HN user
Software engineer; Working on spectagon.md
ex-Stashpad.com, twilio
@cara_jacqueline
Agree with the post. Working on https://spectagon.md which aims to improve the workflow around reviewing docs in the repo.
Reviewing docs in Github isn't great - as the post mentions, Google Docs or similar is typically where review happens. Spectagon aims to change that so that you can submit PRs for docs and you get a great review experience as a layer on top of Github.
Awesome, thank you!
Love the concept of a working memory score for code.
the number of distinct pieces of program state that a developer needs to keep in their head when analysing a function and the impact this has on the understandability and maintainability of code.
The same concept applies not just to writing code, but to any context that you need to load up in order to do your work. E.g. context when jumping into a meeting or when reviewing a new project spec.
In those cases, one of the key things is being able to offload what you don't need in your working memory right now to some other solution (usually notes). More on that here https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory
Thanks for sharing --
More importantly, the process of adding to and maintaining the knowledge base felt more burdensome than beneficial
I wonder if being able to recollect things later in an organized way may not be worth the effort for you.
Something I've found is that I really don't need a robust personal knowledge base. My goal is to do my work well (and taking notes to support this is definitely valuable). Building a personal knowledge base doesn't support this goal and has a more unclear value-prop, so it's a drag to keep up with.
Wrote an opinion piece on this https://www.stashpad.com/blog/you-probably-dont-need-a-knowl...
Ooh interesting - I'm not too familiar with vertical tabs. Will check it out!
What advantages do you see to keeping a large number of tabs open at a time? Do you find that you return to them?
I also try to close things out each evening - and any tabs that I "need" I at least jot down in a notepad for later.
My main motivation is keeping the performance on my computer strong but there is something really nice about getting to start fresh each day.
The research did say 20+ (HN took out the +) so you may not be alone. That sounds hefty though! Do you feel like it works well for you?
Agree that jumping between tools at the expense of focusing on craft won't get you the results you want:
If we're fixated on acquiring every new tool that comes our way, we risk missing out on developing our fundamental, timeless skills—the abilities that transcend technological trends and persist throughout time
But the tools we use can have a big impact on our behavior.
Each tool makes some behaviors easier and others more difficult. By choosing tooling that aligns with your goals, you make it much easier to achieve those goals.
I'm currently knee-deep in the notes space* so will give an example there. I regularly talk to people who have invested a lot of time in their notes / productivity tooling. Their systems "look" good. But more often than not, they're over-engineered and get in the way of their goals.
When they take a step back and switch to simpler tools that align with their desired behaviors, they find more sustainable productivity and more space to hone their craft.
*working on https://stashpad.com - would love to chat if you've had a similar experience.
I'm biased but I'd add--
- Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
- Logseq: https://logseq.com/
- Reflect: https://reflect.app/
- Stashpad: https://stashpad.com/
Oomf thanks for reporting this - on it!
I find this part super interesting:
He describes studies that have found a substantial delay in the reaction time of people talking on their cell phone while driving --- or even just holding conversations with someone in the car while driving. A similar delay has not been found in these studies when the driver is doing more passive activities such as listening to the radio or an audio book; it is the need to focus on a conversation that limits the working memory's ability to effectively support driving at the same time.
When your mind is holding items in working memory, that means that it has less space to focus and execute effectively on the main task at hand.
Just writing things down gives some resolution of that task/thought so that we can fully show up for our main thing.
Working on a new notepad for jotting things down to free up working memory. The goal is to make it easy to capture things and add some organization when you want.
Curious to get feedback. https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory
Stashpad isn't quite this but it's pretty close. Focused on stream-of-consciousness style notes. Would be curious what you think.
Yeah, switching between different modes in the same day (or same half day) can be super scattering.
I try to select 1-3 main objectives for the week and then chunk the work I need to do into things that require being in a more extraverted mode of talking with folks vs more introverted deep dives.
E.g. on the day I did this podcast recording, I did user conversations bc I was in talking to folks mode.
On other days, the focus will be more writing focused - user insights / roadmap priorities / code.
Bytebase (https://bytebase.io) is re-inventing the engineer's notepad. We're engineers from Twilio and Nextdoor and are backed by Techstars, top-preseed firms, and engineers from companies like Github, Slack, Stripe, and more.
We're hiring for founding software engineers in the US. Remote/Hybrid team with HQ in Durham, NC.
Reach out at cara [at] bytebase [dot] io https://pragmatic-engineer.pallet.com/jobs/e05a60b4-8817-4cf...
bytebase.io | Software engineer (Founding Team) | Remote (US) | Full time | Bytebase is the engineer's scratchpad. We're backed by engineers from Github, Twilio, Slack, Stripe, etc and by top pre-seed firms. Competitive salary and significant equity.
https://pragmatic-engineer.pallet.xyz/jobs/e05a60b4-8817-4cf...
Contact: cara [at] bytebase [dot] io
Very interesting - the idea that with paper you accept that much of what you write is tossable and that for the select things you want to keep around, you're willing to re-transcribe. Your writing is understood to be a snapshot in time, not something that's supposed to stay up-to-date over time. There's something liberating about that.
Wow very interesting! I don't know too much about the legal brief use case but it sounds pretty similar to researching a coding task.
I imagine pressing 1, 2, 3, etc. to assign it to the corresponding bucket. That's pretty much it. It's a compound command which allows you to do different things with the shortcut. E.g. 1g to go to 1. 1m to move notes to 1. 1q to create a new bucket in 1,
Re: Ability to create new buckets on the fly - We have that! (keyboard shortcut for it)
Some balancing mechanism for the buckets - a learning algo Don't have that yet but could be pretty interesting.
Key thing is that your notes are reasonably organized without slowing you down.
Yes, exactly! (I'm one of the creators)
We think of Bytebase as your "RAM" or working memory as you're doing your daily work (as opposed to your "Hard Drive").
In our user research, we've seen that over 90% of engineers use some super basic scratchpad (untitled text files, Apple Notes, etc) for their daily work. It's super messy and it seems to be overlooked because it's private.
Thanks for the note! I'm one of the creators.
I've had this experience a number of times. I start out energized and wanting to be super organized. I over-organize. Then 1 or 2 months later, I can't keep up. I stop using my organized system and fall back to some basic untitled text file.
With Bytebase we're trying to embrace this messiness and do things a little differently...
Would love to get your feedback on bytebase.io - our checklist features is specifically inspired by this article, with three states: empty, half-filled, filled. You just hit 'X' to iterate through the states. Checklist items can be infinitely nested.
https://intercom.help/bytebase/en/articles/4587112-to-dos-in...
Effective remote work is about prioritizing. Work and Work/Life balance breaks down when you lose intention with how you spend your time.
Work from home can be less structured and as a result requires more intention. This can involve communicating Deep Work and Deep Breaks (e.g. with Slack Status [1]) so that teammates know when you're unavailable.
I've learned to set a clear intent each morning. I allocate and protect Deep Work time for my Main Thing and don't let almost anything pre-empt it. As different tasks from Work and Home come up, I capture them quickly in such a way that I can deal with them later.
(full disclosure - building bytebase.io to make it really fast to get things down to come back to later).
Great deep dive into core principles of a good note-taking system. There are a few things I'd add. Curious to hear your thoughts.
1) Captured ideas are better than missed ones
2) Adding new ideas is better than updating old ones. Updating notes in-place is inherently lossy, and I think it’s unnecessary.
Yes. And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing.
When you write something in a "source of truth" - like a wiki - you've now made a commitment to keep it updated. (It's a commitment you probably don't want to keep). So, what do you do? You don't write stuff there. Instead you write it somewhere more ephemeral like Slack or a scratchpad.
Setting the expectation that your notes are to be "added to," not "updated" lets you add notes with more ease.
3) Ideas that can’t be recalled are worse than useless Regardless of how you recall information back from your notes, a great note-taking system should make it trivial to get ideas out, as well as in.
Two things I'd add here are
i) It should be easy to deliver ideas to the right location (not just to recall them).
This means copy-paste should be fast. Your notes should use integrations with the tools you use to make it easy to get them there in a snap. If there's a lot of friction to getting notes organized or shared, you're less likely to do it. It's also just annoying to have to highlight text, pull it apart with your mouse, open the app you need, and paste it in.
ii) Most of what you need to recall is actually very simple to find. It's what you recently wrote.
Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so. This explains why so many people use Apple Notes. It's messy but it's fast to get things down and you usually can find what you need using the recency filter.
4) Time is essential to how we remember, and should be a first-class concept in a good note-taking system.
YES YES YES. And the stuff that we need the most right now is most likely to be stuff we wrote recently.
At https://bytebase.io we're building the fastest notepad for engineers. Our focus is on the notes that are most helpful to you as you do your work today.
I've found that in meetings, I mostly just need short quick notes. I don't need entire documents and structure. Instead, I jot down a few of the most important key ideas and action items. After the meeting, I add my action items into my todo list.
Working on bytebase.io - the fastest notepad for engineers. With Bytebase you can jump into a timestamped meeting note in one keystroke and bucketize individual items afterwards.
https://intercom.help/bytebase/en/articles/4587207-meeting-n...
why is that your favorite? Especially curious about PouchDB
Totally agree. As a software engineer, I was always excited to try new notes apps and to "really stay organized" this time. But I always ended up falling back on either Apple Notes or Sublime because everything else was too slow.
Decided to build an app where it's fast to start writing but is also set up to keep your notes sane over time. The app has a built in scratchpad where you capture notes in small chunks, like texting yourself. Then you triage the notes into categories later. https://youtu.be/xRxn4iiWZUM
Would love the community's feedback.
Twitter has a low barrier to finishing. On Twitter, a single sentence is a completely acceptable unit of publication... In contrast, most of my blog posts go unpublished because I fear they’re not complete, or not good enough in some dimension.
This is a great point. Getting out quick sketches of ideas is a faster way to learn. Small, incremental steps are key to making consistent progress.
My co-founder and I have been thinking about how to harness this "sketching" mentality when it comes to daily work notes. For our notes app, bytebase.io, we've found what works best is: - create notes in short chunks, like a tweet. - use a designated dumping ground to get ideas down fast, without worrying about where. - use a lightweight process to triage notes into categories (with keyboard shortcuts).
thanks! hadn't seen them before.
For me, the main cause of procrastination was lack of clarity on what needs to be done.
I've found that following a rigorous brain-dump process makes a big difference.
For my brain-dumps, I start by jotting down a list of everything I can think of that's related to my task. I let ideas flow freely.
Then I scan through what I've written and check if there's anything that's not specific and actionable. If so, I zoom in and do another brain-dump on that task. I repeat until I have only very specific items
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-root-cause-of-procrast...
Yes, founder here. Bi-directional linking will be coming soon! While we don't support bi-directional linking yet, we do have the ability for bytes to live in multiple locations. Here's a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1afP_gsvR30
it'd be great if something would detect that I've had five "Bob 1:1" meetings and would group those together, for example.
This is really interesting. Thanks for the idea! We don't currently offer this kind of detection in bytebase.io but I see how this can be very useful.
The way I take meeting notes in bytebase.io is with a feature called "create scratch collection" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlCQZ8xGL-Q). How it works is you hit q and then just start writing, kind of like you're texting yourself.
With scratch collections, you don't need to worry about where your notes go. You just get them down. Then, sometime later, you can go back through and name the notes and categorize them - if you're so inclined. You can also extract anything actionable into todos