My learnings as week notes

One of my goals for 2024 is to “Compound long-term goals, daily.” Learning is one of those.

Some people publish their learnings as weekly notes, like Simon Willison, Thejesh GN, Anil Radhakrishna, and Julia Evans. I follow their notes.

I started doing the same, quietly, to see if I could sustain it. It’s been a year and it has sustained.

I’m finally publishing them. My week notes are at til.s-anand.net. Here’s the source code.

Capturing learnings must be frictionless

I learn things when I’m reading, listening to podcasts, listening to people, or thinking. In every case I’m close to my phone or laptop.

If my laptop is open, I add my notes to a few (long) Markdown files like this til.md.

If my phone is easier to access, I type or dictate my notes into Microsoft To Do, which is currently my most convenient note-taking app. It syncs with my laptop. I transfer it (via OCR on Microsoft Power Toys) into the Markdown file.

The Markdown files are synced across my devices using Dropbox, which I find the most convenient and fast way to sync.

The notes have a simple format. Here’s something I quickly wrote down in Microsoft To Do while speaking with a senior at a restaurant:

Government websites like the official press releases cannot be crawled from outside India. Hence the need for server farms in India!

Then I copied that over to the Markdown file as a list item along with the date (which Microsoft To Do captures), like this:

- 15 Dec 2024. Government websites like the official press releases cannot be crawled from outside India. Hence the need for server farms in India!

That’s it. Quick and simple. The most important thing is to capture learnings easily. Even the slightest friction hurts this goal.

Publishing learnings

I run this Deno script which parses the Markdown files, groups them by week, and generates a set of static HTML pages. These are published on GitHub Pages, which is currently my favorite way to publish static files.

It generates an RSS feed as well. I’ve started reading more content using RSS feeds via Feedly, including my own notes. I find browsing through them a useful refresher.

This format is different from my blog. In the 1990s and early 2000s, I published individual links as posts. Then I moved to long form posts. This consolidates multiple links into a single weekly post. But rather than publish via WordPress (which is what my blog is currently based on), I prefer a Markdown-based static site. So it’s separate for the moment.

I intend to continue with these notes (and the format) for the foreseeable future.