| Paper notebook(s). It's always open on my desk, next to my mousepad. I only have to move my hand a few inches from my mouse to pick up the pen and start writing. Everything goes in there, in chronological order. In the morning I write the date at the top of a page, check my calendar, email, and Slack, and jot down some to-dos for the day. After that anything goes - meeting notes, brainstorming, quick research, etc. It's not terribly organized or fancy - it doesn't need to be. I just write things down in the order they come up during the day. Anything that needs to be shared or collaborated with others goes into a Google Doc or some digital form, I take a bit of time to convert my quick notes to something meaningful that will make sense to someone else. I very rarely need to reference notes older than a couple of weeks. If I do, it usually doesn't take that long to find based on rough date - I have a stack with my old notebooks in a drawer. I also use BBEdit with a million unsaved documents (well, 175 right now). I use it more as a scratch pad than actual note taking - drafting a longer message or email, manipulating some text I'm moving around, and so on. Nothing that needs to be persisted for long. |