The software engineering notebook
The commitment to taking good notes has been one of the best decisions of my life -- not just professionally. I use my standard text editor (Textmate 2), and have a "notes" project, with all manner of categories organized by folder. I take notes on articles I have read, take notes on any presentations I watch or educational courses I take, or books I read. Moreover, I now take much better in person notes -- I take them into "scratchpads" and then synthesize them later.It's indispensable in meetings because I both take notes about the goals of meetings beforehand, take note of any important parts during them, and am able to succinctly review them afterwards as they relate to the original goals, and easily keep track of any action items.I manage EVERYTHING this way now-- what I am currently working on, notes about what I've done in a day, notes about what I've done on the weekend, notes about books I want to read, movies I want to watch, have watched, fitness routines. It goes on.At first it was a small but useful knowledge base, and a good plan for how to keep track of things better. Now it's a larger, and even more useful knowledge base, where due to review and organization the important concepts in it have mostly made its way into my long term memory. And the process of taking and using the notes has become a smooth and well-honed process. I keep the notes in dropbox so I have easy access to them on mobile also.In short: I treat my personal knowledge base as if it were a coding project: using well organized text files. I am constantly adding to them and maintaining them. It is working very well for me.