Ask HN: Do you maintain a log of what you learn? How often do you go over them?

Rewriting is a process of refining. Most ideas get rewritten and iterated on several times before anything coalesces. Also, it's common to have duplicate ideas at different times so coalescing them simultaneously consolidates them.

For instance, when re-reading my doc, when I see multiple ideas related to say topic A, I put all topic A items together (just copy-and-paste into adjacent paragraphs -- nothing more), try to see the bigger picture and then try to rephrase them more succinctly. I constant rewrite and synthesize the disparate ideas into something more cohesive, kind of like snowballs clumping with some getting bigger over time. Some ideas do die in the process (you can copy-and-paste these into another Docs document), while others grow bigger and become more precise in their expression.

The one idea behind the Fieldstone approach, often not considered in other methods, is engagement of the emotions. Of 100 ideas, I may only feel passionate about 5 at any given time because they resonate in my situation. For instance, some ideas/arguments/metanarratives which were meh to me pre-COVID now feel urgent, and with my current perspective, I've an emotional investment in pursuing and expanding them.

You can have 100 ideas but you really on need to work on the few that you really care about, ie. those whose time has come. Only pursuing ideas that you're emotional about helps you focus and not be overwhelmed by the myriad ideas that are in the document.

Inspiration is lumpy, but with a store of constantly refining/evolving potential ideas in the greenhouse -- which you cultivate over time -- you are better positioned to take advantage of those on the verge of blooming.

It reminds me of what Richard Feynman said about convincing others that you're a genius: "always have 6 important problems percolating in your head; when you come across a new idea, test it against the 6. Once in a while you will hit jackpot and find a good match between problem and solution. Everybody will then think you're a genius for seeing the connection so quickly, when in reality you may have been thinking about the problem for years." (paraphrased)

To that end, I keep a mistake log, into which I insert an entry after doing something that either caused down-time or that caused my team to lose over an hour of productive time. It now has over 500 entries in story format, along with the relevant code. Some example titles (along with their tags in square brackets):

- [gotchas] references to relative file paths are brittle when there are multiple entry points to a program

- [gotchas] lazy evaluation cannot be cached in most systems

- [unix] adding `sudo` affects $PATH and can cause commands not to be found

- [gotchas] never confuse STDOUT with return value

- [collaboration] never remove a flow in code without consulting all possible stake-holders

- [algorithms] when calling a sorting function, always ask yourself if alphabetical or numerical

I plan on posting a video with more details on my YouTube channel soon.

Also, I just keep notes in one giant text file. I'd love some sort of fuzzy search though.

When you say you write things down in log format, do you use a field as a tag?

Any chance you can paste an example entry?