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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)

#101

Post by arminiusreturns »

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.

At the time I was using raw yaml, but eventually transitioned to emacs org-mode.

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.

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

#102

Post by lstamour »

redisman wrote: post #99
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…

We use that and then post it in slack at the end of day as a kind of async status/standup update.

I'm thinking I probably need more organization than simple note-taking. I tried daily journals but it's hard to find stuff later unless you happen to land on the perfect cross-linking or search system, or somehow integrate with a reminders app, and have the system support every type of document or diagram you need from your markdown...

I get caught up trying to design the best system, and end up with something that only half works -- I just post notes to myself in Slack, particularly in the @you channel, the one it sets up for you at your username. Downside: every time I switch jobs, I lose a TON of context. Upside: everything's in Slack and I don't have to worry immediately. :) Plus, it's always possible that I'd lose the computer I was taking notes on, or not allowed to sync notes to my own private repo, or whatnot.

If I need to write longer-form notes than Slack allows, though, I often turn to Notes app or OneNote (if on Windows). But ... it's constrained because I end up not being able to stick with one cross-platform note taking tool -- the tools I use are too different. Still waiting for the perfect tool that has yet to arrive... I suspect the answer lies in the operating system -- to track what I work on in any app and helping me surface and record metadata better. To move from tracking files and folders to helping me track activities and outputs/decisions. Integrating git commit logs with macOS-like app-based revision history with operating system file browsing (for other kinds of cloud storage) seems like the right level of abstraction to work at, but I'm not sure what the right UI would be. :)

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

#103

Post by jakecopp »

ironchef wrote: post #9
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 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…

Vimwiki works great for this! Hyperlinks and diary management, all plain text and able to be opened in anything.

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

#104

Post by mabil »

blackrock wrote: post #93
war1025 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 topi…

Try this alias. alias jim=' \ journaldir="/home/myusername/journal/" ; \ jfile="log_`date -I`.txt" ; \ jfilepath="$journaldir$jfile" ; \ echo "Creating log: $jfilepath" ; \ vi $jfilepath ; ' Instructions: (1) Copy to your .bash_aliases file. (2) Edit the journaldir, and replace myusername with your name. (3) Create a journal directory somewhere for #2. (4) Source it. source ~/.bash_aliases (5) jim will open up today'…

I have something similar, with the folder syncing to google drive, you could encrypt if you want to before hand but I never got to it, I separate one file per month.

  alias journal="vim ~/workspace/google-drive/journal/$(date "+%Y-%m")"
Then in vim I have this mapping, by pressing F2 it opens a new line at the end of the file so you can just start typing. I add goals to the beggining of the week with the F3 map.

  nnoremap  Goi"=strftime("\%A, \%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S")po    - 
  nnoremap  GoiWeek "=strftime("\%V ")pi goals:    -
Monday -> Press F3 -> like a bujo, review what is still relevant and move to next week or drop it.

  Week 10 goals:
      - [ ] check connectivity with service x, splunk and service Y, from new environment
      - [ ] xxxx
Then whenever I will change context in my mind I just go back to the open buffer and press F2. I normally start my day looking at what happened over the other remote branches, and update my weekly goals task list

  Thursday, 2020-07-09 08:25:52
      - emails / slack

  Thursday, 2020-07-09 08:36:13
      - support x person

  Thursday, 2020-07-09 10:00:00
      - dog break

  Thursday, 2020-07-09 10:00:00
      - HN
Then at then end of the year I create a folder `archive/201X/` and move all the files under it.

I had a calendar event reminding me to review what happened over the week on Friday afternoon, but that is just lying to myself. I got to do once or twice over the last couple of years, that is something I need to improve on which is the whole point of article, review it while it is fresh and learn from it.

edit: code format

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

#105

Post by GlennS »

permalac wrote: post #13
GlennS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason I try to write everything down twice. Once roughly by hand, and then a day or two later tidied up and put on the computer.

How do you find time for that?

I guess I prioritize it over other things which I would otherwise be spending the time on. You might just be a more busy person than me?

I also have a pretty strong aversion to headless-chicken-mode, having seen it as a pathological disaster spiral at a couple of places where everything is urgent all the time, and so you never have time for anything. Being in too much of a rush to do things properly is a trap.

I find as an employee I have to fill and empty my head a lot. I have a good short-term memory, but things that I don't write down tend to slip out after a week or two. "Oh, I worked on that thing? I don't remember that."

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

#106

Post by GlennS »

linker3000 wrote: post #60
GlennS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason I try to write everything down twice. Once roughly by hand, and then a day or two later tidied up and put on the computer.

I was taught some 30 years ago that best practise is to write clear contemporary notes because transcribing them later can lead to self-censorship, deciding to omit what might seem irrelevant at the (new) time, but subsequently becomes important, or incorrect re-interpretation.

This is an interesting idea, and I will chew on it for a bit.

I'm not sure how I would achieve it though? The right initial structure isn't usually clear at the beginning of a conversation/research session/whatever I am taking notes on.

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

#107

Post by Wistar »

tehjoker wrote: post #100
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 do the same, but using paper notebooks. I was able to accurately fill out a financial report because of the notes I took over a year ago on a large processing job. It's very helpful to do and organizes my thoughts. Using paper also lets you draw when needed and sketch out how an algorithm should work.

Spot on. The evidential value of a consistently written log can be huge and important for a wide variety of reasons. I have had two situations in my life where my having kept dated notes spared me a whole lot of grief.

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

#108

Post by murphm8 »

joe8756438 wrote: post #77
OJFord wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tatatap looks like a really nice straight-forward/utilitarian tool, thanks! As an aside, as someone interested in building similar (focused on solving one problem hopefully well) tools and earning some modest income from them, would you mind sharing (roughly) what your distribution of free/paid users looks like?

Around 3%. There are people that use it a lot and the rest aren't that engaged.

Taptap looks really cool and I would like to use it, unfortunately my workplace doesn't allow 3rd parties to store the information that would be in my notes. Have you thought about a self-hosted version?

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

#109

Post by brootstrap »

chris_st wrote: post #23
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…

Absolutely. I did something slightly simpler: a single file with a per-day section. This helped immensely with quarterly reviews (I'd forget a lot of things I'd accomplished), and REALLY helped when I hit an obscure bug (typically a configuration thing) that I'd seen several months previously.

Same here. After a year or so i got tired of actually 'vi ~/worklog.txt' and made an alias. The alias opens up that txt file in VI, goes to end of the file, and starts a newline in insert mode haha. LOVE IT

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

#110

Post by Wistar »

modzu wrote: post #42
prepend wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like dotted grid as well. However I like Pilot Juice Up 03 gel tip .3mm. They are very precise, write in many conditions, and I’ve never had one run out of ink.

agree but zebra 401 here

BIC Velocity 1.6 mm. Yeah, I like that fat, juicy writing.
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