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Journaling
Dan Grover | Mar 21 2006
Here's my thinking When I'm developing software, and there's some glitch, what I'll sometimes do is go back into the source where I suspect there might be a problem, and try to figure it out. When in regular life, though, I'm thinking what I should do is start keeping a journal. Then when I ask myself "What was I thinking!?" I can go and find out exactly. Then remind myself "Oh yeah, don't think that." Also sometimes I vent online when I shouldn't. And in some cases it may be seen by people I might not, and sometimes it's googlable and everything. So I downloaded a journal program for the Mac that looked pretty spiffy. But then I realized why I make my to-do lists by hand -- there are certain things that just look stupid typed. And if I kept it in a digital format, there's always that risk of anyone who finds it reproducing it quite easily. I went and ordered a Moleskine ruled large notbook thing, 'cause they seemed nice (and the descriptions of reminded me a little bit, for some reason, of the journal Winston purchases in 1984). I can't wait to get it -- I ordered it with cheapo Media Mail shipping which takes forever. I figure what I should do is set aside a small amount of time every day, probably before bed, to write in it. I could put down thoughts, ideas, reflections, etc, and probably start to develop some conventions for doing so to make it easy to go back and see (e.g. the 'meta data' notebook hacks on here). Does anyone here journal? Is it a useful activity? Any journaling hacks? 41 Comments
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 I keep MacJournal in my...Submitted by Lachia on March 26, 2006 - 3:05pm.
I keep MacJournal in my taskbar thingy and I keep mounds of journals. I have one that I keep locked with a password (personal thoughts and feelings) "just in case"... but the others contain content that is strictly related to the theme of the journal. For instance, I'm a graduate student in plant physiology and I do a TON of lab work. One of my "journals" is titled Lab Work. I open it when I enter the lab and close it when I leave the lab. This way as I'm performing my lab based tasks I can keep notes on 2. Any speedbumps I may have encountered and what I added to my grand "in-box" for references to the speedbump or NA's related to said speedbump 3. Measurements I made during the day (if I made a new batch of reagent) 4. Any odd things that may have happened during the course of my work. This is GREAT for research as when I'm processing my data, if I find the statistics aren't what I expected or if a result seems out of place I can directly refer to my journal to help me explain this. I keep similar journals for my Field Work and Computer Work. Now, I also have a Moleskine, but I reserve that for items related to possible NA's (such as, review Lab journal for Processing) and keep the Journals really to refer back to either as a performance review or tracking. » POSTED IN:
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