Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed

Doing a bit of beating my head against a wall at work, but it finally started showing some cracks near the end of today.

I wanted to mention a work-habit I have found useful over the past months, though. It is a very simple one. I take a decent amount of notes during the day, which go into one big text-file, and I format them as questions and answers. I do like:

Q: What did I try frobbing the frotz with?
A: /usr/bin/blat --mumble

Q: Did that work?
A: No, something went wrong with the grueserver. I think it's because of the lack of burblemumbles?

And for whatever reason, this style feels very natural and easy for to me to jot down useful information in. Any time I ask another person a question, or any time a person asks me a question, I typically write it down --- and a lot more things that I learn get shoehorned into "questions to myself". The real payoff of this is that later on, when I ask myself the *same* question, I've had very good luck grepping through the file because the text of the question is there, and typically matches how I phrase the same question in the future when I've forgotten the answer.

I also obsessively put dates near everything, which helps with collateral email and file searches.

I have also tricked myself into feeling that it is a little game, where my score is simply how many questions I have answered during a day. I feel pretty decent if I can get at least 8 or 9 or so, and a really solid day is 12-15. Crummy unproductive days are usually about 2-4.
Tags: work
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  • (no subject)

    Some further progress cleaning up the https://xkcd.com/1360/ -esque augean stables that is my hard drive. Tomato chicken I made a couple days ago…

  • (no subject)

    Did some personal archaeology. Helped a little with laundry. Threw some chicken, onions, tomato, stock, peppers in the slow cooker and hopefully…

  • (no subject)

    Dinner with akiva and dannel at nuevo portal in carroll gardens. Ate a pile of chicken stew and rice and beans and maduros, good times. I do miss…