Comment by tacostakohashi
18 days ago
I find there is a lot of value in quick and dirty capture and storage of records in good old fashioned files and directories (that re synced, backed up, etc):
things/thing/2026-02-02-shipping-tracking-number.pdf
things/thing/2026-01-12-before-photo.jpg
things/thing/2026-01-10-scan-of-diagram-sketch.jpg
... etc, just capture all the artifacts this way, be they photos, scans of handwritten notes, print-to-pdf of website orders / confirmation numbers, invoices / receipts, instruction manuals, whatever.
99% of the time, its not needed in the future, 1% of the time, it's a big deal, and in those case you can then analyze what was captured into some more useful summarized notes, spreadsheets, as needed.
Understanding this asymmetry is important, you want a system where it is mostly effortless to capture and store raw artifacts as-is, and it doesn't matter if it takes a few hours to analyze things from one place later as needed. If you have the original artifacts that's a few hours of busywork, if the artifacts don't exist... it's impossible.
This asymmetry framing is really helpful.
I’m curious in the cases where that 1% mattered, what made the reconstruction painful even when the raw artifacts existed? Was it ordering events, understanding intent/decisions, or just finding the right things under pressure?
And were those moments tied to audits, disputes, safety issues, or something else?