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The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

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Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#61

Post by bryanmgreen »

et1337 wrote: post #54
ironchef wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same-ish thing. Main highlights on mine: 1) I start off the day with things I should be working on (samesies) 2) I use ### to demarcate different "working sessions" ... one for each meeting, etc. 3) I struggle with finding something that lets me: encrypt, search, big notes, and use multi platform easily :( Closest I've found was google keep so far .. but i hate relying on it like that. I'm pretty sure "somet…

Standard Notes is my Google Keep replacement. Fully encrypted, straightforward business model, works great, apps available on iOS and Android.

Thank you for the recommendation. Looks like it has all the security features I’m desperately missing from all Google products and would make their products an easy default go-to.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#62

Post by KineticLensman »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #30

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. 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 importa…

An approach that I've used in stakeholder meetings (e.g. a project review with external customers) is to have a designated note-taker who creates a record of decisions and actions. They can add additional content as they so wish. At the end of the meeting they quickly summarise the decisions / actions. This helps to ensure that sure everyone leaves the meeting on the same page and also allows people to comment if they thing something has been omitted. This record can be distributed almost immediately including to people who couldn't make it or who have an interest. If everyone keeps track themselves it is easy with the best will in the world for actions to get forgotten or misinterpreted.

If the meeting is complex and the chair has to get involved (e.g. to adjudicate) then they often will be too busy to take the notes themselves; I for one cannot steer a discussion and take notes at the same time. This is also a good way to introduce competent juniors to meetings - make them the record taker (they need to be be briefed first on what is expected). Even tracking who people are can be quite challenging. If there are lots of new faces (e.g. external reviewers) the chair may need to get people to introduce themselves (name and role only, not a bio), and the meeting recorder can concentrate on matching faces with the names on the invite list. If the meeting is in a conference room, writing names around a little picture representing the table can help with this.

Finally, in the sense that history is written by the victors, owning the minutes can be quite a powerful position.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#63

Post by linker3000 »

Something that I didn't see called out in the article is who owns your journal.

Very likely, if you write down notes about work-related activities they are the property of the business.

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!?

I'm not judging, just saying!

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#64

Post by criddell »

gorgoiler wrote: post #25
prepend wrote: post #15

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. 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. I started this because I found having a laptop…

Paper logs are critical for ideas. One just cannot be as expressive in markdown as one can be on a blank dotted-grid page and a pen-pot of Tombow double ended brush pens and Pilot V5s. Anything important can be digested into markdown, but with a note to the journal page where the magic actually happened. (It’s too bad that magic usually turns out to be gibberish thought spam.)

A digital system like GoodNotes on an iPad is a pretty good hybrid system. I can type, write by hand, sketch, paste in code and graphics, embed hyperlinks, etc...

It has built in OCR so a search will find my handwritten notes as well.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

elric wrote: post #6

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. There's a todo list at the top of each day's entry. But the…

[deleted]

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#66

Post by nsomaru »

paulcole wrote: post #58
gorgoiler wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper logs are critical for ideas. One just cannot be as expressive in markdown as one can be on a blank dotted-grid page and a pen-pot of Tombow double ended brush pens and Pilot V5s. Anything important can be digested into markdown, but with a note to the journal page where the magic actually happened. (It’s too bad that magic usually turns out to be gibberish thought spam.)

> One just cannot be as expressive in markdown as one can be on a blank dotted-grid page and a pen-pot of Tombow double ended brush pens and Pilot V5s. Counterpoint: Yes they can. There’s this weird fetishization about paper notebooks. It’s like the people who say that vinyl is unequivocally better (it’s not). For some people the end result of digital notes is vastly superior to anything they can scribble in a notebo…

Except, vinyl fundamentally solves the same problem as another medium of storing audio.

Paper offers a different level of expression. The comparison is thus not equivalent.

Usually when you offer a counter point you don’t just disagree, but provide some basis or example to show the statement or proposition in question is false.

Fetishising notebooks aside, parent mentioned expressiveness. Clearly everything that can be _expressed_ in Markdown can be expressed on paper, but it’s not clear that the opposite is true.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#67

Post by bcrosby95 »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #18
elric wrote: post #6

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. There's a todo list at the top of each day's entry. But the…

I'm curious as to how to implement this ? I mean, i currently put everything that needs doing into org-mode, clock in on the task when i'm working on it, and clock out when i'm done. Mark the task completed, and archive done tasks daily to an archive file. I guess that's the limit of my daily "todo" activities. It's mostly in point form "x needs doing", "request confirmation from x", "send status on project x to y".…

I went the opposite direction as you may be going: from daily markdown files, to 1 giant org mode file where the date is the top header, to 1 giant org mode file where my TODOs etc. are the top header.

I think what works best depends upon how you plan to use them and what your workflow looks like. But I have tended to find the "1 giant file" is a better fit for me.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#68

Post by nabilhat »

elric wrote: post #6

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. There's a todo list at the top of each day's entry. But the…

Because of my lousy memory I've been doing several versions of the same for a long time. It's the most impactful thing I've done in my various jobs. Early in my career, a reputation for good records put me in charge of projects, with remarkable levels of autonomy. Early career $manager tends to appreciate junior reports who invest in their own accountability.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#69

Post by war1025 »

elric wrote: post #6

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. There's a todo list at the top of each day's entry. But the…

I've been doing something very similar to this for the past year and a half. I was inspired by one of my coworkers who has a long running list of notes in a google doc.

I run "vim `date -I`", which opens a file for the current day in the form `YYYY-MM-DD`. I keep it in a git repo that I commit and push to every time I add a note.

I separate topics using `===` surrounded by blank lines. When I go back to update a topic I already wrote something about, I separate it with `--` surrounded by blank lines.

The main thing this ends up being useful to me for is that I put off filing my timesheets until the end of the month, and then when our accounting lady gets after me, I can go back and actually write down semi-accurate notes on what I did each day.

Re: The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal (2017)

#70

Post by war1025 »

prepend wrote: post #15

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. 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. I started this because I found having a laptop…

I keep a stack of paper on my desk. I don't keep a journal with it, but I've always found that blank printer paper is the best tool for fleshing out ideas and keeping quick notes on what your thought process is.
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