In this video I walk through how I work efficiently as a software engineer, and it really starts with the foundation: problem solving. The fastest way to solve problems isn’t “working harder,” it’s asking better questions. I break down what makes a question actually useful (spoiler: context), why doing a bit of research first matters, and how broad questions slow you down and annoy teammates because you’re basically asking them to do the work for you. Then I get into debugging. Yes, print statements can work, but they’re not efficient—especially if your code takes forever to compile. I show why using a real debugger helps you understand control flow and variable state way faster, and I briefly touch on how more senior engineers go even further with monitors to understand runtime and memory (even though that’s a lot of effort if the code works and you understand it). Finally, I share the system I use for notes and tracking work, because “I’ll remember it” doesn’t scale. I demo how I organize tasks, meeting notes, architecture notes, bugs, and big decisions, and why I organize by topic (not timeline) while still capturing key dates. Notes become your personal documentation—useful for outages, manager questions, and even interviews.