Howdy! Good question. It's one I seem to not be able to answer satisfyingly even in, uh,
$ wc -w wiki/ratf/src/notes.adoc
7621 words. (Geez.)
The "wrap-ups" (the distillation process from daily -> weekly -> monthly -> yearly) is of potentially enormous value and are a direct result of the daily logging. I stand by that.
It's hard to put a value on the notes as a capture system because it's difficult to know what I might have lost without it. I do know that if I don't write down great ideas, they're often lost forever, "Dangit, I had a clever little solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in the shower yesterday, but now I've forgotten it!" I am convinced that capturing them has increased my total idea retention.
Plenty of technical ideas I've jotted down also make it into my wiki and/or website, and those things are potentially referenced many, many times. I have absolutely searched for and found things in the digital daily logs. But as I say in the article, searching is really hard because I remember the "wrong" keywords later.
As you say: "the act of taking the note is of value" and I guess an additional benefit I'm just now thinking of are all of the ideas I have NOT acted upon. By writing them down, I feel more confident I won't forget them. Which means I'm more comfortable about not acting on them "Right now before I forget!" Which means when I see the note again (even just when transcribing the next morning), I've had time to cool off and make a better decision about pursing that thing. (ALL ideas are written down, and 99% of them get transcribed even if I have no intention of pursuing them.) I'll add this to the article.
Finally, once I stopped logging brushing my teeth and that sort of thing, the effort-to-value went way up. :-)
The "wrap-ups" (the distillation process from daily -> weekly -> monthly -> yearly) is of potentially enormous value and are a direct result of the daily logging. I stand by that.
It's hard to put a value on the notes as a capture system because it's difficult to know what I might have lost without it. I do know that if I don't write down great ideas, they're often lost forever, "Dangit, I had a clever little solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in the shower yesterday, but now I've forgotten it!" I am convinced that capturing them has increased my total idea retention.
Plenty of technical ideas I've jotted down also make it into my wiki and/or website, and those things are potentially referenced many, many times. I have absolutely searched for and found things in the digital daily logs. But as I say in the article, searching is really hard because I remember the "wrong" keywords later.
As you say: "the act of taking the note is of value" and I guess an additional benefit I'm just now thinking of are all of the ideas I have NOT acted upon. By writing them down, I feel more confident I won't forget them. Which means I'm more comfortable about not acting on them "Right now before I forget!" Which means when I see the note again (even just when transcribing the next morning), I've had time to cool off and make a better decision about pursing that thing. (ALL ideas are written down, and 99% of them get transcribed even if I have no intention of pursuing them.) I'll add this to the article.
Finally, once I stopped logging brushing my teeth and that sort of thing, the effort-to-value went way up. :-)