TLDR;
Logging — habit of writing during your work. Best problem solvers and thinkers consistently write whenever they approach any serious work.
Logging requires effort and discipline. Logging uses capitalization effect: the more you do it, the more benefits you get.
Keep notes open.Keep an Notion or Obsidian page open, so you could easily jump and write something there
Engineers tend to stuck — writing helps you getting unstuck
Through the years of training talents, I’ve noticed that many best engineers, problem solvers and thinkers tend to get stuck.
One approach I used was forcing them to write. When I was training coders solving difficult problems — I would just force them to write nonsense, like dumb variables and a few “IF” statements.
When I would train a system architect or a manager that needs to describe solutions on demand — I would force them start thinking aloud.
This is a pattern known as “externalizing” thoughts — making vague indeas into more concrete external sentences. It is known for years to be helping people to get unstuck and solve complex problems.
Logging
In engineering domain, I adopted this practice in many forms — and one special one I named “Logging”.
Logging is a habit of writing during your work. It can shape many form you most likely known or even use:
- Plan before approaching the task.Planning the list of tasks, their order, implementation details and caveats. You may decompose a complex task into smaller one.
- Writing down hypotheses list.Writing down riskiest assumptions that you need to test or a list of hypothesis you need to validate.
These are specific examples. When I say Logging is a habit, I focus you on the fact that you need to teach yourself constantly write during performing specific tasks.
It helps you unstuck; it helps you keep truck of what done/tested and not forget; it helps you making retros; it helps you correct mistakes. It has way too many benefits not to do it.
But what specific problem Logging addresses?
Logging the problem that when working on something that require longer time [4+ hours] numerous problems appear:
- The problem of memory.It is easy to forget what exactly you done. You were testing different ways to recreate bug or trying to fix a …; when ever you test different hypothesis OR do things at random — you get risk of simply not realizing how you achieved that. Proper journal
- The problem of diminishing returns.It is easy to get way to deep and screw the balance between effort and results.
- And it encourages dry-run[soon].When you teach yourself loggin, you go through the steps before the execution. It helps you forsee the problems, before you encounter them — and thus tweak the path before.
Examples:
- Engineer.You work on solving a tricky bug; you try many things — and eventually got it reproduced. And you are not sure what exactly reproduced it. Damn!
- Manager. You estimate the timeline, add up different time chunks and get the number for the project length. In a day or two you look at it and now sure: why the heck it suppose to take 2 months?
Nuances
Logging is not reporting.Most people see writing things down as reporting. Something you do later for a manager, a review, or a retrospective.
Many folks who went through daily status updates, corporate reporting, etc. hate it. For a good reason. I know cause I hated it too.
Logging gets your retro; retro teaches you. By having a log of work, you can review your work. Specific part of review — groupping the work into clusters. It may be understanding what “modules” you worked on. It maybe understanding what challenges/problem you solved.
Having a specific list of actions helps you clusters and make a retro outlook.
Retrospective analysis makes you smarter than you are: you can correct mistakes earlier than otherwise you would.
Do logging + retro even once per regular 2 week of work — you will be smarter. Do it 2 times per week and your higher ups [lead, head of, CEO] will be glad with you much more.
It helps you figuring out what you actually tested. When you are in uncertainty, struggling with any complex problem — log of work helps you keep the track of hypothesis, pathes you followed.
Mentioned concepts
- Dry-run
- Retrospective thinking.Specific tools I mentioned here are “review” and “retrospective thinking”. These patterns are much more important, that people think. We often rely on “perspective thinking” — by looking forward. But we almost never are encouraged to look backward and figure out where we are, what we’ve done some far, who we became so far.
Jordan Peterson taught me that through “Self-authoring programm” — but I believe it is much bigger that just about personal developmnet.
The pattern of looking backward is fundamental thinking model, that helps you compound over what was done and/or remove / stop loss doing something that is harmful or has low benefits.
There’s balance of course — don’t overdo it, otherwise there’s a peaking problem. Still, having regular micro retros, I call “review” and having a medium one once 1-2 months are useful.
- Externalising thoughts.Techniques like journaling, blogging, sketching/wireframing, speaking aloud, or talking through problems — they are about the same thing: making internal vague thoughts verbal and more formal. Any formal of externalization helps — text and specifically my Logging is one of them.