Test & Code

Brian: 00:00

Let's talk about writing things down. I think writing stuff down has been both a superpower and sometimes a curse for me, so I wanna talk about it.

Brian: 00:32

I like to write things down. I also like having the option to not write things down. Let's take an example of meetings.

Brian: 00:38

So when I go into a meeting, I like to take a a notebook and a pen, and I open the notebook to a blank page. This blank page allows me and others to be ready for me to listen. So it indicates to me myself a note to say, listen to other people, to let them talk. I also think that it's a respectful thing to show that I am ready to take notes and take action items if somebody brings something up. Now I sometimes I have something I wanna talk about in the meeting.

Brian: 01:10

So where do I put that? I usually put those in bullets on the next page. So it's can so the first page is blank. It's ready for me to listen. The next page will have, a few bullets if I wanna make sure that I don't forget those.

Brian: 01:22

Now it's important for me to write those down on the next page because if I don't write those down, I will think about things, think about the stuff I wanna talk about, and not really be listening to other people. So writing those down allow me to keep an open mind and, open ears and listen before I get into that. Now if I am the one holding the meeting, then it it is, I think, reversed. It's respectful to have, a few bullets at the top to let people it indicates to other people in the room that I have something I wanna talk about. I still might ask questions or say ask people how they're doing first, but it gives the appearance from other people that it's an agenda.

Brian: 02:08

There, that I have an agenda so that I'm not wasting people's time, and I think it's respect. How about digital stuff? So I use a notebook. What about digital? And this is just a personal thing for me.

Brian: 02:18

I know some people bring their notes or write notes on digital formats. Digital tablets, I think, are a cool idea I wanna try. However, if it's a laptop or your phone that you're writing things down on, I actually just don't believe you. But even if I do believe you, the my my default feelings are you're doing something else. You're being you're being bored with the meeting.

Brian: 02:44

You're bored with my discussion, and you're looking up, I don't know, YouTube videos or looking up on your Mastodon feed or something. Now even if that's not true, there's just a part of me that thinks you're doing something else, or maybe you're reading email, which is disrespectful during a meeting. So even if you're not, I think a paper and pen, works better. You might have a tablet that's blank, and that would work fine also or like a digital tablet. Okay.

Brian: 03:13

So what do I write down? So when if I'm in a in a meeting, I have a tendency to wanna write complete sentences, but that's not gonna help. It's I'm not gonna be able to write the whole thing down and listen at the same time. So, trying to write keywords down to remind me of a topic the topic we discussed, and I write try to write enough keywords that I'll actually remember the whole thing. So sometimes they are whole sentences, if that allows, but I try to just do shortened shorthand sentences.

Brian: 03:41

Also, definitely to do items, and I'll even put a box around a box next to to do item to remind me that I have agreed to do something. Also, something I need to follow-up on even if it's, like, some other team member or somebody else in the meeting that's agreed to do something, but I'm gonna have to follow-up on it to make sure it's done or check later, I'll write that down to, almost as a to do. It is a to do item for me to follow-up on it later. Also, sometimes thoughts jump into my head, like meditation when there when there's, thoughts jumping in. During a discussion, there'll be other thoughts distracting me from listening to what we're talking about.

Brian: 04:18

Like, maybe I I'm I'm terrible with pun jokes, so there might be a joke that pops into my head. And instead of, like, I'm gonna remember this joke, which I don't really have to. I'll write a little note down, just a couple words. And then even if I don't remember the joke, it'll tell my brain you've written it down. You forgot about you you won't you won't forget about it.

Brian: 04:40

Or, you know, like, one of the things that I noticed recently was the, the light in my on the back of my car, the light that shows the license plate, like, shines on the license plate. You're supposed to have that light, and mine's burnt out. I need to I need to get that fixed. And so if that pops into my head during a meeting, I don't I I can't do anything about it in the meeting, but I'll just draw, like, like, write down light bulb or something. It's not like I'm gonna forget about it, but writing it writing something down allows me to trick my brain to stop thinking about it so I can focus on what's going on in front of me.

Brian: 05:17

Now another thing I have a tendency to do is I have a tendency to write too much stuff down. And if I come away from a meeting with an entire 8 and a half by 11 page of notes or maybe 2 pages, I'm really probably not gonna read all of that. So to try to reduce that, I've gone to a shorter format, notebook, for instance, just like a 5 I don't even know what this is. 5 by 7 or a little smaller. And, and that's what I like to use to remind myself to be selective.

Brian: 05:48

So it's the even though there's plenty of paper, it the shape reminds me to be selective for what I'm writing down. So, why am I focusing on not writing stuff down? Well, one one of the reasons is because I I kind of have have had this problem of writing too much for a long time. So in college, I would write tons of notes through high school and through a few couple years of college. I was writing so much down.

Brian: 06:19

I don't didn't always review it, but I I I felt like I was it was good to have that down. But at one point, my hand started hurting. So the my right hand I'm right handed. My right hand started hurting. My wrist was hurting.

Brian: 06:33

My shoulder, it was just I I couldn't it was writing so much that I couldn't write anymore. So I had to kinda quit cold turkey. So, I I did get seen by a doctor, but but until I did, I really just, like, had to stop. I had to stop doing so much. So I would go into for, like, a week.

Brian: 06:53

Actually, I don't remember how long it was. I would just not take notes, and this was I panicked. Like, how can I go to college without taking notes? But I would just try to be present, to try to just listen to what's going on in the lecture and not think about other stuff and really pay attention. Now that was a really good exercise in just trying to almost meditate on the lecture, and I I think it was it was really good for me anyway.

Brian: 07:22

But, after that, when I started going back to when my hand started feeling better, I could start taking notes again. I didn't wanna get back into that problem, so I started being more selective about it. So more selective on what notes go down. So as soon as I hear something that I think I need to write down, I try to take a fraction of a second to think, do I really need to know this layer? The answer is no.

Brian: 07:50

Don't write it down. Or I might really need to know this later, but does it just make sense to me and I'm probably gonna remember it anyway? Well, then either don't write anything down or write a shorter keyword because I can just get out of my head, stop thinking about it. But I can I can, I know I'm gonna remember it? Now if it's something more complicated and I need to remember it, I will write more keywords or write a complete sentence.

Brian: 08:15

So being selective before it even hits the paper has helped me. Now there's the the edit that's just editing, like, either writing it down or not. But there's the what I wrote down, like, you know, did I write the right keywords? Did I write in complete sentences or whatever? That's the that's another story.

Brian: 08:32

Don't edit. I don't do grammar editing or anything like that when I'm writing it down. It's just to get it out of my head. Now neck next, what do I do with the notes? So after I've got notes now, in college, it was pretty easy.

Brian: 08:45

It's the notes are there for studying, and once the test is done or the quarter is done or something, you just throw away the notebook. Didn't need it. I didn't keep any of that stuff. But, in in work, in life, it's different. So if I'm if I'm keeping a personal journal, that's a different story.

Brian: 09:02

That's great. But for, like, work or to do items or this podcast or other stuff, What do I do with those notes? So if I as soon as I can, I'd like to go back to the notes and go through and, make sure that there's, squares by the 2 new items or the things I need to follow-up on. And I usually circle those also to make sure to remember that that is important. So the circle kind of means I've already edited it.

Brian: 09:30

I've got the important things. Now the stuff that's not important, either, I'll I'll try to draw, like, a diagonal line through the stuff that I don't need to know about later just to to as an indication that I've already added this page of notes, and I don't need it. And oftentimes, I don't need in like, don't need anything, and I just cross the the whole thing off. And I really love to do that. I love to do it so much that, so some of the to do items might be just easy things like email so and so and ask a question.

Brian: 10:02

So just do that. I just go ahead and do that while I'm reviewing the notes so then I can get rid of the whole thing. That's helpful. Now that's what I like to do. I'm not always great about it, but, at least once a week, I like to go through it.

Brian: 10:15

And then, at least once a month, try to go through the whole notebook and make sure that I didn't miss anything. But a month is way too long. Every few days, make sure I didn't miss any pages and notes. It's good. Now after I've got those circled or action items ready, I don't like to keep it on paper.

Brian: 10:32

So I like to transfer those. Even if I haven't got it done, I'm not gonna I don't wanna keep a pile of notes to look up. So I'll transfer those to, like, GitHub or GitLab, to do items or tasks. Get those out of there, or I might for personal stuff, I'll put it in the to do one of the to do apps on my phone or email myself sometimes to remind myself with a time, like, when I need to remember it or put something on a calendar or something like that. To get it out of note form and into actionable form helps.

Brian: 11:06

I also am a creative person. So I've got, like, I often keep pages separate separate pages at the beginning of my notebook with things like, blog posts I'd like to write or podcast article episodes I'd like to record or research or software projects I'd like to do or different things like that or art projects. Those are fine, and I don't really edit those too much. But I do like to keep a couple extra pages around those so that they can grow, and then, I'll cross it off if I no longer wanna do it or something like that or have done it. That's great.

Brian: 11:41

But I just, I keep way more lists of projects that I wanna do than than I actually do. So what's the point of that? I mean, if even if I never do those, there is a point, and the point is to get it out of my head so I don't have to keep thinking about it so that I can be present in what I'm working on. I wanna talk a little bit about email because email is writing with it's kind of for yourself, but it's also for other people. So, I I think I'm pretty good at emailing people.

Brian: 12:13

I I'm pretty short with my emails, usually. I'm probably lying about that. I've written some long emails. Anyway, so one of the things I wanna remind people people of is email is not like texting, and it's not like a journal where you can't in pen where you can't edit easily. Email, you can it's a it's on your computer, so you can you can edit it.

Brian: 12:35

So that's what I wanna remind people of is get this stuff out of your head into an email and then edit it. Drafts are fine. You can keep store it as draft, especially if if it's not like a nice email, if it's, like, talking about a problem. If it's urgent, get that out of there. Get it so fast.

Brian: 12:51

But if it's not urgent, maybe sit on it a bit. So save it as a draft, come back later, review it. And one of the there's a couple tips that I like with emails that I that some people are just really bad at and I used to be bad at. The the first one is if you're asking for somebody to do something, if there's an action that you want the person to do, have that action be in the subject line so they can see when they're viewing their list of emails. You can see somebody's asking me to do something, and this is what it is.

Brian: 13:21

Or at least, you know, please respond or, please take action on whatever. But having having those actions in the subject helps the reader know that there's something you're asking them to do. The other thing is to have kind of one topic per email. So, if you're asking somebody to, like, call somebody for you or order something or anything really, And you also were like, hey. While I'm talking to you, like, in a conversation, you would go up maybe go up to somebody, ask somebody to do something.

Brian: 13:56

But you since you're there, you may as well ask them about their dog or ask them about stuff other stuff. I don't really do that in work emails. I I like to keep that separate and, you know, asking about the dog or whatever is fine. But if you're asking about a bunch of things and you really need responses to 2 or 3 things, go ahead and put those in 3 separate emails because then it's helping the other person. So then the other person can once they've done one, if they responded to 1, they can archive or delete that email, and the other 2 are still there, so they still haven't done those.

Brian: 14:30

So it's kind of like if you're asking somebody to do 3 different things and you have to have to have it in your subject line, that really kind of tells you they need to be 3 separate emails. I had this story about email that I was gonna tell you, but it really wasn't about email. It was about an internal Wiki. But I'll it's the same sort of concept. I've got we've got an internal Wiki where, several colleagues and I are discussing a architectural change, a change proposal on this on a Wiki page.

Brian: 15:02

And I started getting working on on this and realized that I didn't think it the change was actually possible. So what what I did is I I thought it I it was all these all these thoughts about why it wasn't possible running around in my head. And so I I went up and I started writing writing bullet points down to say, here's some background information. Here's some relevant facts about the our current system. Here's some relevant facts about the framework that we're using or the and the changes that we wanna do.

Brian: 15:31

And then I came to the conclusion that because of those, the the change we were trying to make was not possible. And as soon as I wrote that down, it freed up stuff from my head, and I looked at all the things and realized there was a constraint there that wasn't a real constraint. There was a data store, some some state system state that was being held in one place. And what I really realized was that was the problem. If the state was moved somewhere else, it was moved out of that.

Brian: 16:06

If that was in the class, moved out of the class and made it globally available, like, through an accessor function or something or a little database entry, that would make the whole system work. So in getting all that done, I figured out how to solve the problem. So, my intent was to argue the case that the change was not possible, and the effect of writing it down was to free up enough, get all that detail out of my head so that I could look at it, separately. And, actually, I slept on it and came back and looked at it and realized, oh my god. That one constraint is not real.

Brian: 16:45

We can move it out. It doesn't change the API at all. And so I actually did. I slept on it. I came back the next day, and I was able to, I was actually able to see the solution better and was able to prototype.

Brian: 16:58

I had been working on this for days, and aft just getting it out of my head, I was able to prototype a working change in a couple hours, and then I am finished the entire system change in the rest of the day. And just getting that out of my head freed me to be able to creatively think about the solution really was great. I also, in helping I had 2 conversations with my colleagues about this, and so their discussion really helped me with this. So, of course, I also, sent them a note and thanked them for working with me on the change. I'd also like to talk about other forms of writing.

Brian: 17:37

So that was that's wikis, internal wiki, email, little notes in a notebook. But I also do blog posts and, wrote the same book twice. But, so blog posts. I started writing When I started writing a blog, I just kinda wanted a technical blog, but I didn't want I didn't know what to put there. So at the time, I was using the version control system clear case.

Brian: 18:02

That was so many years ago. But there were there were things that I did that I did every day. I didn't need to write those down. I did them every day. But there were some commands that I did once in a while that I would always forget, and so I would always look them up.

Brian: 18:16

So I kind of wrote this, had this rule to myself that if I had to if I wrote I researched something that I know I've researched before, so this is the second time I've had to research how to do something, then I would write a blog post so that I didn't have to research it again. I could just look at my own blog. It worked great. Now the same thing is kind of true for my book. I did not just write the book for myself, the Python testing with Pytest.

Brian: 18:40

But, actually, it is also for me. So my copy of Python testing with Pytest is totally oh, it's totally beat up because I it's at my desk. It's nearby all the time. I use it regularly. And, actually, in that, the architectural change I was just talking about, I'll there were, like, 2 parts that I had to look up.

Brian: 19:00

I needed to use a, this is irrelevant for just the concept of writing stuff down, but I'll tell you anyway. So I had to use, for the solution, I had to use pytestgenerate tests. It's a pytesthook function. And I needed to use that to parameterize a fixture based on the values being passed in by a, a marker and with marker arguments. And and then I had to either parameterize or not parameterize the fixture based on the value of those markers and what the what how much parameterization was gonna work happen.

Brian: 19:36

And and then also the value of the fixture needed to be available for the class all or the tests also. And all of those pieces, you know, like, I'm in a just remember all that stuff. It's a little bit detail y. So, I looked all those those pieces up were in the book, so that was awesome. I was able to I'm grateful for my past self for writing that stuff down, and it helped me with the solution.

Brian: 20:01

So, anyway, from taking quick notes to taking notes during a meeting to, taking notes during listening to a lecture or something and writing things down for myself, to all of the things that I've written in blog posts and in the book. I'm grateful for all the time I've spent writing. So writing allows me to stop thinking about something. It allows me to listen better, and it allows me to remember things. It all seems so simple, but it's very powerful.