How to transfer Craft configuration changes separate from web conent
What you need to do is develop some kind of workflow; the workflow that I use is described in the Database &amp; Asset Syncing Between Environments in Craft CMS

But there are other equally valid ways to do it as well. It's really a combination of some tooling, and then just a workflow methodology that you're going to use to keep things in sync.

Writing things down and trying to then re-apply the changes is problematic, because it human error often rears its ugly head when you try to do things that way.