Let’s go a little bit meta. Software engineers write code for a living. But besides code, what else can we, or should we write? Let’s talk about it.
Imagine the familiar scenario: You start your day. You wake up just before work starts, or there is some time between. You sit at your desk with your coffee, open Slack, and check your messages. Then, you attend your daily stand-up, have an idea about your day, and start tackling your task. You will write some code, yes. But what else can you write to support you?
Why is writing helpful?
Let’s discuss the reasons why writing might be beneficial in the first place. Of course, these reasons are not science-based but my opinion, so take them with a grain of salt.
Slows down thinking
I first noticed that writing about an idea or a concept forces our thinking speed to match our writing speed. You may also notice that when you write, you often narrate the sentence in your head. I used to see this as an irrelevant side effect, but recently, I have noticed that it also helps me focus on the problem.
Closes open loops
This might not be relevant for every type of writing, but incorporating writing into your daily work may help you close the open loops in your head. What do I mean?
Imagine a bug you have worked on in the last couple of days. Multiple tries and different attempts partially fixed the problem, but something is still missing. Most of the time, I think about the problem during the day, even after work. However, when I write where I am at with the solution, what I tried, and my assumptions, I notice that I don’t think about the problem after work. This is also called the Zeigarnik Effect for the curious.
Helps you notice small things
When you slow down your thinking, you also tend to notice the small details more easily. By noticing, you elaborate your thinking and further define the scope of the problem or an idea. You also distill your thinking by comparing the important details and filtering out the unimportant ones.
What can we write?
Anything you do just for the sake of doing it will not be helpful to you in the long run. Let’s talk about some practical use cases that might spark the flame.
Blog posts
Duh, guess what I am doing? Writing stuff and sharing with the world is the most obvious thing you can do. It might not be for everyone, but if you care about something to talk about, you can write about it, too. Setting up a website or Medium or Substack account is straightforward to get started. It lets you distill your thinking and your understanding about an idea. When you write, you are forced to organize your arguments. The dimension you work in is more rigid, and you must arrange your thoughts to make sense.
Interstitial journalling
The easiest thing I can offer is to keep a file open during the day and write what you do as you do it. It doesn’t have to be detailed. Just enough information to slow you down and be aware of what you are actually doing. This is also called Interstitial Journaling. I suppose it came out as an alternative way of tracking your productivity, but I see it as a rubber duck debugging on paper. It also lets you close the working day more gracefully as you will also write what is on your mind and what you can do to try for them tomorrow.
Reference Notes
Engineers research a lot. They do so to learn more about a concept or new framework, understand a library’s internals, or find a solution to a problem. Either way, some of this knowledge might be reused in the future.
We shouldn’t have to write everything we encounter, but curating our insights about what we learn is a helpful practice. It is a low-cost effort to make things stick. Curating shifts your perspective from a consumer and opens the possibility of creating. You might become inspired to understand and learn more about your curiosity. The most recent example I can give you is this blog post. The above paragraph was inspired by a note I created a year ago.
Brag Documents
When you set a direction for your career, there are certain metrics you need to keep tabs on and improve upon. You want to remember your achievements to direct them towards your goals. Some of these achievements are quite direct and noticeable. Others are more obscure and harder to notice. Especially after time has passed and you want to remember them. So the antidote is… yes, write those down too. This time, we are slowing down our work life to notice these things. You might not notice those moments during the hectic work hours. Interstitial Journaling might also help curate those.
You want to write, what to use?
If you have read this far, I can assume that you are interested in using writing as a tool to help you. So, what is the best tool for doing so? The answer is quite simple: the tool you are most comfortable with.
Many emerging concepts, coupled with applications, let you build a note-taking system—sort of a second brain. You can research and use those, too. But I would advise against it. Focusing on building the system to let you take notes effortlessly might distract you from the actual goal.
Personal choices
I went down that rabbit hole and tried many of those systems/tools/concepts. It was a journey—whether necessary or not, I am not sure—but I think I settled on some good basics.
I prefer to keep everything in plain text, more specifically Markdown. (This blog post, too, is just a Markdown file.) This way, Everything is easily accessible and searchable. My tool of choice to control this mess is Obsidian. Again, the tool does not matter; your intent does.
The goal is not to have the perfect system. The goal is to actually make use of the system/practice/tool you are comfortable with so that it becomes useful.
Want to learn more? Here are some links to start your journey:
- Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash