I'm a software engineer, and I've been keeping a "lab journal" on and off for the past decade or so. A single markdown file per day, with the date as filename. First thing I do every day is copy the previous day's entry, give it a once over & remove what's no longer relevant. This helps me remember what I've been working on, and it's a track record of sorts.<p>There's a todo list at the top of each day's entry. But the rest is mostly free-form. Some days don't contain anything. Others contain meeting notes. Design ideas. Results of experiments. It's all plain text, so it's easily grep-able. Sometimes I look back at them to answer "why did I do that"-type questions. Sometimes $manager wonders what I've been working on or why it's taking so much time. I can just point at the journal and say "I've been doing 3 meetings every day and I've been onboarding people so I haven't had time to work on XYZ".<p>It's not much effort. And imho it's definitely worth it.
I still use paper as I find the act of writing down is more useful than search. About once a year I dig into my stack of pocket paper moleskine notebooks to look something up.<p>I make entries for each meeting, date, participant, notes, incoming and outgoing tasks. Also adding in sketches, designs, and other stuff that I wanted to write when I didn’t have a computer near.<p>I started this because I found having a laptop or phone out during a discussion with someone off putting. People would open up if I was jotting small notes but would not if I had a laptop open.<p>I can keep the notebook in my front pocket. Started out with hardcover moleskines but am not trying out rhodia, leuchtturm, and others.<p>Each one lasts about 3 months and I have a stack 4 feet high so probably 10 years or so.
As someone who "recently" (couple of years or more) switched from "senior developer" to architect and at the same time got handed responsibility for 5-10 independent software systems, i completely agree.<p>Before this switch i would default to using memory. It was easy, it worked, and i have a rather good memory. Most things worth remembering somehow just "sticks" without any mnemonics.<p>After the switch, i got 10x the information i used to get before, and while i initially settled on using my inbox as a "todo list", flagging items that needed attention, this also became rather inefficient after a while.<p>I started keeping a journal. Every meeting i go to, i jot down notes, every agreement is written down. I still keep my todo list, but it's in Emacs org-mode now. Notes are handwritten.<p>As the author also hints, handwriting helps commit things to memory, so the times i actually consult my notes are rather rare. Instead, by simply having written them down, my brain somehow accepts that "it's under control", and focuses on something else, but still remembers it.
I'm not expert in meetings, but increasingly I feel like the modern approach of "everyone invited to the meeting is there to say something" doesn't work.<p>Someone who has nothing to directly contribute to the meeting needs to be present to keep the goal of the meeting in focus and ensure a single shared outcome at the end. Yes it's slower, sometimes less efficient and sometimes deep subject matter knowledge is important, but six people leaving a meeting with their own accounts of what happened is almost worse than no account. Wherefore art thou minute takers?<p>Once that is in place, then many of the comments in this thread about needing personal notes to remind them about what to do and when, or what the team agreed to do next, surely are no longer necessary?<p>When everyone can rely on that, then by all means keep personal meta-meeting notes about emotional response, etc. for reflection. I think that's something I would like to work on.
Keeping a journal is important to anybody trying to realize something new. There are tons of senior positions that don’t require a lot of creativity. And there are tons of low level positions that do.<p>Habit is the main journaling challenge, a fact barely touched in the article. There are two habits that need developing simultaneously: taking notes and reviewing notes. It’s true that simply writing something down leads to better recall, but that’s not what the article is about. The article is about creativity.<p>To make something based on your past observations you have to review and synthesize. That skill is much different than taking notes to remember stuff.<p>I agree with the author that there is nothing better than pen and paper. But There are scenarios where all I have is my phone and I still want to take notes. This leads to another can of worms: how to organize all the notes you generate on a daily basis.<p>I built a general purpose note-taking tool [0] to help me develop the habit of taking and reviewing notes. It has also become my repository of snippets of information generated from my phone.<p>I use the snippets I create to inform writing I do elsewhere: documents, outlines, letters, etc.<p>[0]. <a href="https://www.tatatap.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.tatatap.com</a>
Highly recommend reading the book "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll. This book started as a journal by Cliff when he worked at Berkeley Labs in the late 80's. He was an astronomer-turned-IT, and in science I guess they are just in the habit of writing things down.<p>A few months and teletraces later his journal was thick enough to publish into a book, so he did exactly that.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg</a>
Independently of the title I suggest keeping private employment journal. I had so many situations when one wanted to do scapegoat out of me. But I had meeting notes made few months/years ago and could defend myself very well. Of course, there is this productivity topic too, but I treat it as a secondary benefit.
A while back I fell out of love with Evernote and migrated all my years of notes out to txt files which are synced to Dropbox. Huge nested folder structures but easily searched via grep or whatever. And then I have a folder called “Captains Log” and I make txt files for as many things as I can during the day. Code snippets, reminders to buy eggs at the store, urls to some dumb thing I want to remember to read later on but can’t bother with right now. Often the only content of the txt file is the title and no content if it was just a quick jot. And now you can use the Dropbox app edit txt files directly inside it which makes for easy note taking when mobile. Been using this method for years now, still going strong.
I am considering getting a Remarkable tablet just to be able to have the best of both worlds: hand writing and searching. Has anyone used Remarkable extensively and want to share their experience?
I just want to recommend <a href="https://jrnl.sh/" rel="nofollow">https://jrnl.sh/</a> which is a neat little terminal tool for keeping journals. I am sure most here could built it them-self over the weekend, but why reinvent the wheel. It works great with tags, dates (both displaying journal entries from date or date ranges and making an entry for a date or a time "yesterday"). It also support encryption and has a wide range of export options.<p>Funnily enough I actually love notebooks, but I cannot for the death of me keep a neat and nice design when keeping notes using a physical notebook, which means that I loose all motivation. However, having a minimalist tool like jrnl helps me to actually write, not just collect blank notebooks.
Vscode has a nice journal plugin that uses a simple year month day directory structure, has convenient actions like open today, tomorrow and yesterday.<p>Defaults to markdown which is ideal.<p>There is also a nice insert date time plugin so you can time stamp your entries more easily.<p>It's a fluent setup.
A large whiteboard in my home office, on wheels. Two sided, one is blank for brainstorming, the other always full of things I have up in the air. Some lines remain there for months, some for days, until the subject is done.<p>I use the blank side during calls to jot down notes which I transform into meeting summaries and email later. Then I clear it.<p>I find whiteboard writing very satisfying and the the fact it’s always out there in the room with you - can’t minimize it or just not open it - keeps you always synced to your tasks.
Space is limited so it’s always relevant. You’re at some point forced to take care of things to make room for new things - can’t scroll down.
I've been using Apple Notes for the past several years. I create a folder for the team I'm on and then a new note for a new project or task I'm working on at the moment. Search works pretty well and it automatically saves and syncs with my phone. I also maintain a TODO note that I update with what I'm working on, usually on a daily basis, and things I need to look at.<p>I used to use Evernote, but it got unwieldy and Apple Notes did everything I needed it to.
File a ticket. I file so many tickets for work I do. Sometimes after the fact ("oh... they'll wonder why I ..."). A journal is good, but using whatever institutionalized knowledge system your company relies upon (usually some form of ticketing and documentation system). The tickets are good for timelines/notes, and if they need to become something recurring, that's when you document it.
Something that I didn't see called out in the article is who owns your journal.<p>Very likely, if you write down notes about work-related activities they are the property of the business.<p>So, who has physical journals from current and previous jobs at home, and how many people have electronic ones on systems other than corporate approved/internal ones!?<p>I'm not judging, just saying!
This is a great idea / application for writing.<p>Last year I took a senior manager position at a fairly large company. I am also building a side project (not competing, totally unrelated). Between those 2 things my mind is constantly full.<p>I depend on my project plan to move through time / between tasks. But I still depend on my memory and a high volume of unstructured notes to move through small increments of time. You simply can’t plan every single sub task.<p>I have noticed when things get really busy and I start getting tired, everything around me speeds up. I really like the idea in this article that writing a journal by hand slows life down.<p>I’m going to try structured journaling. This year’s Big Project is about to go live, and I need a way to slow it all down for a few minutes each day.
My journaling habit started with Ohlife.com way back in 2014. I found the idea of quickly recapping my week to be therapeutic., plus it was great to see entries over time.<p>I ended up building a product (<a href="https://www.friday.app/" rel="nofollow">https://www.friday.app/</a>) to make this easy and automated. While it's built for teams to share updates and reflect (think weekly updates, retros, etc), there's "single-player" mode available too.<p>I like the digital journal format because I could never start the habit with paper. The automated reminders were critical to establish the habit. I still keep a regular notebook where I'll document thoughts, but it's more ephemeral.
Not specifically because of job title, but I've found that I've tended to keep notes during the first few weeks/months of any new job/engagement. There are always curveballs and stressful moments, and writing them down has helped me calm down a bit and 'step back' from the situation (not a lot, but it helps some). I am not diligent/daily about it, nor do I keep it up for more than few months at the most, but as another tool to keep notes while getting to know people, it helps to be able to double check my recollection of their behavior, our interactions, etc outside of whatever corporate note-taking system is in place.
I have to say that when I was working in biosciences I did this and it was very helpful for me and I'm sure for my successor, but the culture of working around scientists was more conducive of it and I find the corporate world less open to it or more likely to use it in ways it shouldn't be, so I've not been doing it.<p>At the time I was using raw yaml, but eventually transitioned to emacs org-mode.<p>I still do it personally and find it invaluable. I still heavily use moleskins, but regularly sit down to transcibe them into digital form, but don't throw the physical notebooks away, just in case.
I'm now in technical sales working with clients, meetings, deliverables, etc. I've migrated from paper to Evernote, to emacs, out of emacs, and now journal and take notes in emacs with org-mode and org-roam, and use evernote for reference material. Searching notes is now a snap, and I can trust that my reference material is indexed. I'd like to quit evernote, but the OCR, web clipping, and mobile application are still working well enough for me. (although I do monthly exports from evernote and import _what_I_can_ into emacs and file system)
I got a 5 dollar Wordpress droplet on digital ocean for my work journal. I also use it to keep up with Wordpress, even tho I don’t actually extend it<p>The most feature thing for me is I can use my tablet. Dealbreaker otherwise. I’ve been looking at Notion but their iPad app was trash last time I used it<p>Besides don’t hunch and don’t get fat, “keep a journal” is what I would tell my younger self
Shameless plug: <a href="https://github.com/Aperocky/termlife/blob/master/diaryman.sh" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Aperocky/termlife/blob/master/diaryman.sh</a><p>This is how I get to keep journal, by having it as a 5 letter command in the terminal.
My title’s never gotten higher than “research scientist”, and i’ve more or less fastidiously kept a lab notebook for as long as i’ve been working.<p>For the past several years it’s been in the form of a git repo of text files, more or less by date append only.<p>I can’t imagine not having one now.
It's worth noting that journals can and will be subpoenaed as evidence during civil cases in certain jurisdictions. If you don't want something coming out in a court then don't put it in your journal.
Hmmm... the most important "paper skill" at my work is learning to "promote" papers across the tiers of journals.<p>1. Loose-paper and Whiteboards -- Sketches and concepts that rarely last longer than 5 minutes before being erased or trashed.<p>2. Short-term journal -- When a concept needs to stick with me for 1-day or so, I write it down into my short-term journal. This is a tiny Field Notes journal I keep in my pocket, always accessible. This journal is extremely tiny, and thrown away on a regular basis (Well... more like thrown into a bin. I don't think I've re-read any of my old ones, but I do keep them just in case). I rarely visit anything aside from the most recent 3 or 4 pages.<p>3. Long-term journal -- Some concepts need to stick with me for more than a day. These I copy into my long-term journal. Anything in the Long-term journal is indexed... yes, documenting your documentation. If its important enough to be long-term archived, its important enough to be thoughtfully organized and categorized for quick recall. I suggest a journal with multiple bookmarks and pre-numbered pages, such as the Leuchtturm1917.<p>My first "long term journal" was a standard $1 80-page spiral notebook. If you manually number all the pages, then you're going to be well organized. Once you're familiar with an organizational scheme, upgrade to a Leuchtturm. (Moleskins don't have numbered pages...). Some people prefer dates instead of numbers: it really depends on what organizational scheme works for you.<p>4. Team Activity -- Anything requiring coordination with others becomes a team event. Usually an email, but it could be a note on a desk, or a message left on their whiteboard. Or a formal Jira issue ticket.<p>---------<p>The important thing to note is the hierarchy... from ephemeral whiteboard all the way up to formal team coordination.<p>Generally speaking, your notes should traverse the tiers up and down as needed. This means copying notes over-and-over.<p>As computer wizards, we are often familiar with the computer automatically copying our work for us. In the paper world, you must copy notes manually. Despite its tedium, copying notes from one tier to another is extremely important.<p>Writing a note directly into your long-term journal probably means getting the concept wrong. You should get a first-draft figured out somewhere else first (whiteboards). Or, maybe a concept isn't "deserving" of a slot in your long-term journal yet. Keeping it in your short-term journal first helps "reduce the noise" found in your long term journal. Even if you know something is important enough for the long-term journal, keeping it in the short-term journal first can help you figure out how to properly organize it.<p>Finally: Copying notes within the tiers is a form of meditation that helps solidify and memorize ideas. If something is truly important enough to traverse the tiers of organization, then its probably something you want to store into brain-space.<p>-------<p>Teammate communication is simply another tier. You definitely want to get your thoughts and concepts figured out before communicating.
The biggest issue for me as a frontline developer is the backroom decisions that get made by seniors and architecture, that are subsequently poorly documented or communicated.<p>Every meeting should have a TLDR summary of what was accomplished that is shared with everyone that needs to know.