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Use a work journal

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Re: Use a work journal

#191

Post by Flimm »

polairscience wrote: post #104
hubraumhugo wrote: post #96

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/…

What website blocker do you use?

I use LeechBlock NG, for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, as well as Firefox on Android.

Re: Use a work journal

#192

Post by bogdan-lab »

senkora wrote: post #13

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.

Yes, stack is much better than long-long log. After some time you're log becomes too big and if it contains some points you want to return to, then they are just lost. And if you lose something in it you stop trusting it and do not use it. At least this is my story.

Re: Use a work journal

#194

Post by imiric »

simonw wrote: post #28

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 w…

That's interesting, but aren't you concerned about using a proprietary service for this? I would hesitate to be at the mercy of a corporation for such a personal workflow.

Re: Use a work journal

#195

Post by Flimm »

al_borland wrote: post #44
vantassell wrote: post #31

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.

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 bath…

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

Re: Use a work journal

#196

Post by telesilla »

cmiles74 wrote: post #173
lelanthran wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I wrote a program (used from a CLI, but I mostly use the GUI I developed for it) to do something similar for my own use: https://github.com/lelanthran/frame/blob/master/docs/FrameIn... I use it daily.

It's low-tech, but I've been using notebooks (not too thick, stapled usually). I write a header for each day when I start and then a line or two as I work on tasks and I try to note each time I switch tasks. I keep the notebooks but rarely look at them once they are filled. Maybe once or twice as I switch to a new notebook and then once again when it comes to yearly review time. A couple of times I have rifled throug…

Also a note taker - the physical aspect acts as a kind of cementing the thought. I never look at my old notes either and discard them when the book is complete, it's just an excerise in helping me manage complexity.

Re: Use a work journal

#197

Post by simpaticoder »

safety1st wrote: post #130
simpaticoder wrote: post #30

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 o…

If I'm working on something particularly complex I basically just do the journaling in a code comment adjacent to what I'm working on. So the first commit may be three lines of code and a huge long winded rambling comment of what I've already tried or thought about. By the time the task is done I've pared away the more speculative/rambling elements of what I wrote, and what's left is typically some extremely well com…

A good technique I've used as well. Call it "iterative literate programming".

Re: Use a work journal

#199

Post by bee_rider »

simpaticoder wrote: post #30

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 o…

Experience looks like intelligence to us because we didn’t see the hours our favorite instructors and mentors spent banging their heads against their own notebooks, haha.

Re: Use a work journal

#200

Post by bee_rider »

quest88 wrote: post #48
simpaticoder wrote: post #30

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 o…

> 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, like…

This was the biggest revelation in grad school for me, I think.

The professors were in fact not gods of problem solving, they just had the answers. Not just of the problems they brought along (obviously). But also of the handful of problems we’d tend to invent. Of course, if you really catch them flat-footed, they can provide circumspect and sagely advice, and then quickly check Wikipedia to see if anyone has solved your problem.

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