Day 2 – Take Notes

At times, the creation of a few habits is enough to drastically improve your skills and abilities as a Cosmetic Formulator. Taking notes is definitely one of these habits. This might seem too basic of a tip, but you’d be impressed at how many people don’t take notes of their experiments in the lab.

How many times did you underestimate the importance of writing something down, being sure that you’d remember it after ? And then later… did you remember every detail of what you observed that day ? I can bet you didn’t.

While some people have great memory and are able to retain detailed information for later, that’s just not the case for most people. We live in a world of fast communication and technology, there is a world of information being thrown at us every minute of the day. Creating the habit of taking notes not only alleviates the stress of feeling like you need to remember it all, but it’s also the best way to ensure you’ll have detailed and accurate information about your experiments whenever you need.

Literally everything !  Yes, “everything” is a lot of things, but I promise you it’s worth the effort. One of the best ways to learn how to create your own formulas is by hands on practice, trial and error, combining ingredients and at different levels and observing what happens. And then, to remember if it worked or not, and what happened exactly, we need to take notes !

I can guarantee that no one expects you to know every piece of information about the industry, ingredients and your formulas by heart. It’s a given that, with time, we start remembering what is what or being able to predict what will happen. But it’s never enough. The beauty of the art of cosmetic formulation is that when we combine different ingredients, at different ratios and circumstances, we end up with something completely new in our hands. And that’s why, once again, taking notes is so important.

Never forget that whether you’re a trained scientist or not, Cosmetic Formulation is pure science. Therefore, you need to learn how to think as a scientist, and scientists experiment a lot, observe a lot, and take lots and lots of notes!

When I’m Testing New Ingredients, I like to Write Down:

• The ingredient’s trade name;
• The supplier and price;
• Basic information such as properties and roles in a formula, pH and temperature requirements, processing requirements, compatibility with other materials, etc;
• The formula I’m using to test the ingredient;
• Every observation and finding you make during your experiment / ingredient testing session.

When I’m Testing Formulas, I like to Write Down:

• The detailed initial formula;
• Temperature and humidity of your city / work place at the moment of the experiment (very important);
• Any changes made to the formula during the trials, as well as how those changes affected the formula;
• Changes that happened to the formula as time passed (remember that you need to run stability tests, no matter how small your business is).
• Any specific processing method required because of special ingredients or otherwise;
• Any pH and temperature requirements.

THE EXERCISE

Set aside a notebook specifically for your lab and formula notes, and work on creating the habit of writing down everything you observe during your experiments.

Not only will you learn a lot more about the ingredients and formulas you are working with, you’ll also be able to keep working on experiments based on your notes. It’s very rare for a formulator to get formulas perfectly right in the first try, and taking notes usually helps us identify mistakes or not make the same mistake twice.

As a bonus, here is the template I used to make my lab notebook.