I have been writing "Today I Learned" posts (TILs) for a few weeks now and I started writing them as a complement to long form blogging. But I found myself spending 45-60 minutes, sometimes longer, per TIL instead of 15-25. This defeated the purpose of quickly recording and internalizing learnings.
So I went back to the source and came up with these reminders to myself:
- Keep them short and focused. Target less than 250 words.
- Spend less than 25 minutes on writing. Ideally 15.
- Write only about what is clearly figured out. Too much research while writing endangers the constraints.
- Remember: a TIL is not blogging.
- Experiment with including more high-level technical learnings as well. So far most TILs have been tooling and LLM tips. Also include architecture, design, testing, process.
TILs should be quick captures, not polished essays. The value is in consistency and volume, not perfection.