Comment by 8fingerlouie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 8fingerlouie | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who "recently" (couple of years or more) switched from "senior developer" to architect and at the same time got handed responsibility for 5-10 independent software systems, i completely agree.

Before this switch i would default to using memory. It was easy, it worked, and i have a rather good memory. Most things worth remembering somehow just "sticks" without any mnemonics.

After the switch, i got 10x the information i used to get before, and while i initially settled on using my inbox as a "todo list", flagging items that needed attention, this also became rather inefficient after a while.

I started keeping a journal. Every meeting i go to, i jot down notes, every agreement is written down. I still keep my todo list, but it's in Emacs org-mode now. Notes are handwritten.

As the author also hints, handwriting helps commit things to memory, so the times i actually consult my notes are rather rare. Instead, by simply having written them down, my brain somehow accepts that "it's under control", and focuses on something else, but still remembers it.

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.

I am not sure I follow this line of thinking? You are saying that after the fact you somehow understand the context less than you did at the time of initial writing?

I find the absolute opposite to be true- At the time of the lecture or meeting or whatever, I am just trying to capture everything. What is truly important and what is noise is not clear to me at that point. Also in the beginning stages of a class or project certain concepts or decisions seem very new or foreign, and a few months later they are deeply ingrained and no more likely to be forgotten than understanding what gravity is.

By far the most successful study technique I have ever used is recopying my initial notes. The second set is much more coherent, organized, and focused on the tricky bits while removing things that I thought might be important at the time but ended up not being important.

I think someone did you a major disservice 30 years ago.

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.

How do you find time for that?

I have a personal "shut down" period at the end of the day where I close out my browser tabs that are no longer relevant, and review all the scribbles I've written down in a notebook, transfering the few important ideas to the relevant longterm storage, or to the appropriate project file's todo list, etc.... I also write down the first thing I'm going to do in the morning (because I don't believe the first thing to do should just be "catch up on Slack" or "read email").

Helps me clear my mind, and it saves me a lot of time in the morning, because I can start work and have some wins for the day within 15 minutes...and that momentum carries me through....

Also, the shut-down period is nice, because when I'm tired at the end of the day, it doesn't take a lot of energy.

In the words of the Merovingian: "Yes, of course. Who has time? Who has time? But then if we never take time, how can we ever have time?"

I do the same, and transcribing notes doesn't take all that long. You tend to summarize in the process, so it's not usually a 1:1 copy.

I also put references to my (page-numbered) paper notebooks in my notes file, and vice versa, so stuff that would be very long to transcribe doesn't usually have to be transcribed at all.

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."

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