Documentation, as far as I’m concerned, is infrastructure.
There should be enough of it in your project, and in your code, to answer the who, what, where, when, and why of everything.
I’m talking code repos, tickets, Confluence pages, and yes—even the cocktail napkins in your desk drawer. Because you’re not disorganized. You’re actually very organized. Coffee-stained pseudo-code napkins are just how your brilliance shows up to work.
Also: the little yellow notebooks. The sticky notes. The messages to yourself in Slack that no one else understands.
Yes.
The format doesn’t matter as much as the habit. Documentation is not optional. It’s part of the religion.
You worship at the altar of the unyielding development cycle.
You follow the commandment:
“Thou shalt write down what you're thinking and planning, somewhere.
Preferably close to the code. But somewhere.”
Because that’s what context retention is:
All the things you might not remember tomorrow, but will absolutely matter six months from now.
If you're not doing that... you're going to get blindsided --- by yourself.