Why taking notes can be beneficial for you and others
On reading the title, you might have expected yet another article highlighting the importance of writing in order to boost the productivity of a team of engineers. However, this piece offers a fresh perspective by exploring the personal advantages to be gained from taking notes, based on my own experience — experience achieved from a career trajectory that started in a chemistry technician role and most recently landed in a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) position.
The field of chemistry demands meticulousness in writing protocols and consigning result reports. Every detail must be carefully documented to ensure reproducibility of the procedures under identical conditions. Although this aspect of the job may not be the most exciting, it played a crucial role in shaping the person I am today.
Meticulous note-taking helped me transition from the controlled environment of a laboratory to the dynamic realm of site reliability engineering. Initially serving as a trail of breadcrumbs, these notes have assisted me in navigating unfamiliar coding languages and system architectures. Over time this practice has evolved into composing various cheat sheets for troubleshooting methodologies, providing me with a reliable resource to do my job as efficiently as possible.
Keeping this perspective in mind, let me break down why writing notes can be beneficial for your personal growth. The explanations I will be outlining are based on real-life situations that show just how important note-taking can be. They are all examples, but they give you a good idea of why the notes you take can turn into really handy technical documents, such as how-tos, meeting reports, tickets, or Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
While this article primarily targets associates and those thinking of changing career, it’s worth highlighting that taking notes is a crucial skill no matter what your role is, so I hope everyone will find it useful!
Because you don’t have an eidetic memory
Unless you have an eidetic memory, you can’t remember everything — that’s a fact. During a call, simply open a text editor on the side and write down the most relevant details. No need for long sentences — just take notes, retrieve instructions for a task, outline architecture ideas for future discussions… It might seem a bit tedious initially, but doing this allows you to quickly see if you are missing any information for the next steps.
So why is this habit worth embracing?
Speaking from experience, I can’t count the number of times I’ve made a cheat sheet during a call, just writing down the steps needed to tackle a ticket. And every now and then, I have to get one out because I’m not sure which command to run. Some of my cheat sheets have even been used to complete some of our how-tos, helping others with their own tasks. There’s something really rewarding about watching your old personal notes becoming common tools for everyone to use.
Writing down all this information minimizes errors and makes you more confident, especially when moving to a new role.
Because it will help you understand things
You can take all the notes you want, but if you don’t understand what you’re writing down, they won’t be useful to you. You need to comprehend what you’re writing in order to properly convey the information to others. Chances are, if you don’t understand what you’re doing, others won’t either. Taking notes is also a great opportunity to ask for feedback and additional information. By writing down details and asking questions, you can make sense of it!
So, how can this actually be good for you?
When I first joined my team, I started taking notes during our meetings, especially when they involved decisions aimed at improving our architecture. In those early days, I received a lot of information in dribs and drabs. Taking notes during our calls allowed me to connect all the previous information and understand our infrastructure as a whole. Those notes later came in handy when I was working on the documentation related to our infrastructure. Making them not only helped me but also meant newcomers could be provided with a clearer understanding of our setup — another way to add a trophy to your collection!
Writing down all this information helps to cement your understanding of the situation and facilitates more confident exchanges with your colleagues.
Because you’ll delve deeper into topics
In addition to improving your understanding, writing notes allows you to delve deeper into the subjects you’re dealing with. While reviewing your notes, you may find yourself considering gray areas. Why is this step designated for the beginning? What would the consequences be if it were performed at the end? What does this term mean? To clarify these areas, you’ll need to do some additional research, thus deepening your knowledge of the subject. Your research will therefore span both the global technical scope and your company or team context.
So, how can this help you improve?
After transitioning into my new role, I familiarized myself with the majority of technical terms through various online searches. However, discussions about the infrastructure remained somewhat nebulous as sometimes the information I got related to another company’s specific infrastructure. Consequently, it could often be challenging to find information that aligned with our particular situation. Once my team received a request from the Data team about a static website they wanted to deploy. I bounced back and forth between asking questions and reviewing my notes, and ultimately we realized it wasn’t so simple. As my SRE coworkers couldn’t find a proper solution, we had to conduct some research, which evolved into writing an ADR based on my notes. Getting involved in this exercise turned out to be a really important learning experience. Beyond writing the document itself, we had to make sure that other technical teams could understand what the different options were and ask for their insight.
Writing down all this information encourages your curiosity and leads you to become more precise with your work.
Because you feel like an impostor
For many, starting a new job can lead to experiencing what is known as impostor syndrome. My technique for minimizing its impact is to not feel useless: I need to feel that my work is useful to my peers. A simple solution is to share reliable documentation. A meeting report outlining progress on a subject, a how-to distributed internally, an incident follow-up leading to actions, etc… It may seem like a modest contribution but feeling useful is a real reward. It’s also a way to share your knowledge and get recognition.
So, how does it help you avoid impostor syndrome?
After a few months in my position, the SRE team decided to migrate the first application from our legacy servers to a completely new infrastructure stack. Everything was prepared: First one member of the team had the keyboard, another kept an eye on monitoring, and the engineering was ready for testing. Feeling like I couldn’t find my place at the time, I decided to write down all the different steps taken that morning, the events encountered, and the future modifications needed. We now use this as a template to prepare the rest of our production migrations and minimize any oversights.
Sharing all this information allows you to feel more legitimate and useful in your position.
Because you’re gaining experience
Let’s take 2 minutes to pause and assess your progress. If you have understood all the points mentioned above, it’s obvious that you have already gained experience. You will become more skilled and therefore better equipped to participate actively in decision-making. You will also know where the important information is to move forward. It may feel like baby steps but when you look back at it, you’ll see it was one big step that starts out as a simple habit and becomes continuous progression contributing toward your professional life.
So, how can you see results?
For the moment, I’m the only associate in my team but not the most recent arrival. We hired a senior shortly after me and I was proud to participate in his onboarding. He had more technical experience but I had more knowledge of our infrastructure. Having participated in documenting our infrastructure, I knew where to find the information. Using my personal notes, I could actively take part in his orientation and induction and it also demonstrated how I had progressed in my position. Sharing your knowledge with others is good practice and a perfect way to demonstrate your progression.
Gathering all this information allows you to monitor your growth and progression.
A few tips to get you started
I understand that taking notes regularly is perceived as an obligation rather than a good habit. But as you can see from this article, those notes can often be turned into documentation. Taking notes is often assumed to be a waste of time, so I hope what I’ve shared here offers a fresh perspective, helping you to recognize that it is a good habit that will help not just you in your daily work, but your colleagues too.
If you’re unsure where to begin, practice on a 15-minute call and draft all the information. While reviewing your notes, sift out the unnecessary information and choose a title that summarizes the remaining information. Gradually you will be able to retrieve the correct information on the first try and start enjoying the time saving. Step by step, you will find yourself updating existing documentation as well as feeling more confident about what you’ve learned.
One important thing when starting: Don’t worry about who’s going to be reading, just write first and foremost for yourself. Fretting about finding the right tone or wording can add too many constraints to your technique at the start.
These tips are only meant to help you get in the habit of taking notes and creating documentation. The definition of technical documentation and best practices for writing it are a whole other topic… So stay tuned!
I hope this article has inspired you — and don’t hesitate to share your personal experiences!
Written by Clémence Fauchet, Associate Site Reliability Engineer @ WTTJ
Edited by Anne-Laure Civeyrac
Illustration by David Adrien
