[cjdoc29]

Anecdotally, I have found that in doing non-urgent root-cause investigations, writing* is the only way for me to think deeply about a problem.

My flow looks like:

1. Write the impact of the problem as currently observed. This answers most Product and Executive questions and know I'm actively working on solving this problem.

2. List down ideas of what I think it could be.

3. Start exploring those ideas by priority.

4. Bring in Datadog metrics, log items, commands/queries

5. Have a conclusion for each of those ideas

This has multiplicative effects:

1. Others don't feel the need to have me in a Zoom call because they can follow my progress and comment on the doc if they feel strongly about something. I have full focus on the task at hand.

2. The doc becomes handy in outage review meetings and retrospectives later on

3. Useful commands/queries sometimes end up being formed here and I can go back and reuse them

*I rarely actually handwrite things. I depend on Markdown-formatted collaborative notes tools that get out of the way (i.e. not Google Docs).

[doubled112]

Google Docs is still doable for these kind of collaborative notes.

I've learned not to worry about anything that isn't content during the process. It can be copied, pasted, formatted, fixed, proof read, and put somewhere more permanent later, just not while I am hard at it.

[ghaff]

For collaboration, Google Docs works great. I can't imagine going back to a world where mostly everyone took their own notes (or not) in meetings. Or a world when editing and commenting on a document meant mailing copies around and someone often had to merge diffs manually. Going back 10 years would be a horrible step backward for any sort of collaboration in documents.

(and before someone says it, GitHub/GitLab really isn't a good substitute because they're designed around a different use case. I actually use GitLab for one type of task I'm involved with. Given the final form will be an adoc, it's OK but not really ideal for writing.)

For personal notes that aren't handwritten, mostly anything that will produce a txt file.

[cjdoc29]

It's better these days with code block support and now accepts Markdown shortcuts. But I haven't given it a chance since before those things were supported :)

[ryanlpeterman]

I do a similar thing. Especially helpful for long-running investigations that are difficult to root cause. Documenting the current state of the investigation allows people to jump in easily and helps everyone tell what the current conclusions are.

[maicro]

I'll bite - what notes tools do you like to use/recommend? I previously used Evernote for everything, but switched to Notion a while ago; neither are great at "get[ting] out of the way" though I think Evernote was probably better in that regard when I used it last...

[cjdoc29]

My company uses Dropbox Paper which does a few things well: Markdown + embedded images (with captions), and collaborative features. I use Notion for my personal stuff, which sufficiently gets out of my way, but never tried it with other collaborators!