How to Record and Retrieve Anything You've Ever Had to Look Up Twice

Hacker News · Mar 2, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Never lose a hard-won process again This week a potential customer asked me for an evaluation preview of one of my educational PDF ebooks. “No problem!” I said, “I’ll get that to you today.” Right! Time to watermark a lower resolution copy of the PDF and upload it to the files section of my website. This is a process I have done many times in the past — but not for about two years. It took a bit of experimentation at the time to settle on watermarking software I was happy with, and to get the right settings for placing our logo onto the page. I repeated the process maybe 10 or 20 times over the course of two weeks, so I felt like it had earned its place on the list of Things I Know How To Do. But I was wrong. It turns out that not doing a thing regularly can turn it into something that needs to be learned all over again. If only I’d written down the name of the software, and its settings, at the time! Preparing that document for the customer was frustrating, and took up time I’d wanted to spend on other tasks. Fortunately things like this don’t happen very often, thanks to the personal knowledge base I’ve been building for the last few years. It’s like the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of the corporate world, but for any multi-step process, business or personal. Some of the other topics in my knowledge base include — How to reduce the size of a PDF without losing image quality How to take a screenshot using the terminal How to fix Miele dishwasher code F14 How to set up a template in Fastmail How to add a specific Notion page to iOS Home Screen How to generate tax records for a Shopify store How to make yourself actually do it Now I don’t imagine I’m telling you anything you don’t already know. You understand the value of recording procedures, but you still find yourself looking up the same stuff, over and over again. It’s not difficult to do, in theory. As soon as you find yourself looking up how to do something for the second time, write down how to do that thing. So why don’t we do it? Perhaps it’s because, like me with the watermarking job, you think you’ll remember next time. Or you suspect that you might forget, but you put off the task of documenting until later — and when later comes, you’re back to square one. Here are two things that can make it easier to document any multi-step process. Don’t go onto the next step until you’ve written down what you just did (like interstitial journaling) Narrate the entire process in an audio note as you are going through it, or very soon afterwards There’s nothing magical about those tips, is there! They work, but you still have to be intentional about making a record. No one can push through that barrier (you know, the one that says there’s something more important to be getting on with and you can always write it down later) for you. However you get it done, get it done! The payoff is worth the effort. How to find things again So, you’ve recorded some processes you know you’ll need to refer to again. Where do you store them? And how do you find them again at the point they are needed? They’ll need to live in a location you won’t lose track of, and they’ll need to be easily retrievable by the you of the future who can’t remember exactly what you called them. Location (where to look) Of course I recommend text files for this kind of knowledge base, but you can use whatever app you’re most likely to keep around long term. Apple Notes is a popular choice. Keep all your how-tos in one searchable place, be it an app or a group of text files you can run searches on. I keep my knowledge base as a series of Markdown files in a folder, and I access them through Obsidian. The wonderful thing about text files (including Markdown) is that you can read them with any text editor at all. No one app can stand as a gatekeeper between you and the knowledge you have collected. Naturally, you can also record your processes on paper. If that’s your preference, be sure to also write an index of them all and make a digital backup! Identifier (make it clear that this is a process) Even the most clearly written description of a process will be no good to you if you can’t find it when you need it. You need a way to identify that a note or a file belongs to your knowledge base. This can be done with the properties of a file, but my favourite way is with a hashtag. Use the #howto tag any time you write down how you did something, or preface the title of individual notes with how to -. This makes it super easy to see all your processes in one place, no matter how scattered they might be across your notes! Name (identify the topic) Underestimate the importance of a good file name or note title at your peril! Some of my how-tos were entered into my One Note (1-N), others are stand-alone text files. Both work to deliver what I’m looking for when they have a title that leaves no room for ambiguity. Approach naming a how-to as if you could only use one word in the title. What would that word be? What would the second word be? In the case of How to fix Miele dishwasher code F14, the two words would be dishwasher and F14. Add other words to those 2–3 as needed to describe and add context, but always include the key words that speak to the heart of the process. These are the words which, used alone, will inevitably come to mind when you’re thinking of how to do that thing in the future. One more example: How to prepare documents for online store without using up too much memory is a terrible title. It’s descriptive of only one instance where I might need that skill. How to reduce the size of a PDF without losing image quality is much better. PDF is the most important word, reduce and size are next. It’s much better to be specific. State what the skill or process is, not just one way it can be applied. Never lose a hard-won process again Alright then, it’s over to you! The next time you find yourself looking up how to do something again, don’t move on to anything else before writing down each step of the process. Record an audio note describing what you did if you really don’t have time to sit and write it down. You can do that in the car, if you have to, hands-free. Make sure you pop a reminder into your task management system to process the audio note into your text notes, and include a link to the original audio in the final note. Keep all your howto files where they will be easily searchable, and tag them with #howto or similar. Include the most important key words in the file or note name. Making this a habit is the hardest part! Keep at it and you’ll soon be documenting all those little things without even thinking about it. And thanks to the latest entry in my knowledge base, I’ll be ready the next time I have to prepare a document for watermarking! (FYI, there’s a built-in Automator workflow on the Mac that works a treat for watermarking PDFs.) This piece was inspired by Autodidact’s post, where they show how an unstructured collected of plain text files can be a perfectly serviceable knowledgebase. 💬 I love to hear from readers! email hello at ellanew dot com or message me on Mastodon or Bluesky. Follow my RSS feed, or sign up to receive a weekly plain text themed email. If you’ve found value here I invite you to share this post with someone you think will appreciate it, or make a contribution to my support jar. ... ... ... ...