The Data Detective's Toolkit: How Miguel Captures Every Insight
"When you're in unfamiliar territory, you need to take many more notes." — Miguel Curiel
Have you ever found yourself deep in a data investigation, only to realize you've forgotten what you discovered two hours ago? Or worse: trying to explain to a stakeholder why a KPI dropped, but drawing a blank on half your reasoning? Miguel Curiel knows this pain all too well.
As a Product Analytics Manager, Miguel spends his days diving deep into datasets, chasing answers to questions like "Why did this KPI drop?" and exploring unfamiliar territories of information. Before reconfigured, his analytical process was fragmented across SQL queries, Jupyter notebooks, and R scripts, with notes scattered across different projects and no easy way to connect them.
"All of them have notes in separate projects, and you cannot really bring them together without something external," Miguel explains. "That's where reconfigured has been helpful."
P.S. This is a blog series highlighting the amazing people who use reconfigured for their notetaking needs. We always want to promote our people when possible, so if you'd like to be featured please drop me a message.
The Investigative Workflow
For Miguel, each analytics investigation is a "quest" – either a specific project or an ad hoc question from a stakeholder. What looks simple on the surface ("Why did this KPI drop?") usually leads to multiple layers of discovery.
During these data deep dives, Miguel follows a structured approach:
- He defines the methodology first: which data sources to examine, what time frames to analyze, and which filters to apply
- As he examines the data, he captures insights and nuances in real-time
- He documents unexpected discoveries, like realizing a filter needs adjustment due to null values
- He notes specific findings about account performance, trend patterns, and potential causes for changes
This meticulous documentation pays off big time when it's time to communicate findings. All the context, reasoning, and evidence for his conclusions are already captured in a coherent narrative.
The Sidekick: An Extension of Thought
What Miguel values most about reconfigured is how seamlessly it integrates with his workflow, particularly through the Sidekick feature. Using an intuitive four-finger keyboard shortcut, he can instantly capture thoughts without breaking his concentration.
"I really like shortcuts a lot. I use shortcuts for everything I can. And the ones you developed felt very intuitive," Miguel notes. "Especially the Sidekick, the one with the four fingers. It's such an easy way... you just open, type whatever you want, and it'll be stashed."
During intense analytical work, Miguel finds himself using the Sidekick every 5-10 minutes, sometimes even more frequently when exploring completely unfamiliar datasets. That's not just frequent use. That's making the tool an extension of his thinking process.
When he's heads-down in analysis, Miguel keeps reconfigured's main interface closed, relying exclusively on the Sidekick for rapid capture of thoughts. He then returns to the journal view at the beginning and end of a quest to organize his findings and prepare insights for sharing.
Permission to Be Verbose
Another aspect of reconfigured that resonated with Miguel was the explicit invitation to be verbose in note-taking. No more trying to condense complex thoughts into tidy bullet points or perfectly structured documentation.
"The invitation to be verbose... from an investigative point of view and train of thought point of view feels supernatural," Miguel shares. "It's a welcome experience just to have your raw thoughts about the data and splat them in there."
This approach stands in contrast to many note-taking systems that emphasize brevity and structure from the outset. By encouraging free-flowing documentation of thought processes, reconfigured helps analysts capture the context and reasoning behind their findings, elements that can be just as valuable as the conclusions themselves.
Centralization: The Quest for Connection
The third key benefit Miguel highlights is centralization. Data work often spans across multiple tools and platforms, with insights scattered across various environments. reconfigured gives him a single source of truth for his analytical journey.
"Centralizing, switching between projects, and having somewhere to store all of these nuggets you're finding along the way" provides significant value for Miguel's workflow. This centralization helps both during active investigation and when revisiting past work.
Miguel also sees untapped potential in connecting these various quests: "What would be very valuable is once you have all of these ad hoc questions, being able to have them talk to each other via AI or LLM. Like, what are the common themes among my questions?"
Building the Habit
Like any tool that requires active engagement, Miguel acknowledges there was a learning curve to integrating reconfigured into his daily workflow. "There has been a learning curve in terms of remembering, so there is still a habit formation bit," he explains.
What made the difference for Miguel was focusing on the long-term benefits: "Memory, I think, and really being intentional about it... take copious notes because further down the line, this will help you convey insights and summarize everything."
Over time, the habit became more natural. For routine investigations in familiar data territory, he might use the Sidekick every 15-30 minutes. But when diving into completely new datasets, like during a recent job application case study, the frequency increased to every 5-10 minutes.
From Raw Notes to Valuable Insights
The ultimate value of reconfigured for Miguel comes from how it transforms scattered observations into coherent, communicable insights. The extensive documentation of his thought process and discoveries makes it significantly easier to convey findings to stakeholders.
"All these connected journals provide focused and timely context that can be used in all kinds of things," Miguel reflects. The ability to trace his analytical journey from question to answer helps him tell a more compelling story about the data.
The Bottom Line: Your Brain on Steroids
At the end of the day, what Miguel's story highlights is something I've seen over and over with data folks: our brains aren't built to hold the complexity of modern data work.
The problem isn't just about forgetting your findings. It's about losing the valuable context around how you arrived at those findings in the first place. When that happens, you lose half the value of your work.
For Miguel and other data professionals, reconfigured isn't trying to replace their thinking process. It's extending it. By removing the friction between observation and documentation, it helps turn chaotic data explorations into structured insights that drive better business decisions.
And honestly? That's the whole point of data work anyway. Finding the signal in the noise, turning chaos into order, and helping businesses make smarter moves based on what you discover.
Whether you're investigating why metrics changed, exploring unfamiliar datasets, or preparing findings for stakeholders, having a system that captures both your destinations AND the paths you took to reach them isn't just nice-to-have. It's increasingly essential in a world where data complexity isn't getting any simpler.
Want to try reconfigured's flexible approach to note-taking? Get started for free and discover how it might adapt to your unique workflow.