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Comment by cnnrro | Hacker News Reader

> I also learned how effective logging can be, and have applied that in just about every area of my life.

This statement really piqued my curiosity. Would you mind expanding on it?

Sure, as a radio operator, even just a listener-operator, you quickly find that A) you are expected to keep a log, and in many situations _must_ keep a log (contests are a good example), and B) a log easily runs circles around your memory. As it turns out, logs also provide a helpful context for bridging the gap between the subjective and objective lenses, both of which are helpful and needed for solving problems, reaching goals, etc. no matter the activity.

In many areas of life, I knew I was really far too subjective due to my research into my personal psychology (I'm a professional coach) and wondered about different ways I could be _more_ objective without actually becoming an external sensing-measuring device. :-) Reading about logging tools like SINPO[0] helped me intuitively identify new ways of logging & spreadsheeting my way through different activities and situations.

As an example, when I get sick, I now engage this logging skill rather than just feeling my way through the illness, and I get to see some really cool emergent properties of this new personal system. I usually monitor my vitals in addition to writing down some subjective 1-10 ratings of how I feel in terms of general wellbeing, nausea, depression, and anxiety as the day passes. I have an autoimmune condition and while I can't just take a pill and cure that, my logs have shown me the peaks and troughs of amplitude within every passing hour of severe illness, when those illnesses come. I discovered that as I watch this data I can be more nuanced about the way I treat my sick time, and ended up actually getting productive work done that I _wanted to get done_ while "sick", by recognizing the high points and patterns in rest and energy buildup. "Riding the waves" with more precision, so to speak. There is also the analytical side of this, where I'll occasionally look back through my logs and see icons like a circled "!!!" which means "wow you tried something new here and it worked amazingly well, please add this to your toolkit for this activity from now on."

Because you're effectively engaging more of your "sensor suite," you kind of feel more like the space ship that can navigate the asteroid field vs. the one that really gets banged up. When you fold in the analysis step, it's like you're now better able to approach even more treacherous asteroid fields--your machinery is getting upgrades over time.

Incidentally, when I meet up with a doctor, I can be much more accurate about what happened and when.

I do the same logging thing at work, and now keep logs as part of just about every project. In some cases this is a literal mini-blog on a web page, and in other cases it's a text file tucked somewhere 15 folders deep, and in still other cases it's a small mark in the margin of a paper journal page.

I also discovered that this helps with other hobbies. I run RPGs for my kids and develop my own table-top RPGs, and keeping a log is a huge tip for a really effective campaign. Later on the log can become a published, written narrative (e.g. Record of Lodoss War), or mined for new ideas.

I used to struggle to keep a personal journal, but I've since found that I can more easily approach the practice by starting from the "Stardate" mindset and being a tad more robotic regarding current circumstances than I can by trying to keep the personal history that used to come to mind when I'd consider journaling.

Another thing I've learned is that we are extremely brittle about this practice, as a society. Our thinking about keeping logs tends to be black & white (a common sign of lack of education on the matter) and we hesitate or think in terms like "OCD" when people around us really leverage this practice[1]. IMO this is really unfortunate.

Anyway I hope this expands on it a bit!

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINPO_code

1. https://qz.com/507727/a-man-who-recorded-his-every-sneeze-fo... (example)

Just to chime in, I saw an old-timer keep a daily work log in a text file, and that appealed to me so I started it too. This was in 1998, and to this day I still keep writing new entries to that same text file pretty much every business day. Old test account credentials, notes on what got done, ticket numbers, ideas, unfinished todos, the works. It also helps with time sheets at the end of the month :-)

Consistently recording logs is the importannt factor. You don't need fancy tools, a simple text-editor is all you need to have.

In Emacs one has org-mode, in Vim, vimwiki, even for plain Notepad, one can easily create a time log by pressing the F5 key. It will fill in the time and date automatically. Create a text file like day_log.txt, open it at the start of your day and press F5 key to fill the date and time. Just add couple of words on what you want to note. Done.

Rather like back in the day people like Jefferson would keep a daily journal. Hand-written in a paper notebook of course, and still available 250 years later, without worrying about hardware and data conversion issues.

Let's not be too dramatic, ascii and utf8 will be readable in 250 years, that's a certainty.

As for the hardware issue, his notebook was kept because he was an important person. Average Joe's notebook had a much greater chance to go into the landfill.

That's the same for today persons' digital files: Average Joe laptop goes to landfill but I'm sure presidents and whatever's files are archived by State or their families, same as they did for the paper notebook back then.

How big is that file now, out of curiosity?

I used to do this but now I just review my git history

> Another thing I've learned is that we are extremely brittle about this practice, as a society. Our thinking about keeping logs tends to be black & white (a common sign of lack of education on the matter) and we hesitate or think in terms like "OCD" when people around us really leverage this practice[1]. IMO this is really unfortunate.

That's some wisdom

How does radio provide advantages for logging purposes? I log a bit, not as extensively as you seem to (but I'm always looking to incorporate more data and improved workflow ideas), but I can't clearly envision (due to my ignorance of radio, likely) the advantages radio would provide over just entering info into my laptop in a text file (including keeping clocked time, timestamps, etc).

The amateur radio community emphasizes logging all contacts. It builds a habit, especially since a lot of community interaction is around (friendly) competitions of who can make the most distant contacts, etc. All informal, but it teaches the habit through cultural acclimation.

Additionally the FCC mandates certain station records be maintained, so it's not entirely a community initiative.

I think you're on to something. I'd love to dig even deeper about this topic maybe with some examples of your logs, as well as the time commitment this practice requires.

Maybe not quite the same, but very similar, is the bullet journal fad that's going on right now. Lots of people have found bullet journaling (which is essentially logging) very useful in their daily life.

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