Do yourself a favor! Build a forgiving note-taking system for yourself

How I built an easy, ongoing system to document my work

Documentation is really hard. More so if you are making decisions and trade-offs every other hour, switching between meetings, giving out “quick” help, and tweeting while at it.

Me: I need to document everything. Also me: Trying to find my documents.

Like most of you reading this, I have tried my luck at productivity tools, lists, retros, etc. And like most of you, I started off well but failed miserably after a while. While some may start saying words like consistency and discipline — I will not.

Let’s be practical and not talk as productivity gurus here. I have immense respect for people who have practiced and mastered consistency and have well-organized Notion docs for all sections of their lives.

I am not there yet— and I need a note-taking system that is more forgiving. A system that solves for 100% if I do it well, and 60% even when I fail miserably at it.

I fail when I fall off the wake-up-early wagon. When I have to jump into Mondays because my weekends were full. When I am just too overwhelmed to spend half an hour writing about my day. I fail often, and so I need to give myself space for that. 🤷‍♀️

My main goals for note-taking

Track my weekly work and mood

For example, delivered designs for feature X, Presented in team-wide all hands, Feeling excited about this feature.

Capture points I might not remember later

Organized a birthday gift for X, Created quick mockups in an hour to get the Y feature rolling.

Collect data points for my weekly 1-on-1 with my manager

XYZ project has a conflict. My mood has been consistently so and so over weeks.

Actively shape my career

I use all of the above to create a story I can tell in reviews and interviews.

How I went about doing it

📅 Created time on my calendar

I have a recurring meeting an hour before I finish my day. If it’s after my last meeting, I tend to skip it as I am just desperate to get off my laptop.

It has the link to my notes doc attached. So I just have to open it and fill in my notes.

I wish the rest of our calendars were this empty, but we all know that is a distant dream. This is why this 15 mins slot becomes more important.

⚡️ Simplified the note-taking

It is a pretty basic word document with two columns — weekly and daily. I write daily for less than 5 minutes.

It literally is this simple. No emojis, text formatting etc.

Notes vary as per my mood. Sometimes I am super wordy and I fill in for days I might have missed and take time to go through my last few days.

Sometimes I just write a line (worked on X, need to complete Y). Sometimes I just miss doing it.

💛 Made it forgiving — most important!

I have 6 chances to write in (5 after workdays, and 1 at the start of the week). Most of the weeks, I do a good job of writing at least 3 times a week. That one day I am wordy, I make up for days I missed.

I do not give myself a hard time about it. The alternative is (realistically) not doing anything. You have to work with the document.

When I read through my short notes from 2–3 months ago, I am instantly reminded of things I did or how I was feeling at that time. That counts as a win for me!

🔥 Use it well

Doesn’t matter if you take notes daily, or once a week. You have to know how to make lemonade out of lemons! 🍋

I work with what I got and highlight all points which can help me create a story later — be it to share with my manager, or for a promotion deck, for portfolio, or just to tell myself.

Over time, you start getting a sense of good vs okayish data points. You then tend to take better notes more often.

I make time to go about highlighting the points I know I will use in my story later.

And that’s about it. I figured I should write about the system I have currently that works well for me. Maybe in future it would evolve and change with my needs, but for now this works!
Chhavi

For more behind-the-blog moments, and fun things I curate, find me on Instagram here. Also on the bird app!