Ask HN: How do you take notes at work?

[vishaalk]

I recently got into the habit of writing down what I've done at work each day, but found after a few months of daily journaling there are lots of days that I never revisit. I try to keep track of important links and learnings, and started making some bespoke pages like "How do I .... [insert action here?", which proved useful, but figured I'd ask here what types of things they found useful to write down. I know some people prioritize their to-dos at the top of each journal page. I tried writing down what I learned each day and that was useful for a while.

Interested to hear what people have to say. Thanks!

P.S. I use OneNote for this but since it's mostly text theoretically I could use anything

[dvtrn]

My method is kind of pure anarchy, some bastardized combination of the bullet journal and freeform notation of things as the pop up in my head.

The real magic (for me) is highlighters. I highlight in my journal. Green = Requires action, orange = some kind of policy or process thing, blue = plan for later, or something I want to come back to or a stray idea to try out later.

Indentations happen to expand on the previous line. Hanging words are pushed over to the extremity of the page. I sometimes write sideways on pages as almost literal sidebars. There's an entire page of a handdrawn command line, colored with lines to output explaining a provisioning script I was rewriting earlier this year.

End of the day I then write a summary in OneNote (coming to really like this program--first time back in a Windows shop since 98SE), and later toss the critical stuff that needs to be de-silo'd into the team wiki.

Works for me, utterly baffles everyone else-but folks seem to love how obsessive I am about updating the wiki. Onboarding new devs is HILARIOUSLY fast now. So...there's that.

...I'm kind of obsessive about journaling..sorry for the wall of text. Saw the topic and got excited.