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Comment by Elte | Hacker News Reader

I like to keep "writing walls" of whatever problem I need to solve, either in work or outside of it. These are basically Google Docs without rules about structuring of content, it's mostly me type-talking with myself about what the problem is, what some possible approaches are for solving it, or even "arghs" and the occasional profanity if things don't work out. Also I paste in URLs for whatever useful resources I find which has saved me a lot of time when working on semi-related things in the past. There are no rules, I just write what comes to mind or whatever I don't wish to store inside my head anymore.

It's a simple thing but it has proven rather helpful in my process to have some place to rant and ponder things without needing to think about the correctness of that particular process as well.

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Completely agree! I use org-mode for this, I start a new * section every day with a date.

I also use hashtags like #link, #question, #note, #todo, #done, so I can easily search through them.

When I encounter some error, I write down the error, add a hashtag by the topic (like #docker or #ubuntu or #stripe), then URL for a solution I found (like stackoverflow), then a snipped of code that solved it with a brief explanation.

At this point my notes.org is 7.7 megabytes long and contains all the notes from every day of the past several years. So when I encounter an error I've solved before I just do the search and immediately find the solution.

Also I mark all the important thoughts and insights with >> at the beginning of the line, so I can search for ">>" and find a summary of all the most important insights I've learned over the past month.

I like to do this but I find it difficult to go completely "free form" on a work computer that might be monitored. It's silly but but I don't like the idea of someone being able to see my inner thought processes like that because a lot of times you are stating the obvious just to put that on paper, but to an observer it looks like "man this guy has trouble grasping even the most basic concepts!"

Haha I understand where you're coming from with that, but I don't have that problem anymore. Everyone makes dumb mistakes and asks stupid questions; it's completely irrelevant, the only thing that matters is the outcome. I think if a person ever where to read any of my writing walls they may be relieved that they're not the only ones going through a process like that ;).

I've also followed this approach a lot, yet I still find myself searching for the right ways to format it and the right ways to 'promote' pieces of my docs to real documentation or public notes. Cue highlighting with bold, red text, etc.

Not actually sure how people design a solution to something without this style or something near to it... whiteboard session with yourself?

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