I am working on a pretty complex project. It is a series of very complex books, that needs to keep a strict mathematical structure.
The thing is, I completely cracked the code 6 years ago, and had madly scribbled out the solution in a now lost notebook.
To be clear, these aren’t fiction books but complicated “trick” books that perform a magic trick completely out of my hands and in the hands of whoever I’m showing the trick to.
Like most things, the secret is simple, but behind the scenes there is a lot going on to both obscure the secret and make the amazing thing happen.
I would now have to recreate the logic I’d already come up with 6 years ago and not only that but I would need to do it 100 more different times (I am working on 100 completely different versions, don’t ask it’s completely crazy).
I started digging into my archives for the original books so I could study the structure and maybe reverse engineer what I’d figuredout 6 years ago and then apply it to the new 100 books.
That’s when something unexpected happened. Deep inside a hard drive, I found instructions written by my young self in the very probably chance older me would forget how to do it. I guess younger, more naive me hadn’t expected that I would also forget I had written up the instructions.
They were a little vague, but after a few minutes of trial and error and finding a template (young me seems much wiser than old me) I was able to crank out the structure and template for a few more books. It will still take time, the best things are never easy, but at least I’m not starting from scratch.
But I guygress. This is all to say, don’t be like old me, be more like young me. Right now, open up a folder on google docs or in your notes on your phone, label it instructions and start writing down how you do things that are complicated or you don’t plan on doing every day. Anything that can help future you. Because that future guy might not be as smart, or memoryful as who you are right now.
Your future self will thank you.
I’m giving myself a handshake as we speak.
When in doubt, write it out.