(For the umpteenth time, I’m going to take something that is working for me lately, and encourage others to try it.)
Perhaps your project needs development notes. By notes I mean: text that you write yourself, with dated entries (could be one per day; could be multiple per day for different topics). What I’m referring to is a sort of development journal for the work that you’re doing.
These notes have become the heartbeat of the projects I’m working on lately. The notes fulfill many purposes:
- Capture ideas for the future in an unstructured, yet accessible and searchable way.
- Allow you to put down what is currently difficult, or standing in your way.
- Capture design decisions that are perhaps still too loose to be put down in more structured documentation.
- Break the blank page for the day.
- Give context to LLMs working with you.
- Give you material to reflect on months or years later.
- Put interesting things you read there, for future reference.
- Show your progress to those interested in your project (if you choose to publish the notes).
This is a bit more structured than my previous operational principle of “writing down my ideas”. For many years (and still today) I kept a programming journal of sorts. But this variant, where the notes concerning a project X go into the project X, with dated entries, feels like a much more fertile way of doing it.
To use a programming analogy, these notes are an almost daily git diff of the top of your mind. If what you’re working on is mainly about ideas, then you could almost see your development notes as the daily steps you take to form the project.