, but took that away in the end.
  • Scarblac 2y ago
    Accept that that is how it works for you. Like, maybe you do different types of work and subconsciously find it useful only for some of them. That's OK. Consider it a tool you sometimes use, and think of using journaling as an option when you're frustrated with something.
  • rzzzt 2y ago
    I keep a daily log but tend do skip updating it at the most intense times, ie. when it would be the most helpful to take notes...
  • merlincorey 2y ago
    We often need consistency and time to build up habits that stick. I do everything including my own personal side projects in a work journal with time tracking for everything, but I had to work up to it being a natural part of my workflow. Here's my suggested path to gaining these habits: 1. Initially just try to make sure you are taking SOME notes at the start or end of every day - it doesn't matter where they are or how they are formatted just always take some notes at the start or end of your day 2. Once you have gotten into the habit of taking daily notes, start figuring what kinds of things you need notes for most often and take those before or during those activities - for example if you often find yourself having to look back at work tickets to retrieve some important information, start adding that information to your notes 3. By the time you are taking daily notes and adding things you know you need notes for you probably have a lot of notes so start worrying about structure and formatting - for example maybe you decide text files with homegrown markup aren't going to scale and you look into something like Obsidian with Markdown or Emacs with Org-mode 4. Repeat iterations of using your chosen note taking methods daily, building good habits, and improving your note taking system for you - if it feels like something is taking more time than it is worth change how you are doing it so it takes less time or just stop doing it
• bgoated01 2y ago
  I'm currently working on a PhD dissertation part time, and this concept has been very helpful since I'm not working full days and therefore have more context switching. I end up drawing a lot of graphs and figures to think things through, so a big notebook of graph paper ends up working the best for me. Every couple of days or so I write out a list of the next few tasks as I currently see them, then think on paper to figure out how to implement the code for each task. Funny thing is, writing it down helps it stick in my brain, so I need the write up less than I would if I didn't write it. That's got to be some kind of contrapositive of Murphy's law or something.
• m3kw9 2y ago
  Most things I write become almost obsolete in a few days
• TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  I have a #leftoff tag in all my Logseq journals where I leave a description of where I was when I stepped away from a task. Use it everyday all day. Simple and works great.
• waprin 2y ago
  The technique of journaling as you work is sometimes called “interstitial journaling” and I became a big fan of it as a way to help focus as well as keeping track of what I was working on. I made a tool to associate those notes with a color coded project and timestamp: https://interstitch.app https://interstitch.app It ended up being unintentionally similar to an invoicing time tracking tool a freelancer might use but the use case Im interested in is more personal productivity. Can’t say the project has generated much interest outside my own personal use but I find it very nice to track notes as I go and then easily see how much time I spent on a given project. You can also add a #hashtag in the notes and then filter by that hashtag in the calendar view. Completely free in case anyone else finds it helpful!
• Willish42 2y ago
  I started doing a daily work journal in earnest when I began as a SWE and it's seriously saved my hide dozens of times. It's a habit that once you get used to, you can't function without it
• gringocl 2y ago
  Our implementation team of 15 writes individual and project logs every day. The logs are not to account for a record of what was performed but rather the rational, decisions, setbacks, observations, learnings, etc of our work. Each member of the team is expected to keep current on the individual and project logs. I’ve been doing this now for the last two years and I’m always surprised at how helpful they continue to be.
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• borghives 2y ago
  Is there a benefit difference between digital journal and analog (pen) ? I’ve been having this internal debate. Any thoughts?
  • charles_f 2y ago
    I like the idea of analog, there's something about writing on paper. Practically, digital is much better. Everytime I see something that might be useful I past a link. I paste links to discussions I need to follow up on. And then I also use a homemade plugin for Obsidian that lists my to-dos across all notes(1), so whenever I think about something I need to do I just include it directly into the text and it's listed there. I think you could do something somewhat similar on paper (I tried a while back), but the overhead is simply too much for me. 1: https://github.com/cfe84/obsidian-pw https://github.com/cfe84/obsidian-pw
    • bamboozled 2y ago
      How much retention do you require though? For me having a more organized week is probably useful, not sure about having to retrieves years worth of information ?
  • FranklinMaillot 2y ago
    Pen and paper is far superior in my experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953297
  • criddell 2y ago
    If analog works better for you, maybe a good stylus would be a usable middle ground? Don’t cheap out on it though. The inexpensive ones aren’t worth it.
  • sswezey 2y ago
    I've done analog for years and tried to do digital this year. I switched back to analog. With digital, I tended to just dump everything whereas with analog I reflected and edited for concision. The things I typed I forgot; writing things down I remembered. It's much the same as taking notes - the act of physically writing helps "set" the information. I know a lot of people will say to do digital for ease of searching. I find that if I write it down, I'm much more likely to remember and not need to search in the first place. And digital I think it's easier to get lost in the ways to try and optimize the process with a file, format, editor, plugin, method, etc. With paper, I have some paper that I can write in whatever format I want at the time. I use these every year for taking notes: https://www.leuchtturm1917.com/weekly-planner-and-notebook-2025-english.html https://www.leuchtturm1917.com/weekly-planner-and-notebook-2... . I've been using the A5, but will probably go up to the B5+ for next year. I've been using these for the past 7 years.
• nicbou 2y ago
  I did this at my last job and it was very helpful. I used an actual notebook. I used a new page every day. I'd write down everything I worked on, mostly for stand-ups and performance reviews, and the to-do list but only for items I intended to complete that day. Every morning, I manually copied the previous day's to-do items to the new page. It reminded me of what I was working on and made me aware of the issues I kept delaying.
• ge96 2y ago
  I always wrote notes into Apple notes everyday It would be like: W47 Mon, date
• DarkCrusader2 2y ago
  I have been using PlainTasks [0] plugin with Sublime Text for many years now at work to do something similar. It is sort of a mix between GTD [1] and journalling. I create a new file monthly (since that is the "sprint" duration at work) and for each project I am working on, I create a project heading and a list of tasks below each. The plugin doesn't enforce any schema and is just a plain text file so I can iterate on the task list, record thoughts as free form notes anywhere (just below the project heading or below a particular task or just in the file anywhere. If the notes grow too large for a particular project (they don't usually for me), I pull them in a separate file dedicated to that project. I iterate on the task list as things become more clear. For eg. I might start as "Find out how to deploy new certificates on our cluster nodes". Once I have done some research or talked to my colleagues, I might mark this a done or delete it and replace it with a list of steps required to deploy the certificates. I also mark things I am going to do today with "@today" every day in the morning. If something planned comes up urgently, it gets it own task with "@critical" tag. The plugin highlights these tags for me. There are some more features but I only use creating and marking tasks as done with the 2 tags. The plugin is also semi-abandoned which is a big +1 for me as I don't have to worry about flow breaking changes or sudden sponsorship messages or constant updates. I don't use sublime for anything else but tracking tasks and notes so it gives me a sort of dedicated workspace for collecting my tasks. Recall is just a plain text search away. I have been using this for many years and has been extremely effective for me. Whenever I feel lost of overwhelmed, I just look this file, find the @today tags and suddenly I am back in my flow. Most of the other tools I have tried (Jira, Asana, Trello, Github/Gitlab issues, Azure DevOps, company internal project management tooling etc.) are too opinionated, not flexible enough, sends unnecessary notifications to me or everyone on the team and are a chore to maintain (busywork). [0] https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks [1] https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/ https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/
• tivert 2y ago
  > Except that it’s nothing new, right? “Writing helps you organize your thoughts more clearly”: everyone and their grandmother know that! Writing a plan, writing a diary? People keep listing how transformative that’s been for them. Luckily, we'll soon be replacing writing with editing LLM output. Much more efficient. /s
• hubraumhugo 2y ago
  It's surprising how many devs are trying to overoptimize for productivity with various fancy tools and techniques, when it actually comes down to simple basics. Here is what I rely on as a founder who does a lot of context switching: - a never-ending text file for todos and work journal [0] - calendar for planning (and blocking focus time) - website blocker - turned off notifications [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876
  • DarkCrusader2 2y ago
    Big +1 to this (see my comment on this thread). I just use a editor plugin to make marking tasks as done/cancelled easier and rotate the files every month to keep things a little organized (and scoping the keyword search) and it has been the most effective form of project management/journalling for me for many years.
  • polairscience 2y ago
    What website blocker do you use?
    • elitan 2y ago
      I follow the same structure, and I use Notion, Google Calendar, and Flow App.
    • Flimm 2y ago
      I use LeechBlock NG, for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, as well as Firefox on Android.
  • mistahenry 2y ago
    For the never-ending text file for todos and work journal, I've found great success with org-mode, especially since deadlines automatically end up in my calendar with org-agenda. The outline format of org-mode is quite nice and it took all of 1 day to learn the key commands for making / manipulating the outline, creating links, and cycling through TODO states (using Doom emacs made the start super easy since I already know vi and didn't have to also learn the text editing commands). I've also found the concept of an "inbox" from the Zettelkasten method very helpful. Anytime something comes up that's not yet in my system, I add it to the inbox for later processing (org-capture on my computer, and beorg on my phone). This way, note entry doesn't require a full context switch. I then just make sure to regularly drain my inbox. I don't use emacs currently for anything but org-mode but I'm far happier with this than I was with a never ending `.md` file.
• Log_out_ 2y ago
  I use notepad++ documents. One is the stack, its just describing as one liners with checkboxes and subtasks a task and its depths. Arrow to where execution is.one can have several threads of course. Research into a topic goes into that list as tasks and then seperate documents or wikis if it blows the list.simple and it works suprisingly intuitiv like a bare metal os stack debug screen.
• rustypotato 2y ago
  I hand-write a work journal. Just an A5 notebook and a few pens of different colors. Definitely an essential piece of my dev toolkit. I've especially come to love the free-form nature of hand-writing, which allows me to visualize more of my thoughts than a digital text editor. The journal has served two main purposes. One, I can write and annotate free-form pseudocode at exactly the level of abstraction I need without getting distracted by the errors produced by the code editor. It's really helped me work through the difficult parts of coding puzzles before I ever touch the keyboard to implement. Two, I have a scientific notebook for debugging. I write down a hypothesis, design a small experiment, document the steps and complications as I go, and write down what the actual result was; then repeat the cycle. Putting it all in writing keeps it straight so I don't chase my tail, and I have something to look back on if I need to explain the bug and how it was solved to my coworkers.
  • waxaxiom 2y ago
    Can you tell me more about the scientific notebook? Does it have a specific layout or is it just another notebook you use for debugging?
• simonireilly 2y ago
  VS code user, Vs code journal plugin - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pajoma.vscode-journal https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pajoma.v... >month/day.md >month/day/important-meeting.md Find the equivalent for where you spend the majority of your time
• ochronus 2y ago
  I wonder what the logistics of this look like - isn't this just another interrupt while you're in the zone? Or do you do it between two zones, retroactively? Imagine you start working deep on something. Do you simultaneously take notes of what you're doing?
• submeta 2y ago
  I cannot work without taking notes. It is a process of thinking, sorting my ideas, documenting steps and outcomes, pausing, practicing meta-cognition, gaining clarity and confidence along the process. Plus I have the benefit to go back to my notes and have instant access to what I did days, months, years ago. So I can’t understand how people are working without taking notes, documenting (for themselves), and journaling.
  • FranklinMaillot 2y ago
    Same here. Taking notes is incredibly helpful, especially when I'm stuck or unfocused. I just start writing anything that's on my mind and it's like the writing does the thinking for me. While I used to type notes digitally, I've recently discovered the superiority of pen and paper. Writing by hand offers more flexibility - you can start anywhere on the page, sketch, or create mind maps effortlessly which encourages creativity, whereas typing forces you to think linearly. Research also shows handwriting improves thinking and memory retention.[1] Interestingly, rediscovering fountain pens sparked this change for me. The enjoyment of using a quality writing instrument encouraged me to take more handwritten notes, leading to significant improvements in my workflow. I now keep separate notebooks for different projects and have started journaling. This discussion has made me realize that moving my keyboard is the last bit of friction when switching from computer to paper notes. It might finally convince me to invest in that split keyboard I've been considering. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529...
    • submeta 2y ago
      Both digital and handwritten notes have their values. - I‘ve used moleskine notebooks and fountain pens for over two decades. Fountain pens are unbelievably smooth to write with, and the text looks beautifully. So I can relate to your experience. Re Keyboards: I switched to mechanical keyboards lately and will never go back. It’s like the fountain pen of typing.
      • 2y ago
• mxey 2y ago
  I use my inbox in OmniFocus as a running log of things for later, but I like the idea of having a dedicated journal thing.
• zogrodea 2y ago
  Nice article that reminds me of that one Sherlock Holmes quote. “I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
• karencarits 2y ago
  I've concluded that I need different note taking tools for various contexts. * LogSeq for day-to-day notes. Append only. Since everything is bullet points, I don't have to worry about structure, and it's easy to just add a comment instead of revising a paragraph. * TiddlyWiki for write-ups. I've tested many wiki solutions but always return to TiddlyWiki. Mainly because it is so easy to adapt how things look, and various entries may need different presentation. * E-mail. Should not be underestimated as a knowledge base for discussions and decisions. Unfortunately, the search function in outlook is terrible
  • singhrac 2y ago
    I use Obsidian for the first two. Email was very useful but you need to essentially categorize the data yourself manually. I’m very surprised there isn’t a bot that will automatically attempt to categorize your emails for you via IMAP access.
    • karencarits 2y ago
      I tried obsidian too, but found that outlining/nested bullet points in LogSeq matched my flow better. I agree regarding emails, one day I'll try to write a script that imports emails with a specific tag, perhaps autotagging can be a part of the pipeline
• philwelch 2y ago
  One format I like to use is to organize my most immediate tasks in the form of a stack. So if I’m working on feature A, that’s the bottom of the stack. Need to solve sub problem A1, push that to the top of the stack. Subproblem A1 requires me to shave yak number A1(a) so now my stack is three deep. Someone asks me for something unrelated. I pause, make sure I’ve fully written down my current stack, and then patiently listen to the person (or read their message). If I need to context switch and do something right now, fine, now interrupt B is the top of the stack, and when it’s done, I go back to shaving yak number A1(a). If I’m blocked, I pull the front task in my priority queue and push that to the stack. If the stack gets too deep with unrelated tasks and interrupts, I usually pull it apart and put everything into a priority queue. At a higher level of granularity it also helps to record what you’ve actually done for performance reviews and the like.
• parasti 2y ago
  I sometimes use this approach for untangling unfamiliar undocumented code and for keeping track of what worked/didn't work for a particularly complex task. I found that it's a real life superpower, a literal augmentation of my flawed, forgetful human brain. The biggest downside is that I don't use it enough in fear that it takes up too much time to write everything down, so I feel I'm wasting my employer's time.
• lifeisstillgood 2y ago
  I don’t like keeping it seperate from “The code”. I try but there is ultimately one place to keep everything and that is in “the code”. So my comments become my journal, and this gels with how I view code and source control - that leaving dead comments, moving around functions and chnaging stuff is part of the process It’s like, we are somehow conditioned into thinking that the commit must be perfect and not reflect a process over time. And the thing is a software system reflects a process over time even if we are pushing it into production
• nottorp 2y ago
  Hmm? I keep (shared if needed) google docs for every project called "XXX random notes" and we throw info in there. I thought everyone did that?
• smusamashah 2y ago
  I was assigned a big project at work 2 years ago. Apart from main code base there were a bunch of other modules and services it talked to at it was all very old code. I couldn't have kept all of that in my head throughout. I kind of rediscovered OneNote which helped me actually do the project. It's like your thought dumping playground. It's the only tool that offers least resistance to jotting down thoughts in whatever form you like. Every page is like a freeform infinite canvas. Just click anywhere, start typing or paste the screenshot or even files. OneNote has been my daily driver since then. I mostly just dump thoughts in a lossely structured system that I am following for myself.
  • _xnmw 2y ago
    Same here though my preferred tool is OmniOutliner or any similar tool with hierarchical branching. There are other tools like Roam/Obsidian but Omni has proved to the fastest offline local macOS app with the most rich feature set.
• blumomo 2y ago
  GitLab issues also works nicely for journaling. Each issue is a task, bundled into milestones. Within each issue you can add comments and even have one level of nested comments. Good for a lightweight hierarchical journaling. And comments/threads of an issue can each be “resolved”, all within the same issue. Great for progress tracking. Ah, and you can paste images and have syntax highlighting. Great for debugging.
• barrenko 2y ago
  Related - we need more landscape-oriented notebooks in the world.
• rhardih 2y ago
  This has become one of my favourite tools over the last couple of years: https://jrnl.sh https://jrnl.sh
• _spduchamp 2y ago
  I have a part-time research assistant job in a lab where I work on several overlapping projects, and when I started this job I started a journal using a Google Spreadsheet, with a shortcut to the sheet on the home screen on my phone. It's instantly always there, adds up my hours for time tracking, and when I have to write a project status report, I just pull out the relevant entries and turn them into proper sentences. Bam! Report done with semi-chronological flow. I bold entries of open questions/tasks that need attention, and i can quickly scan my journal to know exactly what to work on next. I've never been so organized and on top of things in my life. This little journal hack makes me look like a fricken genius in the lab.
• esskay 2y ago
  Evey time I've tried essentially journaling for my own sanity I get too bogged down in the way to actually do it. Logseq and Obsidian are often mentione but by the time I've figured out how the hell to use thier obscure syntax (why the hell am I programming, its a journal) I've lost interest. I'd like for there to be an out of the box option, but there doesnt seem to be any. When you bring this up in discussions like this it often ends up just proving the point when someone tells you "Oh its easy just install X and then add this plugin, that plugin, tweak this file to do such and such...and my adhd brain lost interest. There's a real hole in the market for a good out of the box, opensource and self hoated tool that you open the app and write tool, not a note pad, we've all got one of those, I'm talking about somethinh you open, you've got your current day to dump notes into and and they're stored. Sure, theres tools like DayOne, but it's cloud based storage is a catagorical no for me, and many others - theres been countless discussions about this on Reddit, and the answer is always spend half a day screwing around with Logseq or Obsidian and then try to remember their syntax. The out of the box on both of those is pretty awful, and if the solution is spending hours tweaking it it's not really a solution, its a patch, one that shouldn't really need to be made if it's supposed to be the tool to use.
  • rigmarole 2y ago
    What syntax are you trying to use or thinking that you need? In Obsidian for example, remove all plugins except Daily Note and just start typing. Ignore all syntax except maybe bullets. Ignore properties and links. Ignore any habit-tracking or database tricks people say you need. Ignore the graph. Or consider using Vim/Neovim and set a leader hotkey to open today’s journal/YYYY-MM-DD.txt
    • setopt 2y ago
      > Or consider using Vim/Neovim and set a leader hotkey to open today’s journal/YYYY-MM-DD.txt For a broader audience: Create a shell script that runs “$EDITOR $JOURNALDIR/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md”, and bind a system-wide keybinding to run that script. Works even for GUI editors.
      • 2y ago
• alabhyajindal 2y ago
  I use Sublime Text for my daily journal and it works really well. Typing in Sublime is a joy. I have it open throughout the day in a separate virtual desktop. Distraction Free mode is very cool!
• softwaredoug 2y ago
  I like how a work journal reorients your locus of control, and focus on important vs urgent work. You can get really reactive to whatever stuff is happening on your team that you lose the forest for the trees. And further as you get more and more senior, living off of reactivity is only counterproductive as you control your own time and its expected you try to shift to a focus of important over urgent work.
• huevosabio 2y ago
  I like having a "devlog.md" file for each project/repo. The log is jut a reverse chronological order of comments/todos/rants. I have mapped on VSCode cmd+shift+I to write a timestamp. Whenever I want to write something I just insert a timestamp at the beginning of the bullet-point list and write it out. This is stored alongside the repo. It is particularly useful for recovering in the morning where I was the night before.
  • snakey 2y ago
    Along the same lines, I also find it useful to have a text log for each sizeable task I undertake. This could contain anything, notes of module structure, code & data snippets for testing, everything! Like one of the top comments mentions, it acts as a node of knowledge within a wider system (graph) and I end up revisiting these logs more often than you would expect! It only gets better as you explore/document more and edges form.
    • huevosabio 2y ago
      Yea, for me what really helped is once I interned at a hydraulic engineering company and I was tasked with debugging a custom software for pump modeling/optimization in GIS. I had no background in C++ or the GIS I was dealing with and this was a one-off thing that was built for a project, but not maintained or documented at all. The lead eng that wrote the software also had a long and detailed personal log of what he was working on. He just gave me that. It helped a lot to understand not only how the software worked, but also the design decisions.
  • Flimm 2y ago
    Do you commit "devlog.md" to your version control system? If not, how do you sync it between your different computers?
    • huevosabio 2y ago
      Yes, I do!
• Simon_ORourke 2y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree that this approach makes perfect sense and would perhaps help with context switching various tasks, the time required to pour your heart out journaling would take time away from doing actual work. While I do some note taking at work it's all one liners, url references, copy and paste code snippets and VM options for intellij.
• adius 2y ago
  Heynote was exactly developed for this purpose. Just one big buffer with sections and lots of shortcuts and nice little additional features: https://heynote.com/ https://heynote.com/
  • hruzgar 2y ago
    no vim support sadly
• neilv 2y ago
  Sometimes I use the project management tool's issue/task comments for notes on what I'm thinking. Other times, comments in the code. Other times, the relevant page in the startup's wiki. Sometimes the intermediate notes want to evolve to more polished documentation and/or code, and other times it wants to be preserved in a very lightweight way. What's important is that information you or others might later need is captured in a way that's accessible when you need it. Make it a practice, and it's negligible additional effort.
• hghar 2y ago
  This sounds so similar to certain productivity dogmas that were mentioned already in the comments and I know that some people get extremely obsessed with those methods and that in the end that might become precisely a productivity obstacle. But honestly I have been doing exactly what the author claims work for him, just write what you are doing and you “feel” is going to be useful later, this very thing that just happened in the command line is a clue to the complete puzzle. And it’s funny that this is exactly what those productivity dogmas describe as “second brain” in my perspective you just take what works for you from those methods. I think you just have to try it, although it seems like that’s a waste of time and that you will never see that note again just write it save it and maybe the next month when you come back to the same exact problem those notes will be pure gold, yea I know most of those notes are going to be just a bunch of bytes never to be seen again but when they are useful you will be so thankful that you did it.
• gdilla 2y ago
  all the senior engineers i worked with, when i started out 20 years ago, carried around bound books and kept as journals. And they logged things all day, dated entries. They just said it was essential, so I did it.
  • g8oz 2y ago
    Indeed, we are doing a lot of reinventing. Or more charitably reapplying old ideas to today's world and it's affordances.
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• chillingeffect 2y ago
  No Joplin in this thread?! Simple and flexible, cheap sub or free if you host self or on a service like dropbox. Import/export for backup. Instantly useful out of the box. Many plugins but i havent needed them. Basic search is all I need. I keep brief notes of the "secret sauce" as I work, eg a list of magic commands, a short outline of function calls, etc.
• myth_drannon 2y ago
  The first paragraph spoke to me. The complexity of the systems is so big and the difficulty of fixing issues is exponential. The stress of working on things that are not core software development is killing me. How to calm down after working on days without good progress on the issue, PM is on my neck, the end of sprint is near and the task is not finished yet.
• bloopernova 2y ago
  The org-journal extension to Emacs' org-mode is great for this. ctrl-c n j = add new timestamped journal entry https://github.com/bastibe/org-journal https://github.com/bastibe/org-journal So the workflow for this is: command-tab to switch to Emacs, ctrl-c n j to add a new journal entry, write the entry, command-tab back to whatever else I was doing. Emacs auto-saves my changes. Of course, getting to that point requires some work. You have to be using Emacs and org-mode already, or prepared to try it, and that journey can be difficult for some. The org-journal extension is great: It supports daily/weekly/monthly/yearly journal files (I use daily but I'm considering switching to weekly or monthly). When I create a new daily file, it only "brings forward" uncompleted TODO items, which means any completed TODOs are automatically archived out of your sight. Because it integrates with org-mode, I have it set up such that it tracks when a task is moved from TODO into PROG, and again when it moves into DONE. (I get annoyed when columns don't line up, so I made my todo item names 4 characters long)
• guptarohit 2y ago
  I been doing the same from a year, dumping all my thoughts in obsidian notes especially on the Friday evening, this really helped me resuming when back to the work.
• lkrubner 2y ago
  “Writing helps you organize your thoughts more clearly” I actually rely on email for this. I'm grateful to work with a project manager who does not mind me writing her 20 emails a day, some of which she does not actually need to read. But some of of it is relevant to her, and it helps me keep focused when I can then follow up and discuss things with her.
• afitnerd 2y ago
  I use the resettable rocket wave notebook for my work journal. Aside from reinforcing ideas and helping figure things out on paper, it’s perfect to jump back into a task that’s been interrupted. The other trick with it is to keep a running todo list from the back page in. The moment a disruptive thought pops into my head that I need to revisit, I flip to the back, capture it, and flip back to where I was.
• _huayra_ 2y ago
  The best tool for this I've found so far is Logseq [0]. The only things that come close in functionality are some really custom Emacs roll-your-own things that were just too hard for me as a basic Doom Emacs defaults user, and Anytype. However, I couldn't understand the storage of Anytype enough to convince me that my work would be okay with it (e.g. encryption, but IPFS-ing your files all over the place, maybe?). Anyway, here are the reasons to consider Logseq for a "lab journal". Note all of these features are unique to Logseq (except the ones I note, afaik), but the subset of them are from what I can tell: 1. Local storage: this is just messing around with markdown on a local file. You can keep it in your corporate storage as a regular folder, at home, it is completely separate from your data sync setup and you can choose what you want. They are working a new database-backed version of the files for faster querying (though I have >10k files in it now and it does fine). 2. Open source: Obsidian, a popular alternative, is not open source. Considering this carries confidential info and all my personal stuff (not at work though!), I gotta trust my tools. 3. Killer feature that only Logseq has: custom, datalog query engine to query your existing notes and aggregate things. Other tools have some similar thing, but it's mostly akin to "search" and possibly ANDing some terms together, but Logseq has much more advanced uses enabled by this engine. The datalog and querying feel initially like a "draw the rest of the owl" meme, as it is up to you to decide whether you want to create namespace hierarchies (e.g. should your `vim` page be `devtools/vim`, just `vim`, or tagged with `devtools`?), but once you figure out a system, it takes a bit to craft a few clever queries and reuse them with templates. I have a reasonably slick system for this, where I have a set of queries prioritized by due date / priority on my home page, along with incoming (waiting for someone) and outgoing (someone waiting on me) dependencies. I organize things with a series of "project" pages that each have a very long query to aggregate all my daily journal entries (and other pages) that are tagged with anything related to that project page (e.g. I have a page `CMake Template Repository` where I'm trying to create a github template repo for C++ projects so I don't have to write it from scratch each time). It has really helped me get things done despite having a bit of ADHD. If there's enough interest, I can try to write this up in a blog post. [0] https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/
• swaggyBoatswain 2y ago
  I just slack myself notes of things I am trying to process that are more in depth. It helps me rebuild context, and those notes are usuallu short lived (usually a day or a week depending on difficulty of task)
• tsthename 2y ago
  Apart from being a personal cache for your thoughts, it also catches you from going down rabbit holes. Keeping a log like this is one kind of guard. I've had to come up with my own set of tricks while working alone [0] but in general I think it helps to be a defensive developer. [0] https://www.idiotlamborghini.com/articles/mastering_focus_as_a_solo_developer https://www.idiotlamborghini.com/articles/mastering_focus_as...
• BonitaPersona 2y ago
  I also keep an error journal, which I call "The Library of Horrors", so when an error reocurs I can refer to. I found this necessary because I tend to remember the "oh, this happened earlier..." but not the "... and this is the approach we followed succesfully" that should follow. The information is slotted in my brain, but not accessible unless I have some key reminder. Also serves as a communication device between my past and future self, and between coworkers. The error-solving information tends to live transiently in your and your coworkers minds, and it is very valuable. I haven't solved the method to properly identify-and-recalling. I simply save new information per project, per language, etc, with not much thinking. This would clearly be the next point of improvement.
  • charles_f 2y ago
    > "The Library of Horrors" Oh god that brings back memories from when I dared to propose sharing "failure stories" instead of success stories when I was in consulting. The look on people's faces was that rare blend of disdain and horror. We can't fail, how can we share failures? I mean you only learn from each other's successes right?
• koozz 2y ago
  Very nice! I immediately created a fish shell function for this. Feel free to copy/modify/ignore. Running `journal` quickly allows you to add a line to your journal. This will fallback to ~/.journal.log unless you have a .journal.log file in the current directory or any of its parents. Running `journal show` outputs the tail -5 of that journal. Running `journal init` creates a log in the current folder. Adding .journal.log to your global gitignore is recommended. $ cat ~/.config/fish/functions/journal.fish function journal set -f journal ~/.journal.log if test "$argv[1]" = "init" set -f journal .journal.log else set -f journal ~/.journal.log end touch $journal set -l dirparts (string split "/" (pwd)) set -l dircount (count $dirparts) for x in (seq $dircount -1 2) set -l dir (string join "/" $dirparts[1..$x]) if test -f $dir/.journal.log set -f journal $dir/.journal.log break end end if test "$argv[1]" = "show" printf "Last journal entries from: %s\n" "$journal" tail -5 $journal else printf "Add to journal: %s\n" "$journal" read -P "Addition: " -l line if test -z $line printf "Nothing added.\n" return end printf "%s\n" "$line" >> $journal end end
• ahaferburg 2y ago
  "4 days of sleepless afternoons", love it! I was laughing out loud multiple times. Keep writing, please!
  • charles_f 2y ago
    Thanks, I'm glad you noticed this one
• j45 2y ago
  A physical notebook has been excellent for me for capture and increased retention/recall. Where it falls apart is locating informatoin. For this, logseq has been invaluable, having no set standard or way than scribbling my notes the same way in logseq, with completely invented hashtags that only I remember (yay) I never have to tag much on my own, thanks to the auto-tagging plugin, I just type the word and it does it on it's own as long as I've done this. This kind of a work journal is more of a log, it doesn't quite hit the spot of "where do I put a longer form document" similar to what Obsidian, Notion, or Anytype might allow. That's probably a lack of my looking into it. I have seen people install a Logseq vault inside a Obsidian directory to have the best of both worlds in one storage and that seems quite elegant and simple for a solution. I'm more and more considering a Remarkable or Supernote... as I do like the writing and drawing. If anyone's using an ipad mini to make their note taking life easier happy to hear as well, the screen is a tad small, it can be partially reoriented, etc, but mostly these days, note taking is about workflow too
• rglover 2y ago
  I don't do a journal, but I do like to do "end of day" notes. Working on adding database binary support to my JS framework [1] and finished last night with this (just dropped in a Markdown file): --- Latest version of DB installer is breaking. Why: - We had it bump all DB versions to latest. MongoDB is failing on MacOS. - MongoDB is failing on Linux and PostgreSQL is failing to build. Ideas: - Separate the logic off by database/platform. This will ensure that once we lock in a database/platform combo, it’s set unless we mess with it. Current set up is getting increasingly complex to the point of insanity. - Go through, one database at a time tomorrow, for each platform. Get it perfect on each for the latest version (unless there’s a compat issue) and then move on to the next. Good news: - The basic idea WORKS. We can always roll back to older versions and figure out the latest stuff later, but I don’t think we’ll need to. It’s just going to take a full day of work to get 100%. - This is worth it as this is the last major barrier to entry. It also removed headaches with people saying “works for me” while others say “it doesn’t work.” --- Makes the next day's ramp up take a few minutes as opposed to who knows how long. [1] https://cheatcode.co/joystick https://cheatcode.co/joystick
• nvarsj 2y ago
  The best thing I ever did for work was to get a notebook and keep a running todo. Every few days I start a new entry, copying over old items and ignoring items that aren't important anymore. I then prioritise my work and get going. This has been my constant over the last 15 years and has always served me well (very low friction, easy to use pen and paper to jot out ideas/thoughts/todos). I have expanded that a bit in the few years. I now also use Obsidian as my digital wiki. If I'm researching topics, etc. I store it in Obsidian. It's basically my second brain and really helps when I need to remember the details of something I looked at months in the past. The other thing I started doing is keeping a running work journal in a Google doc where I summarize what I did each day. This is more out of necessity, as I need to write my performance review each year and I use this to summarize what I did.