notes
Short notes, kept in one place.
Write it down the same day
An idea that is not written down within a day is usually gone by the weekend. I keep one plain text file open all day and paste everything into it, sorted or not. Sorting happens on Sunday, and half of it gets deleted.
One list, not five
I used to keep a list for work, one for home, one for books and so on. Now there is a single list with short tags at the end of each line. Finding things got easier, and I stopped forgetting which list a thing was on.
Reading notes in three lines
After finishing a book I write three lines: what it was about, one idea worth keeping, and whether I would read it again. Anything longer I never reread, so the short format wins.
Weekly review, ten minutes
Every Sunday I read through the past week of notes, move what is still open to the top, and archive the rest. It takes ten minutes and keeps the file from turning into a swamp.