Writing Things Down - Intangible Value

Writing things down on paper has this amazing intangible value.

In our world of software engineering it is easy to get caught in this loop where everything is done on computers or our phones. These devices don't give you something that makes it easier for our brains to connect things or see the big picture flow.

Even to this day, I use a lab-style book where I take my quick notes and jot down my ideas. The same as the lab books in the engineering program in school, my current lab book is not organized in any special way. I just put a date for the given day and jot down my observations, ideas and occasional notes. This lab-book/notebook is not meant to replace my TO-DO system; it is meant to replace a collection of post-it notes and to give me space to freely transfer ideas to paper. We all have a photographic memory to some degree (some of us more and some less) and when somebody mentions a topic, our brain is good in remembering what page we wrote it on and which part of the page. You can even go back months or years into your notebooks and find a piece of information or maybe have some information on nostalgic moments.

How many times have we thought of putting together a diagram for your teammates and we walked away from it because transferring your ideas using a tool like LucidChart or Confluence Draw io slows us down. Just grab your notebook and sketch it there quickly and then translate it into a LucidChart later; or in the worst case, you just take a picture of your diagram from your notebook and post it in your team's online documentation; that's still better than not having any diagrams at all. Go get that notebook for yourself. I am attaching a picture of mine. Look at those clean pages ready to receive some ideas :)

Thank you for reading this article. Keep geeking out!

Almir Mustafic