How to Defrag Your Dev Log

Today we’re going to learn a different dev log summarization technique: defragmentation.

The longer you continue your daily dev log practice, the more likely it is you’ll create complete knowledge bases for specific skills or tasks. These knowledge bases represent tremendous value to future you. When the time comes, you’ll be able to exploit them to your advantage.

Unfortunately, when the time comes, you can’t find them.

Because you’ve scattered them across dozens of entries spanning months of time.

Not only that, but:

You’re not quite sure what to search for.

You don’t know if you saved the information or a link to it.

You don’t even know if you wrote down the one thing you need.

Don’t worry. I’m going to show you how to fix this problem for good.

Here’s how, step by step:

Step 1: Leverage tags and links throughout your notes.

Apply basic metadata in the moment, enabling you to integrate scattered knowledge in the future.

Use an editor that supports linking information via tags and wiki-style links. Both styles sort information into buckets, some broader (tags) and some narrower (links). Don’t overthink the labels. Just apply them to your daily entries when it feels right.

Step 2: When you “get that feeling,” create a topic note.

The beauty of wiki-style links is the target doesn’t have to exist.

This means when you refer to people or things, you can with zero friction create a link their page. A page that doesn’t exist. As you notice it popping up everywhere, you “get that feeling” it’s time to integrate. Follow the link, letting your editor create the page for you. Start working through the backlinks, summarizing the information.

Step 3: Periodically run a defragmentation.

Integrate your tags regularly for best dev log performance.

When you’re doing a lot of work within a broad topic area (e.g. a public cloud provider), you may not be sure what buckets you need. So apply a memorable tag (#cloud-provider) for later use. Periodically, walk through your tags. The ones with the most backlinks are candidates for topic notes of their own.

Don’t worry about coming up with the perfect tags and links. Just get started. And as part of your weekly reviews, take the opportunity to try out steps two and three. The structure that emerges is the one you need!