- **Epistemic status:** #budding An Engineering Daybook is a notebook where you can write what you did, things you have learned, reminders, meeting notes, ideas, doodles, [[Debugging]] strategies attempted, etc. The daybook has the following benefits: - **Record of events:** When trying to remember how you solved a bug, why did x task take so long, what dev did you call a month ago, etc. You can search your notebook for the date when you did such a thing and be able to answer the question. - **Express ideas:** Being able to express the idea on your mind even though it might not be relevant to the task at hand can allow you to stay focused on the task at hand instead of wasting hours in a rabbit hole. - **Self reflect:** Stopping to write things down naturally makes your mind reflect like if you were having a conversation with someone else. You might realize that the note you took was even plain wrong, saving you time. Keeping a physical notebook instead of digital is not required, but it has the added benefit that it can force you to write shorter notes and can't just copy/paste text that can impede reflecting on the note. --- ## References - “Engineering Daybooks | Mike Babb - Software Developer.” Accessed July 18, 2022. <https://mikebabb.com/blog/engineering-daybooks/>. - Thomas, David, and Andrew Hunt. _The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition: Journey to Mastery_. Second edition. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2019.