Like you, I probably have about a thousand different ideas and streams of thought during the course of a day. Unlike you, I don't write any of them down.

I do this because there is no way I'd get anything done if I didn't. I don't mind forgetting some key insight, because if it was important or relevant enough, it'll translate into sometime I will write down when the time is right. If not, it's probably something that I shouldn't bother wasting my time with. (That's not to suggest it isn't valuable).

You only have so many hours in the day to work on so many things. People like us need to ignore our own brain 80% of the time to be productive. It's a curse really.

Org-mode is nice for two reasons: first, it gives you a way to organize projects and sub-projects and meta-projects. Second, it's a reality check -- if you gave yourself a task that in no way advances any goals you've already stated, org-mode's organization scheme means that you end up either creating a new goal or admitting that a new project isn't worth your time.

We treat notes as a stream and you categorize notes using hashcodes.

We have an iPhone and Android client so you can easily include pictures in your notes.

We aren't live yet, but will be in a few weeks. =)

If you want me to contact you when we are live sign up below,

https://3banana.com/doLogon.action?s=hn

</blatant self promotion :P>

All depends on my caffeine intake. =)

Fundamentally we view notes as a stream like a log file or Twitter.

You will have one place to easily and quickly dump everything, then be able to grep out the relevant information, and then late bind the decision on what to do with that information.

jott.com and reqall.com - both have iphone and blackberry apps

We are building something even simpler, a personal syslog synced across phone/web/command line.

It's been working great since September 2000 (it was in subversion then I think, or maybe even CVS).

Search is via grep or vi.

I also have a tiny CGI script that prints the last n lines of it so I can refer to it from my phone's web browser.

For task lists, I tried a bunch of things at one point, and only one that stuck was Taskpaper (http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper). It's so simple that I actually use it. I've been using it for about a year now on a sustained basis. It has simple emacs keybindings, like other OS X text editors, so that's nice for me too.

For ideas best expressed by complicated freehand drawings, I use pen and paper. I always carry an unruled (no lines) notebook for this purpose.

For a while I was using a small drawing tablet and Curio (http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/) for drawings, but it didn't stick. The GUI was a little too slow, and plugging in the tablet was too much of an extra step. A tablet Mac would solve this. (Yeah, yeah I could get a PC, but I'd rather avoid it if I can.)

When I take notes at a meeting or a talk, I use TextEdit (again, w/ simple emacs keybindings), and depend on spotlight to help me relocate things. I prepend all filenames with the date in <2 digit year><2 digit month><2 digit day> format, so by default things sort by date across filesystems etc. This is surprisingly useful.

It's a system that works pretty well for me, but everyone's different. I'm the kind of person who, even while other things are going on around me, am looking not only at the current state of my current venture but the direction and potential of that venture and others. Needless to say, I get a lot of those "oh crap, that's neat" when I'm out and about. The important part is really how you make use of those notes later on. I go through them on a nightly or bi-nightly basis and just browse through some of my ideas or concepts and figure out what's worth keeping track of or expanding and what's something to set aside as "good idea, but not now." It's important not to overwhelm yourself with notes going in a different direction.

The notes that are worth keeping and expanding I usually stick all together in a folder of some sort and they usually end up typed, expanded, and analyzed in a word document at some point in time where I've fully expanded on or refined an idea or perspective.

I can't say enough good about this program. i use it everywhere (mac, web, macbook, iphone). it's certainly not perfect (auto indent?, the ability to copy check boxes) but it is certainly good. I use a moleskine too, but for searching and loading up data, and keeping task lists, with pictures! Evernote has made me very happy.

this question was asked awhile back on HN and that is how I found out about. I've tried various things in the past, but evernote has worked great for me. evernote.com.

Evernote is to my memos what dropbox is to my work in progress files.

I'm not a huge fan of the system because it's not available online, it doesn't support tagging, and it doesn't work well for branching, annotations, or hyperlinking. I have yet to see any particular wiki, blog, or mind-map software which really does what I'm looking for.

This might be a good candidate for me to write up some software to more sufficiently meet my needs.

I also have a physical notebook which I write in chronologically. I tend to use a page or two a week, with things scribbled in the margins and diagrams all over the place. It's kind of neat in that you can read it in order and see what I've been thinking about. Unfortunately this doesn't mesh well with my electronic system. I haven't yet found an interface that I like for doing graphical notes or scribbles yet on the pc... maybe there will be a tablet PC which has support for what I dream of.

If it's all plain text, tags and annotations are just conventions. I use tag: and [].

Started with the lovely and simple Notepad textfiles, but after a bit they are too simple and too hard to maintain, thus not good.

Then I used Google Notebook for a long time, was easy to add stuff, but not so easy to find it later. Plus it's still too simple for my liking, can't categorize ideas too well.

I switched recently to Evernote, which seems to be an improvement over Google Notebook, but for some reason I still don't feel comfortable with it. The fact that I can type offline and sync with different computers or read my ideas online is really welcome and handy, though.

Everytime I fall back to my paper notebook, which is also too simple and not search friendly, but I like handwriting and for some strange reason, ideas flow much better than when I write rather than type them. The real only grudge I have with it is that there is no backspace key and no "insert a new line in the middle of the text" either :(

Sometimes it's just faster to write on paper, if I don't have my notes doc open in a browser tab. I build up notes all day in one of my pockets. At the end of the day, I take all my notes and copy them into Google docs.

Additionally I use http://dabbleboard.com/ for sketches, and then save a link to my sketch in my Google Doc.

The concern some have with with Google docs, is the paranoid one, that maybe Google is stealing all your good ideas. I'm just going to assume that they are too busy for that shit(or hopefully too ethical). But otherwise google docs is becoming the defacto file sharing app, so why not just sell out now while it's hot.

Any little program or something that I write gets `tar czvf`ed into its own new message. Sometimes there will be comments in the body of the message and sometimes not.

For things that haven't made a Gmail message yet, there is a `notes.txt` file that is kept under RCS (via Emacs vc-mode).

We are live, you can check us out at the link below:

http://www.ubernote.com

http://yellownote.info

It's like OS X sticky notes (mentioned elsewhere in this thread, which I also love) for the web. There's an iPhone interface for it too.

(sorry to self-promote, but it's relevant to the discussion)

I went to the bookstore last night and decided to pick up a couple of notebooks since they were on clearance. I noticed there was a Moleskine section, and since other folks seem to talk about them all the time (many in this thread), I decided to see what the big deal was. I flipped through a couple of them, and they didn't seem to be any better than any other notebook. They were also much more expensive. Are they just popular due to their marketing? They market themselves as being the same notebooks used by Hemingway etc., but that's not true. And even if the notebooks were used by smart people, so what? You aren't going to write like Hemingway or paint like Picasso because you use the same paper. So what's the deal? Is there something better about them that make them cost so much?

However, the hardbound Moleskines are a bit pricey, so I use the tan Cahier notebooks. They are less expensive and they have the added benefit of being able to write on the cover.

I add cataloging information to the front of every notebook; date ranges, project names, any other major items that may be relevant a year down the road.

This way, I don't lose any input, can focus on the task(s) at hand, and have some degree of certainty that I'm working on better projects.

It's a free web app which does one thing well: it allows you to maintain and reorder any number of lists.

The reason I use it is because their iPhone app is the best ToDo app I have used on the platform (and I have tried the majority of free ones).

The iPhone app syncs with the web app, which I can access from anywhere.

On my Mac, I use Fluid to create a site specific browser that lives in the menubar to allow me quick access to my Zenbe List at any time.

So in this way, I always have access to any streams of thought that I decide to jot down day-to-day.

Edit: I wanted to like Evernote and used it for several days, but found it was much too slow. As well, the Mac client is not suited for quick creation of notes.

Once every few days/weeks, I go through the moleskine and review. If there's anything worth recording, I put that in a mind-map.

Agreed its not a comprehensive system, but like LogicHoleFlaw says, I am still waiting for that one combination of software/hardware that I can use. Someday. Sigh.

I sometimes email notes to myself, from my work to my personal account, so I can review later. I also use Palm Desktop to maintain lists of things to do or buy. One problem with the email approach is Yahoo Mail's search function is terrible -- emails that are older than a few months are not indexed. But I've had the account for 10 years, and don't like the gmail interface enough to switch.

I write some notes on paper, especially when I am using the phone, and will re-enter the data into Palm or a text editor if necessary.

Haphazard, but it works.

I like the ones with a graph pattern printed on one side or blank on both sides. Can take great notes in meetings. Can vary the number of cards that you bring with you. Several times I've been with people and we've mapped out entire projects with them on a bar tabletop. I'll never go back to a moleskine or a handheld app.

If I'm away from a computer, good old pen and paper fills in the gaps.

Anything written on those that's actually worthwhile eventually makes its way into something permanent - either in code or in an actual paper - so I don't care what happens to the note itself.

I would use a physical notebook - moleskines have the best reputation - but since I'm in college going for a computer major, I'm very rarely far from my laptop.

http://www.maketask.com

It has great copy and paste functionality for capturing snippets of information from web sites. The loose organizational structure of the notebooks is great for jotting down quick ideas.

Then, I can search it all if needed.

iPhone notes, reviewed frequently.

Text files which I convert into Moleskine notes.

That's all.

On the go? Moleskine