Looking back on past self, one thing I wish I’d realised is the importance of keeping notes of everything.

回顾过去的自我，我希望我意识到的一件事是记录所有事情的重要性。

This means everything interesting I’ve read and written; every methodology and screen I’ve designed, every big or difficult problem I’ve solved, every interesting research finding, every great photo from every weird testing set up.

这意味着我已经阅读和编写了所有有趣的东西。 我设计的每一种方法和屏幕，我解决的每一个大问题或难题，每一个有趣的研究发现，每一个怪异的测试设置的每张出色照片。

For the last 5 years I’ve been doing this, but I wish I’d started 15 years ago instead.

在过去的5年中，我一直在这样做，但我希望我早在15年前就开始了。

为什么这很重要？ (Why is this important?)

You’re going to really regret not saving those great research photos somewhere sensible when you need to write your portfolio.

当您需要编写自己的作品集时，您真的会后悔没有将那些出色的研究照片保存在合理的位置。

You’re going to kick yourself when someone asks you for the 8th time to design a methodology you’ve already written and lost.

当有人第八次要求您设计已经编写并迷失的方法时，您将踢自己。

You can take this as far as you want, but in 5–10 years time when you’re teaching other people what you’ve learned, you’re going to wish you’d stored it all.

您可以随心所欲地做到这一点，但是在5到10年的时间里，当您向其他人传授所学知识时，您会希望自己将其全部存储起来。

保存什么？ (What to save?)

Well it’s overwhelming isnt it. So much to learn and Medium alone is a treasure trove of content. Here are the things I recommend saving (from experience), and some tips how to do it, using some of the most useful free tools I’ve found.

好吧， 这是压倒性的 。 要学习的东西太多了，而仅Medium是内容的宝库。 这是我建议(根据经验)保存的东西，以及使用一些我发现的最有用的免费工具进行操作的提示。

I would focus firstly on things you’ve done:

首先，我将重点介绍您所做的事情:

1.图片和案例研究 (1. Photos and case studies)

Make a good habit of writing up at least notes, and collating photos of every project you’ve worked on. Don’t worry about writing the whole thing long form — a simple way to do this is to make a template of headings (such as project name, role, challenge, activities, outcomes) that can be filled out in 15 minutes at the end of a project.

养成至少写笔记，并整理所从事的每个项目的照片的好习惯。 不用担心将整个内容写成长格式，一种简单的方法是制作一个标题模板(例如项目名称，角色，挑战，活动，结果)，该模板可以在15分钟内填写完毕一个项目。

2.文章 (2. Articles)

Anything you’ve written. Even if you’ve not posted it online. Even if you’ve never been officially published, save everything. Even the stuff people ask you to write for a client or a pitch or their boss, where you explain XYZ. Create a little wiki of subjects. You can do this simply using any number of tools (see below).

您写的任何东西。 即使您尚未在线发布。 即使您从未正式发布过，也请保存所有内容。 甚至有人要求您为客户，推销员或他们的老板写信的东西，在这里您要解释XYZ。 创建主题的小百科。 您可以简单地使用任何数量的工具(请参见下文)来执行此操作。

3.方法论 (3. Methodologies)

Doesn’t matter what you’ve written — it can be a full client proposal, some notes on something you think will work, or a doodle that solves a process problem — keep it all, so long as it’s robust. Even if it’s something you’ve run, and learned not to do again, keep it. Especially if it’s that.

不管您写什么内容(可以是完整的客户建议，您认为可以使用的东西的注释，也可以是解决过程问题的涂鸦)，只要功能强大，就可以保留所有内容。 即使您已经运行了某个东西，并且学会了不要再做，也要保留它。 尤其是那样的话。

Then things you’ve discovered:

然后您发现的东西:

4.链接 (4. Links)

Trying to re-find something you thought was great 3 years ago is painful. Use a “read later” type app to save your favourites. Just don’t get into the habit of saving billions of links and articles you never read. Make it a practice to save things you’ve actually read, or put aside time for focused reading.

尝试重新发现3年前您认为很棒的东西很痛苦。 使用“稍后阅读”类型的应用程序保存您的收藏夹。 只是不要养成节省数十亿从未读过的链接和文章的习惯。 练习保存您实际阅读的内容，或留出时间集中阅读 。

5.行情 (5. Quotes)

Things your bosses and mentors and industry heroes say are worth keeping; things that resonate now, next week or in years to come. You don’t have to follow everyone’s guidance, but it’s worth having it just in case. Look at Covid — you never know when the world is going to turn on its axis.

您的老板，导师和行业英雄所说的话值得保留； 现在，下周或未来几年引起共鸣的事物。 您不必遵循每个人的指导，但是值得以防万一。 看一下Covid，您永远不知道世界何时会转轴。

6.想法和概念 (6. Ideas and concepts)

You’ll read a lot of books and articles, and have a lot of conversations. You won’t have all of these literally sitting on a shelf around you, so if you find something special, make a note of the idea and where it came from. you never know when you’ll want to track it down again.

您将阅读很多书籍和文章，并进行很多对话。 您不会将所有这些字面意思放在您周围的架子上，因此，如果您发现一些特别的东西，请记下该主意及其来源。 您永远不会知道何时要再次查找。

免费的存储和管理工具: (Free tools for storage and curation:)

Books are great, but piles of paper and old post-its are unwieldy to manage over the years. Go cloud-based, and find a solution that allows you to put the most stuff on the same platform, and access it from any device.

书籍很棒，但是这些年来，成堆的纸张和旧的帖子难以管理。 基于云，找到一种解决方案，使您可以将最多的东西放在同一平台上，并可以从任何设备访问它。

• Google Drive, Drop box, etc — Dumping things in the cloud is quick and easy. But your future self will really thank you for putting things in folders with appropriate names. Create a series of “Word” style docs, give them meaningful subject-matter titles and store them in relevant folders. See, I told you IA was useful.

  Google云端硬盘，收件箱等 -将内容转储到云中非常容易。 但是，您未来的自己会真的感谢您将其放入具有适当名称的文件夹中。 创建一系列“ Word”样式的文档，为它们提供有意义的主题标题并将其存储在相关文件夹中。 看， 我告诉你IA很有用 。

• MS notes — Great if it’s your own account. But don’t forget, if you use a work account you might forget to take it with you when you change jobs.

  MS注释 -如果是您自己的帐户，则很好。 但是请不要忘记，如果您使用工作帐户，则在换工作时可能会忘记随身携带。

• Wordpress — Doesn’t have to be live, you can use a free personal blog as a storage repository until you are ready to make your real portfolio site. Plus you can and keep it private.

  Wordpress —不必实时运行，您可以使用免费的个人博客作为存储库，直到准备好创建真正的投资组合网站为止。 另外，您可以将它设为私有。

• Pocket — Just for saving links, but even with the free version you can tag the crap out of everything and find stuff again pretty easily.

  掌上电脑 —仅用于保存链接，但即使使用免费版本，您也可以标记所有内容中的废话，并轻松地再次查找内容。

• Evernote — A lot of people like Evernote, but they push you from free into paid really quickly, so it’s not one of my faves. But if you’ve got it already, then this is probably what you want to use.

  Evernote-很多人都喜欢Evernote，但是他们确实很快将您从免费变成了付费，所以这不是我的最爱。 但是，如果您已经拥有了它，那么这可能就是您想要使用的。

• Notion.so — I’ve recently discovered this, and it’s a great way of putting together all sorts of resources from lists to spreadsheets. It’s also a good stand in for knocking out a quick shareable resource like this. Also ideal if you are at the stage of teaching others.

  Notion.so-我最近发现了这一点，这是将列表到电子表格中各种资源整合在一起的好方法。 这也是淘汰像这样的快速可共享资源的良好代表。 如果您正在教别人，那也是理想的选择。

重要提示 (Top tips)

• Keep it up — Add to this a little every week or every month. Never leave it more than 4 weeks or you’ll just stop forever.

  保持现状 —每周或每月稍微增加一点。 永远不要离开超过4周，否则您将永远停止。

• Keep it clean — Review it periodically and delete or archive any old stuff. You can always invest in a physical external hardrive for your long term back up and just keep the last couple of years online.

  保持清洁 —定期检查并删除或存档任何旧内容。 您可以随时为外部备份购买物理外部硬盘，并保持最近几年的联机状态。

• Keep it lean — There are so many online and cloud tools now that there weren’t when I started out to help you with this. Just keep the number low and use each one for as many things as possible. You don’t want to have to search 20 tools for one piece of content.

  保持精简 —现在有许多在线和云工具，当我刚开始为您提供帮助时就没有。 只需保持较低的数字，然后将每个数字用于尽可能多的事情即可。 您不需要为一件内容搜索20种工具。

The secret is little and often. When you look back, you’ll realise how far you’ve come and how much you’ve done and learned. Your future self will thank you.

这个秘密很少而且经常发生。 当您回头看时，您会意识到自己走了多远，已经学到了多少。 您未来的自我会感谢您。