So, I was messing around trying to find a better way to keep my personal project notes straight the other week. You know how it goes, bits of paper here, random text files there, it becomes a real headache. I remembered reading something ages ago, tucked away in some forum post or maybe an old comment section, about a guy named Jonathan Irwin and some simple method he supposedly used.
Honestly, couldn’t recall the exact details or even if this Jonathan Irwin was a real known person. Didn’t matter much to me. The gist I remembered was about simplifying things drastically. My current system, if you could call it that, was clearly not working. Too much time spent looking for stuff I wrote down just days before. So, I thought, okay, let’s give this vague memory of a ‘Jonathan Irwin way’ a go. Nothing to lose, right?
Trying Out This Approach
First thing I did was grab a plain old notebook. Not a fancy one, just a standard lined one. The core idea I kind of pieced together was about dedicating space and keeping things super focused. So, that’s what I ran with.
Here’s what I actually did:
- I picked one specific thing I was working on – trying to fix that annoying bug in my little home automation script.
- I dedicated the entire notebook just to this one problem. Felt weird, having a whole book for potentially just a few pages of notes.
- On the first page, I just wrote the main goal: “Fix the porch light timing issue”.
- Then, every time I tried something, or had a specific idea to test, it got its own section, sometimes its own page if I had more thoughts about it. Like, one page for “Check the cron job logs”, another for “Test sensor input directly”.
- I made sure to write down the date and time I tried something, and what the result was. Even if it failed, I wrote down why I thought it failed.
It wasn’t rocket science, obviously. Very basic stuff. But forcing myself to use this physical notebook, one issue at a time, made a difference. I wasn’t clicking between windows or getting lost in endless digital notes.
How It Felt and What Happened
At first, it felt slow. Writing by hand, flipping pages. But after a day or two, I noticed something. Because everything about that one problem was in one place, I could easily see the history of what I tried. It stopped me from accidentally repeating steps I’d already taken, which happens to me a lot when my notes are scattered.
There were no fancy features, no search function other than my own memory and flipping through. But the constraint was kind of freeing. It made me focus on the actual problem-solving steps rather than organizing the notes perfectly.
In the end, I did figure out that stupid bug. Took me maybe two evenings of focused work. Looking back through the notebook, I could clearly trace my path from confusion to solution. Seeing the crossed-out failures and the final working idea all laid out was pretty satisfying, gotta say.
So, this “Jonathan Irwin” method, or at least my interpretation of it? It’s not revolutionary. But for tackling a single, nagging problem, dedicating a simple, physical space just for it really helped me stay on track. Might try it again next time I’m stuck on something specific. Sometimes simple is good.
