Using an engineering notebook
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Using an engineering notebook
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Re: Using an engineering notebook
#2I use a physical notebook but not really an engeneering notebook as described here.
I make notes while working and notes during meetings. Honestly most of it never gets read after a eay but I still do it.
Very few of my colleagues carry a notebook around. Those who do are not seen taking notes too often.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#3I use a physical notebook but not really an engeneering notebook as described here. I make notes while working and notes during meetings. Honestly most of it never gets read after a eay but I still do it. Very few of my colleagues carry a notebook around. Those who do are not seen taking notes too often.
Almost all my paper notes these days are write-only media.
The benefit is not the artifact itself, but the immediate act of formalizing the idea, emphasizing its importance, and being mindful/attentive to what's going on.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#4I think this is great advice. One thing that I think is simultaneously trite and under-appreciated is the degree to which writing itself drives strong memory formation, even if the notes themselves aren’t particularly good or detailed. I’ve been keeping technical notebooks for about a decade now, and I’ve found that I can open up to almost any page and remember exactly what I was thinking when I scrawled on it. By contrast, things I write in Obsidian need much more context (i.e. detail) to remind me what I was thinking.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#5We have a strong culture of engineering notebooks in my org. I tried for a good 5 years — i carried one and probably filled up 5 of them.
But i went back to them maybe 5 times in all those years. And the effort of writing actually distracts me more than the effortless action of typing. Plus the search and backup functions.
Even in high school in the early 90s I typed up all my class notes because the act of transcribing my written scratch to typed notes cemented it in my memory — i remember the sensation of recalling something for a test by air typing.
I guess with this history, its just how Ive trained myself so I carry laptop every where I go and type on that, but I al jealous of some of the well crafted and illustrated notes of some peers — especially the ones with multicolor pens for differentiation.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#6One thing that has helped me keep to start keeping long-running notebooks (which I use as engineering notebooks at times, among other things) is to actually keep two: one for immediate notes that I treat as disposable, and then another for "permanent" stuff. The former is a little 3x5 pocket notebook that literally lives in my pocket (or beside my keyboard), and I can jot stuff down in whatever order or format is convenient at the time. When I have a bit of time, I go through and "reconcile" the smaller notebook with the larger one (a regular composition book) by copying over the relevant information and indexing it. I then cross off the pages in the pocket notebook so I'll know I've dealt with them. (FWIW this is inspired by the bookkeeping practice of keeping a "wastebook" or "journal" that is just a list of transactions as they happen, and later "posting" or reconciling them into one's ledgers.)
This has a couple benefits. First, you always get better work if you go through more than one draft. Second, the idea of something being in the "permanent" notebook forever can cause me to freeze up a bit, not wanting to "mess it up". Having a place where I can "stage" or draft my entries helps with this.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#7In my research I take notes exactly as described here. I use plain-text files, one per week, with dated sections using markdown-ish notation where convenient. Display is never a goal; approximately 80-char column plaintext is the target format.
I agree with other commenters here that typing gives me more flexibility, in particular when writing arguments. I’ll format each point as a bullet and rearrange the list until I’m satisfied with the flow.
The notebook is essential for recovering tidbits learned along the way, e.g. what tricky steps did I need to get that one dependency to build. Weekly notepads are coarse enough to search by memory and contain enough context to get oriented quickly when going back several months.
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#8I found a similar blog post like this years ago at the start of my career and started keeping a Rhodia Webnotebook A5. I've got over a dozen now from all my years of work. Nice for nostalgia
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#9Surprised it’s not mentioned, but important for the sake of patents too
Re: Using an engineering notebook
#10Just wanted to flag the use of the little "jump back to where I was reading" links on the footnotes is a feature I'll be implementing and using on every footnote I ever write for the rest of my life now. Thank you!