I find writing text (preference: Markdown) and sprinkling it with visualizations (tables, graphviz...) to document stuff very useful and productive.
I don't see this as a burden but rather the opposite. A good portion of programming is not writing code, but thinking and communication. Using text as a direct output of this process helps in many areas. Mostly because we have a limited capability of keeping stuff in our heads at any given time.
A typical categorization of these documents would be:
- specification: describing the thing you build in detail
- todo-lists: organizing actions
- guides/instruction: describing usage of the thing you build in a accessible manner
- meeting & discussion protocols
The thing is: None of these things are extra or can be avoided. The only difference is whether you write them down or not.
The article describes something I would put into the fourth category, or maybe a fifth where you describe intent historically (like design documents).
I personally don't write design-documents or ADRs, nor have I ever seen them. But I assume that these become valuable in larger organizations and teams with a higher communication overhead. As soon you need to talk about these things over and over you want to write these down.