I read the [[Pragmatic Programmer]] in 2021 while I was doing some fieldwork in Kenya. There were many findings from that book that I have sought to apply to daily life.

One of those was using a notebook to jot down what you’re working on, your thoughts on the work and how you’d solved X problem. I was pretty dedicated to these daybooks, they had a contents page and everything. I would use them daily to remind myself of answers to thorny questions I had worked out and since relegated to “the book”, an external cache to save memory in-capite.

Then when I left work, my previous employer kept them. I am still bitter as hell that I don’t have access to this information, especially because it’s certainly been destroyed or otherwise put away never to be looked at again. Ultimately the work I was doing was company property and so it’s their right to do so. But it seems an awful shame to have knowledge destroyed. Ce’st le vie :shrug:

The section from the Pragmatic Programmer reproduced in full:

# Engineering Daybooks

Dave once worked for a small computer manufacturer, which meant working alongside electronic and sometimes mechanical engineers.

Many of them walked around with a paper notebook, normally with a pen stuffed down the spine. Every now and then when we were talking, they’d pop the notebook open and scribble something.

Eventually Dave asked the obvious question. It turned out that they’d been trained to keep an engineering daybook, a kind of journal in which they recorded what they did, things they’d learned, sketches of ideas, readings from meters: basically anything to do with their work. When the notebook became full, they’d write the date range on the spine, then stick it on the shelf next to previous daybooks. There may have been a gentle competition going on for whose set of books took the most shelf space.

The daybook has three main benefits:

- It is more reliable than memory. People might ask “What was the name of that company you called last week about the power supply problem?” and you can flip back a page or so and give them the name and number.
- It gives you a place to store ideas that aren’t immediately relevant to the task at hand. That way you can continue to concentrate on what you are doing, knowing that the great idea won’t be forgotten.
- It acts as a kind of rubber duck (described on page 94). When you stop to write something down, your brain may switch gears, almost as if talking to someone—a great chance to reflect. You may start to make a note and then suddenly realize that what you’d just done, the topic of the note, is just plain wrong.