Just Write It Down (Digitally)

One habit that’s been building for me over the last two years is note-taking. In school, and for most of my career, I’ve relied on my memory instead of taking actual notes during classes or meetings. However, the more I put intelligence tools to work, the more I rely on having digitally captured the way I think about or approach tasks. These days I take notes on everything, and I keep it simple. I don’t have a fancy note-taking app. I occasionally use dictation flows, but mostly I just type into Notes, a Markdown file, or basically whatever open text input tool is nearby.

I capture ideas, processes, todos, random Carlin-esque Brain Droppings, anything. Most of it will fall off into a forgotten folder someday, but I think it’s critical practice for anyone who wants to bend intelligence tools to their will.

Ignoring the flavor of the hour vis-a-vis SKILL, Command, Persona, RAG, MCP, prompt preprocessor, or whatever you want to use to season your hash, finding a consistent way that works for you to apply your thinking to the flow of creating what you want out of these tools is a skill that will be incredibly valuable going forward. I’d wager this type of digital breadcrumbing will prove useful even if intelligence tool usage ebbs.

The next step for me is to build a refinement flow for the random splats. Time to taxonomize my fidgety thoughts.