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Use a work journal

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Re: Use a work journal

#241

Post by veunes »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #54
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…

I write a lot of notes in fact I write more than I read. It helps. However I have some issues: 1. How much commentary should I write? I try to write not too many notes because I write code, and some say code should be self-documenting. So it's the same old question of how many comments should there be along the code. 2. How do I retrieve a note I've written earlier? I can use tags and search for them but it is not ea…

Focus on meaningful, contextual comments that explain the "why" behind your code.

Re: Use a work journal

#242

Post by veunes »

bee_rider wrote: post #199
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.

Absolutely! What often appears to be effortless intelligence or innate talent is usually the result of extensive experience and hard work.

Re: Use a work journal

#243

Post by compootr »

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…

my concern is what happens when github decides they don't want you on their platform any more, and terminate your account immediately?

Re: Use a work journal

#245

Post by fullspectrumdev »

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…

This is the method that I’ve found works best for me - each project has a repo, and when I’m working on a specific “thing” I open an issue.

There’s usually a lot more issue comments than commits as I just add a comment to the issue while I “work it out”.

New problem? New issue.

New insight on that problem? Comment.

And so on…

Re: Use a work journal

#246

Post by kingo55 »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #91
pizzathyme wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found a lot of success going one step further giving up on retrieval all together. I use either a new text file every time (which I never open again) or a physical notebook page (which I never refer back to). I get so much value from the act of writing itself.

Same. I just bought a scanner which I intend to use to scan and OCR my notes so that I can finally shred the mountain of paper I have. But I know I won't read the digital copy either so I'm not sure why I'm bothering. I guess it's the next step to putting it completely out of mind.

Would you have an LLM summarise it for you instead?

Re: Use a work journal

#247

Post by WJW »

greggsy wrote: post #236
leetrout wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found, and advise teams I lead or work with, that the tool absolutely does not matter because it is the discipline to use the tool consistently that makes a difference. Now, having said that, shoving jira down peoples throats with all kinds of rules around tagging and whatever wears people out. So, yes, a text file, a google doc, linear or a few post-its on the wall.

Obsidian in a nutshell. Too many bells a whistles to tweak, and isn’t conducive to consistency.

I run it without any modifications from the default and it has been working quite well tbh. I'm pretty far from being a "power user" of obsidian though, it's literally only a note taking tool for me.

Re: Use a work journal

#248

Post by kingo55 »

p5a0u9l wrote: post #41
nlawalker wrote: post #21

What finally got this to stick for me was abandoning all notion of structure and organization (and formal concepts like “logging” and “journaling”) and optimizing fully for capture over retrieval, then relying on search tools and proximity for the latter. I have the OneNote icon in the notification area configured to create a new quick note and use it liberally. Occasionally I look through all the pages, especially t…

This is the way. I’ve used zettelkasten, which is similar philosophy. Dump a thought and tag it for retrieval later. I prefer making this work with simple files and markdown. I have a colleague who uses email drafts well. My problem with OneNote and similar is the bloat of it. But, having images alongside text, when needed, is super nice.

You can have images alongside text in VS Code extensions too. Yes there's still bloat but you may already have VS Code open.

Re: Use a work journal

#249

Post by blharr »

codazoda wrote: post #81
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.

I recently started doing this with my todo list. I wrote a few bash functions and aliases: todo: Open my list in an editor todo [thing]: Add a thing to the bottom of my list. next: Show me only my next most important task. mark: Mark my current task done. There are a few more, but you get the idea.

Still a Linux noob, but I'm recently learning that you can do simple things like this in bash and the fact that it just... works is incredible. Thanks for the suggestion, I think I'll try this one

Re: Use a work journal

#250

Post by greggsy »

compootr wrote: post #243
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…

my concern is what happens when github decides they don't want you on their platform any more, and terminate your account immediately?

Why would this happen?
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