I used to have an elaborate system, but I converged on a simple solution: I stash everything in a single Google Docs document. I made the conscious decision to

I used to have an elaborate system, but I converged on a simple solution: I stash everything in a single Google Docs document. I made the conscious decision to optimize for ease of use, so that the friction/effort to write something down is minimized. At the same time, I also made a decision to not to adopt any organization system -- anything that increases the friction of use is eschewed. Search was all I needed. I've been using this system for the past 5 years or so, and it's been very productive. To extract ideas from it, I routinely re-read stuff (it's in log format, so it's very easy to read) and use the Fieldstone approach (Weinberg) to coalesce similar and interesting thoughts and rewrite into larger thoughts. I've gotten a lot of actionable ideas this way (that I actually go on to execute on). So it's a system optimized for postprocessing rather than pre-processing. I find that pre-processing systems are unsustainable over the long term unless you're exceptionally disciplined. I try to build systems that don't rely on sustained human discipline.