How makers stay productive

I'd been using Makerlog for 2+ years now, and initially I'd just log my tasks just as everyone did. But it didn't quite do much for me. It felt mostly like a one way street - I fed Makerlog tasks, but it didn't quite feed anything back to me.

Lately I'd experimenting with using Makerlog as a learning log. I would write these [long-form logs](https://getmakerlog.com/products/lifelog) capturing stuff I'd learned from making my product [Lifelog](https://golifelog.com), the difficulties I faced, the emotional responses I had, new coding tricks I learned, and the intricacies of why I made certain technical decisions.

That's when Makerlog started getting really useful. When I needed to debug the code, I could refer back to these logs to recap what I was thinking, why I made certain decisions, why I did things a certain way. That would have not been possible if I continued to just log one-liner tasks with little to zero context.

The learning logs had also started to be really useful in conjunction to my practice of writing monthly goals and reviews. We only have limited space in our heads to remember so many things we did in a month, and often I would be under an impression that I didn't do much that month, only to be gladly proven wrong when I scroll through my logs for the month. It complements my monthly recaps really well now.

Right now I liken it to being like a ship captain's log, or the blackbox recording of an airplane. It's not just the quantitative data like streak count and no. of tasks logged, but also the qualitative aspect of writing these learnings down. For sure, it does take more effort and time, which not everyone might be down for.

But I would love to encourage more Makerloggers to try this. I love reading other makers' learnings, their struggles, how they overcame it, etc. I think we'll all be better off—individually as makers, and as a community as well—if more of such learnings are shared openly on the Makerlog feed.