I use paper for sketches and plain text for anything I need to search. The tricky part is the handoff: a useful observation can disappear into a notebook unless I give it a title and move it into the project notes.
My current rule is to end a session with three lines: what changed, what remains uncertain, and what I would do next. That is short enough to write even when the session went nowhere.
I am curious about rules rather than applications. What keeps your notes useful once the immediate context has faded?
Write the question before the answer. An unexplained result can look important without reminding me why I measured it. The original question usually brings the context back faster than another paragraph of output.
I use paper for sketches and plain text for anything I need to search. The tricky part is the handoff: a useful observation can disappear into a notebook unless I give it a title and move it into the project notes.
My current rule is to end a session with three lines: what changed, what remains uncertain, and what I would do next. That is short enough to write even when the session went nowhere.
I am curious about rules rather than applications. What keeps your notes useful once the immediate context has faded?