As you work your way through a problem that you haven’t faced before always try and make some time to document your process.
Lately I’ve been working on a few projects that have been out of my usual comfort zone. They’ve involved a little more javascript and a bit more system administration work. While I don’t consider myself to be an expert in either of those fields, I have found that I’m pretty good and finding the right google search term to get the right answer.
On a few occasions the results I have found have managed to get me 90% of the way, but some tweaks have been required to get it all working in my particular scenario. At this point I should have written down my actions and captured the results through here. My Blog. My Web Log of what happens. The place I write to remind me about stuff. This would allow me to reference my own instructions again should I need them, and also provide the 100% correct solution for someone with my same problem.
Unfortunately I’ve been a little lazy and not had as much time to document these findings recently, and as a result I can no longer remember what I had solved. What I do know is that some time down the track I will lose that time 10 fold trying to resolve the same problem.
Always write down what you’re doing when discovering something new, it will help me out one day too.