A simple guide to keeping a journal in business

Professional work is documented and reproducible. The basis for good documentation is writing things down personally. There are many instructions online for different areas of application. I was looking for an integrated approach.

Why is it important that we write things down?

I still remember the first few days while studying when I was new in a lab. The professor had agreed to let me write a term paper in his department. On the second day, he came to me and asked me to start writing.

I asked back: "What should I write down? I haven't even started the work yet."

He replied: "Write down what you plan to do! Write down how you want to proceed! Write down what literature there is. What are the important terms?"

Wow. He was right. These were all things that I could already write down. I learned from him how to write. Writing helps me think. In this blog, for example, I write down my knowledge and insights that I will need later. If I write down important things, I save a lot of time later because I don't have to do the research again.

What should you write down in business?

Over time, I have learned that the following information helps me:

• Journal: There are days when I write down a lot. It's information about my cases and projects. Maybe also tasks that I want to complete. There is a journal section in my notes for this. But these notes shouldn't live long. Watts Humphrey recommended keeping an engineering journal.
• Project notes: I have a note for (almost) every task or project. These are basic information about a process, e.g. contact persons or links to systems. But also next steps and results. David Allen recommends keeping a projects list.
• Knowledge notes: Then I need an area in which I store my knowledge for the long term. Recently, I have done a lot of research into the history of the ideas behind Scrum or requirements management. There are lots of little notes about people, institutions or events. Long-term knowledge, however, also includes information on how I edit a video with ffmpeg. Sönke Ahrens recommends a zettelkasten for this.

Each category has to be organized differently so that I can find something again. 

Are there any special principles or rules that make note-taking and note management easier?

I have had a few problems in the past with the many different types of notes:

• I forgot to write down something important. (Or I wrote it down but forgot where I put it).
• Notes become outdated. I lost track of what was still current and what was not.
• Notes, tasks and information were in many different places.

I therefore thought about or copied a few principles:

• There is only one place where the notes are. I used to have notes in different places. This led to long search times.
• Temporary notes are separated from permanent notes. Separate the dynamic from the static notes.
• Write down the sources where you found something.
• Revise notes regularly. Create overviews regularly.

If I only have one program for notes, what could a structure look like?

Structure for notes

I have three places for my knowledge:

• my program for notes (e.g. Obsidian),
• a literature database for all books, articles or other sources (e.g. Zotero) and
• my file storage, where all files and emails are located.

I have the following structure in my note program:

• Journal: a note for each day. The diary is tidied up regularly.
• Project notes: a note for each process or project. When I group the projects or processes into folders, I use the same logic as for my file storage.
• Knowledge notes: there are many small notes here. There is a very rough list of topics by which I sort my notes. This list follows a different logic than that of the file storage. I also use this list of topics when managing my literature.

 

Fig. 1: A structure for notes

Are there special routines?

Yes. I have gotten into the habit of a few things:

• Every day a note is created (automatically) for the day.
• Every morning I go through the note from the previous day. I transfer the knowledge and some tasks to the process or knowledge notes. I transfer the tasks that I want to do today to today's note.
• A note is created for each new project.
• When a project (or case) is completed, the note is archived. I either move it to the archive folder in my note program or I save the file for the project in my file storage. This should definitely make it disappear from the list of active processes.
• I note down references to books, videos, blog articles, etc. in my literature database on the relevant topic.
• Knowledge notes are filed in the relevant topic. Each knowledge note contains a link to the index of the topic.

Anyone who wants to delve deeper into this topic will find useful knowledge in these books:

• Ahrens, Sönke: How to Take Smart Notes : One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking. : Sönke Ahrens, 2022. https://www.soenkeahrens.de/en/takesmartnotes
  
• Allen, David: Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Penguin, 2015. https://gettingthingsdone.com/ 
• Humphrey, Watts S.: Introduction to the Personal Software Process. Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1997. There is a new version: https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/library/the-personal-software-process-psp-body-of-knowledge-version-20/