[ChuckMcM]

I use a notebook. One that I write in using a pen. When stopping for the evening/day/whatever I take 5 - 10 minutes to write in my notebook what part of the project is working, what has been changed, open questions, and a list of three things to do next. You can think of it like having a standup meeting with myself :-). When I go back to the project, I thumb back through the pages in my notebook until I find the last "log entry", read it, and them make a notation with a page number of the next open page in my notebook and an arrow to the right. Then I flip to the open page put the project name on it, and put a left arrow notation to the page where the previous update was.

By working this way my note book contains a bunch of doubly linked list of pages which are the log of a particular project, but the number of projects is not bounded. If I want to review a project from start to finish that is pretty easy to do, and the act of actually writing in my notebook affixes the information in my head more thoroughly than writing it into a computer file does.

[Philipp__]

Thank God I am not the only one who is still using pen and paper for the most part. Yeah, org-mode in Emacs is amazing, I love it, but notebook won't be replaced anytime soon, at least in my case. I found that I write and draw a lot while I'm programming, It may be weird but It's kinda easier for me to visualize and understand algorithms better. Plus there is something about writing that I like a lot. I am still at academia, and I find writing code on paper very strange and efficient way to learn. Because I do not have a lot of experience it is kinda hard for me not to skim code and fly over it. When I take function or chunk of code, write it down, and look at it, I start drawing and analyzing everything much more in-depth. I will probably by years be able to go in-depth like that just by looking at code and staring at monitor, but for now I like to write it down and program it on paper. Totally different dimension, distraction free and for me very efficient. But maybe I am just weirdo tho.

[dragonshed]

A suggestion to improve upon the user experience of navigating a notebook: http://www.highfivehq.com/#method

The doubly linked list approach might be more useful if entries aren't naturally in chronological order, or if it's more of a graph than a list :)

I also primarily use pen & paper for most things, but even with log entries (as well as simple bullet-journal structures), I struggle to effectively manage projects. I was hoping for more detail on the structures used by others.

[nathcd]

I agree that pen and paper is the best way to keep notes, logs, etc., and I'd add that I think the second best way is text files. I use text files for my todo list, calendar, journal, and for other similar needs.

In my experience the simplicity of these methods dramatically lowers the cognitive barriers in motivating oneself to keep notes and logs. You'll never have to worry about migrating between platforms or TextFiles, Inc. going out of business. And you can use your own processing tools for editing, scripting, syncing and so on.

[nbadg]

The doubly-linked list is a really good idea! I'll have to start using it.

For no real purpose other than personal interest, I like to put a "NET" (no earlier than) date next to my page numbers in my notebook. Every time I start a new page, I write the page number and the current date (ex '#51 NET 21 Sep 2016') on the page.

[nbadg]

As an aside, I really wish there were something that really, truly duplicated the experience of pen and paper, but were digitally indexable and searchable. There's just something really special about the tactile feedback. I also really like the way I can bounce between two arbitrary pages extremely rapidly with a physical notebook, or even look at two at once.

Plus, depending on how well you remember what, rapidly searching for a given entry is way faster if you flip to the approximate point in a physical book. That's my biggest complaint about my Kindle: random access is incredibly slow; in a physical book I've read within a year or so, I can reliably find a quote I was looking for within 30 seconds, but on my Kindle it takes forever.

[thr0waway1239]

Maybe you know about the LiveScribe SmartPen:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00524DLZ0/

This was a really nice product, until the company decided to go for the "smartphone app" experience and changed everything about it drastically. I sought out and bought the older version (the second gen) because it actually had all the features I expected.

The concept is out there, but with the following improvements you can get the experience you seek: make the pen slimmer and more natural to hold, make the special paper look more like normal paper, and have a pen dock which does all the magic of syncing and creation of digital notes etc. Bonus if it were somehow possible to replicate the pixelation of the special notebook on a carbon-paper style sheet so that you can just use whatever notebook you wanted and insert this special sheet underneath.

Also about random access: I have always wondered why the eReader software never has a mode where when you scroll on the play head, it shows the current page, plus 2 pages before and 3 after (all displayed as smaller thumbnails, sort of like Netflix). Wouldn't that be at least a little closer to the flipping experience?

[nbadg]

Stuff like the LiveScribe is close, but not quite, what I want. I think at the moment one of the most likely candidates is actually something with AR. Plus, it would just be really stupendously cool to have a blank notebook that is "full" of AR writing.

Talk about invisible ink.

[blcArmadillo]

While reading your comment I was reminded of this method [1] I saw awhile back of having an index in the back of a notebook and marking the edge of pages at the point of the corresponding index item. It's an interesting concept if you don't need a ton of granularity in your ability to search.

[1] http://www.highfivehq.com

[nbadg]

That's super clever too. Man, my notebook game is getting so much better today.

[ChuckMcM]

I also use a set of colored posit "pointers" that I tag pages with, red for action items, blue for web site ideas, green for the current project and yellow for possibly patentable Ideas

[asimuvPR]

+1 for notebooks. You can scribble notes and drawings and not worry about anything. Its simpler to manage.

[divbit]

Same but onenote with a tablet and pen, because then I can access it from wherever...

[ChuckMcM]

With my Surface Book this became more practical. I really like the drawing experience with it. Prior to that, online solutions suffered from "hard to doodle in"

[divbit]

Yeah, I use a similar device and it really is an almost perfect replacement for pen and paper notes