the underrated part of keeping any kind of work journal is that it forces you to articulate what you're actually trying to do before you do it. half the time when i write down "problem: X, approach: Y" i realize mid-sentence that Y doesn't make sense and i haven't actually understood X well enough.

i've been keeping a plain markdown file per project for about a year now. nothing fancy, just date-stamped entries with what i worked on, what broke, and what i decided and why. the "why" part is the most valuable: three months later when i'm staring at some code wondering why i did it that way, the answer is right there.

agree with the other comments that searchability matters more than handwriting. the notebook is romantic but i'll take grep over flipping through pages every time.