1. Introduction the upgrade I didn’t see coming
Let’s be clear: I didn’t start this to become a “10x engineer.”
There was no big plan, no YouTube productivity rabbit hole, no mentor whispering secrets over coffee. What actually happened? I broke.
It was one of those cursed debugging weeks. My terminal mocked me. My git history looked like a crime scene. Every PR review felt like a personal attack. And worst of all? I couldn’t even explain to myself what the hell I was doing.
Out of frustration, I opened a blank note and typed:
“I have absolutely no idea why this function works. If future me is reading this, sorry.”
That was it no structure, no intention just a frustrated rant from a dev on the brink. But something clicked. I felt lighter. I closed the file.
The next day, I opened it again. Typed another thought. Then another.
What began as mental cleanup slowly became a habit.
That habit rewired how I think, how I write code, and how I solve problems.
It made me… better. Not in a flashy, resume-polishing way. But in a real way.
And the wild part?
It had nothing to do with actual coding.
2. Why developers hit a ceiling without realizing it
No one tells you this, but there’s a limit to how far you can get just by coding more.
When you’re early in your career, the progress graph feels steep. Every new tool, every framework tutorial, every “aha” moment builds on the last. But then… it plateaus. You’re writing more code but not necessarily getting better. You’re shipping, sure but the bugs are sneakier, the decisions harder, the mental fatigue stronger.
And here’s the kicker: it’s not because you don’t know enough.
It’s because your mental stack is full.
Let’s use dev terms. Your brain has limited RAM. You’re juggling feature specs, architecture trade-offs, edge cases, team feedback, personal impostor syndrome, and “how do I undo a git reset again?” all in real time. When everything lives in your head, nothing gets processed cleanly.
You know how your IDE lags when too many tabs are open? That’s you, daily.
This leads to a subtle but dangerous developer condition:
Decision fatigue disguised as technical confusion.
You’re not stuck because the tech is hard you’re stuck because your brain has no room left to debug itself.
Most devs think the answer is “grind harder.”
But in reality, what we need is space to think.
And that’s what journaling gave me without ever calling itself that.
3. What I started doing (and why it felt weird at first)
So, yeah I started journaling.
But not the “dear diary, today I drank coffee and cried over CSS” kind.
This was unfiltered, borderline angry, often messy dev-brain output.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t consistent. And at first, it felt… wrong.
Like I was wasting time typing stuff that wouldn’t compile.
But I kept doing it.
Whenever something annoyed me, confused me, or made me proud, I’d dump a quick note:
- “This API design feels off. Why did I make it so nested?”
- “Regex worked, but I don’t remember why. Add example next time, idiot.”
- “Took 2 hours to realize the bug was a race condition. Log this pattern.”
Sometimes it was two lines. Sometimes it was a full-on rant.
Sometimes I even added a fake Stack Overflow answer to myself.
Q: Why does this service fail when
env=prod?
A: Because you forgot to inject the prod config, you absolute donut.
No structure. No tags. Just me, talking to me.
Here’s where I wrote it:
- Obsidian for Markdown power-users (me now)
- Apple Notes when I was on the go (me in chaos mode)
- VS Code + Markdown when I didn’t want to leave my editor
It didn’t feel productive at first. No output. No commits. No CI checks.
But what I didn’t expect was how quickly I started thinking better.
This wasn’t journaling. It was debugging my own brain.
4. How journaling improved my dev skills (real impact)
Within a few weeks, I noticed something wild:
I was making fewer dumb mistakes and explaining my work better.
Not because I’d magically gotten smarter.
But because writing forced me to slow down and think clearly.
Here’s what changed:
I planned before I wrote code
I’d jot down a one-paragraph sketch of what I intended to build.
This tiny act helped me catch flawed logic before it hit the compiler.
My commit messages stopped sounding like regrets
When you’ve already written “why” in your notes, writing a useful commit message feels natural.
No more fix stuff or final-final-FINAL-cleanup.
I became my own rubber duck
Ever tried explaining a bug to your future self? Brutal. But effective.
Once I could describe a bug in plain English, the fix usually revealed itself.
I saw patterns in my thinking
Reading old entries was like reading my brain’s changelog:
“Oh, look this is the third time I overengineered something instead of just using a simple object map.”
I stopped fearing blank screens
You know the blank screen of doom?
When you open a new file and your brain short-circuits?
Yeah, that got easier.
Because journaling gave me a sandbox to think before I coded.
Over time, I wasn’t just solving problems faster I was solving better problems.
My PRs got tighter. My reasoning clearer. My confidence? Not cocky, but steady.
And all I’d done was start writing to myself like I was pair programming… with future me.
5. What this isn’t: no fluff, no journaling for Instagram
Let me be crystal clear:
I’m not trying to sell you on some life coach fantasy of “journaling your way to six figures.”
This isn’t morning pages.
It’s not about gratitude lists or motivational quotes.
It’s not even about consistency.
This is messy, functional thinking for devs.
You’re not writing for likes. You’re not optimizing for aesthetics.
You’re just dumping thoughts so your brain can breathe.
It doesn’t matter if it’s misspelled, unformatted, or full of rage.
This isn’t “dear diary, today I built a monolith.”
It’s more like “dear future me, this controller is cursed and here’s why.”
No pressure to be deep. No need to explain to anyone but yourself.
The magic doesn’t come from writing well it comes from writing honestly.
The truth is, most of us are carrying around a backlog of decisions, doubts, and tech debt not just in code, but in our heads.
Journaling isn’t therapy. But sometimes, it’s the only place your architecture decisions can scream without judgment.
6. Want to try it? here’s a dev journaling starter pack
Alright, no excuses. If you’ve made it this far, you’re at least dev-curious about journaling.
Good news: you don’t need a Notion template. You don’t need to buy a fancy notebook. You just need a place to dump thoughts and a little structure to get going.
Here’s the zero-friction starter pack:
When to journal
Pick any one of these:
- After solving a tough bug
- When you feel stuck on something
- At the end of your dev day
- Mid-project, when you feel lost
- When you surprise yourself by shipping something clean
(Notice how “every morning at 6:30 AM with tea” isn’t on the list.)
What to write
Start simple:
- “What did I build today?
- “What went wrong?”
- “What surprised me?”
- “What would I do differently next time?”
- “What do I want future me to remember?”
Don’t overthink it. This is you writing to you.
Where to write
Choose one you’ll actually use:
- Markdown files in a Git repo version-controlled brain
- Obsidian for the nerds who love backlinks
- Apple Notes / Google Keep for the chaotic good types
- VS Code scratch file because you refuse to leave the terminal
- GitHub Gists if you want to keep some public for others (bonus: they’re searchable)
Optional dev upgrades
- Create a
dev-journalfolder with daily notes - Use tags like
#debug,#design,#regret - Add code snippets with comments
- Link out to PRs, commits, or docs
The key? Make it useful to future you.
And if you miss a day? Who cares. The point isn’t streaks. It’s signal.
8. The surprising extras: mental health, clarity, focus
I started this to think better.
What I didn’t expect was that I’d start to feel better, too.
No, journaling didn’t fix burnout. It didn’t remove deadlines. It didn’t stop that one teammate from commenting “why tho?” on every PR.
But it gave me space — real, private, uninterrupted space — to process what was going on.
Clarity
Writing forced me to untangle problems before they turned into stress spirals.
I realized that 80% of the time, I wasn’t stuck on a coding issue — I was stuck on an unspoken assumption.
Focus
Once I offloaded my thoughts, I could stop obsessing over them.
It was like writing a cache to disk so I could free up some RAM.
Better communication
Turns out, when you practice explaining things to yourself, you get better at explaining them to others.
Code reviews got easier. Mentorship got smoother. Even Slack replies got tighter.
Stress relief
Ranting into a text file is surprisingly therapeutic.
It’s like yelling into the void, but the void answers back six weeks later and says,
“Hey. I figured it out. You were right to doubt that design.”
9. Why most devs won’t do this (but you should)
Let’s be honest:
Most developers will read something like this and nod… and then never do it.
Not because they disagree. But because writing feels unproductive.
It doesn’t ship features. It doesn’t push commits. It doesn’t get you those sweet Jira points.
But here’s the twist:
Writing is a force multiplier.
Ten minutes of journaling can save you two hours of thrashing.
A single clear insight from your notes can prevent an architecture faceplant.
A short log of what you were thinking during that last sprint can make your next retro way less awkward.
Most devs chase more knowledge, more speed, more shortcuts.
Very few pause to upgrade how they think.
If you’ve ever wished you could remember why you did something
or wished you had a smarter, calmer version of yourself to bounce ideas off
this is that.
Writing gives you that version of yourself on demand.
It won’t always be pretty. But it’ll be real. And honest. And way more useful than yet another tab of AI-generated Stack Overflow answers.
So yeah most won’t do it.
But you? You probably should.
10. Conclusion don’t code more, think better
No one told me to start writing. There was no course, no blog post, no “dev productivity” Twitter thread that led me here.
I was just tired of being confused and tired of making the same mistakes twice.
Journaling wasn’t about being more productive. It was about being more aware.
Aware of how I think. How I work. Where I mess up. Where I improve.
And once I started doing that, everything else leveled up:
- My code got cleaner
- My focus got sharper.
- My confidence stopped yo-yoing every time something broke.
If there’s one thing I’d say to past me, it’s this:
You don’t need to code more to become a better developer.
You just need to think better. And thinking starts by writing it down.
Seriously. Try it.
Open a note, type a thought, and see where it leads.
Worst case? You wasted 5 minutes.
Best case? You debug your brain, your work, and your future all in one shot.
11. Helpful resources for the dev who wants to think better
Obsidian
Your second brain, but Markdown-powered. Great for devs who want backlinks, folders, and control over their thoughts.
📓 VS Code + Markdown Preview Enhanced
You’re already living in VS Code might as well journal there too.
GitJournal
Turn your thoughts into version-controlled commits. Great for journaling on the go (and syncing via Git!).
Zettelkasten method intro
A nerdy (but awesome) system for connecting ideas if you want to get fancy with your thinking structure.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Not dev-specific, but the best guide for building habits that actually stick. Like journaling.
r/ObsidianMD subreddit
For devs who like tinkering with their tools almost as much as using them.
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