PKM

The Engineering Notebook as a Time Machine

"Later" is too late when it comes to note-taking.

Odin Halvorson

14 Feb 2026 — 2 min read

I read a really interesting blog post recently about the "engineering notebook," a practice of recording notes immediately, as you work on things, documenting what you are doing and why.

“The methodological rigor of an engineering notebook takes things to another level.”

One of the better-known methods of notebook PKM is the commonplace book—a single repository where all of your daily information finds a home. But the methodological rigor of an engineering notebook takes things to another level, and I find that really intriguing. The idea being that you’re keeping a diet detailed log, dating everything, and doing these notes in real time.

Remember, you are a completely different person now than you will be in the future. That means that everything you write needs to be written so that a stranger (yourself as you will become) can understand it, context included.

Everything that you should be writing into a personal knowledge management system should be translated, so that a completely different person can understand the context and the content.

I am a huge fan of Cory Doctorow's writing, and he actually uses a similar method, where he leaves a digital notepad up on his computer screen and constantly keeps a running list there of things that are going on for him. He calls this his “working memory," or the memex method.

But for a couple of reasons, I really like the idea of doing a physical notebook. I plan to write a couple of more blog posts about the reasons why handwriting is so vital to the process of memory and also the process of truly original and unique creation, but for now I'll just say that it's great for both the depth of what you write, and for your memory.

“Handwriting is so vital to the process of memory and also the process of truly original and unique creation.”

This ties back to what I’ve written in The Ethics of Attention in the Digital Age—the need to slow down and resist the rapid-fire “vibe” of modern tech. Incidentally, it’s why so many people who are currently getting excited about “vibe coding” utterly fail to do anything either original or robust.

Without the friction of real documentation and the cognitive effort of true applied reason, you lose the groundedness required for true innovation.

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