The Zettelkasten in particular requires an incredible degree of conscientiousness. I've found that having a whiteboard in my office helps me jot down quick mat

The Zettelkasten in particular requires an incredible degree of conscientiousness. I've found that having a whiteboard in my office helps me jot down quick mathematical ideas as soon as they come (but note how simpler this is due to the home office wave), but that doesn't work well for fleeting thoughts of a more philosophical or conceptual nature. There's a lot of innovation going on for conscientious people to have a better UI to keep notes, but really all innovation can happen post hoc if you have a text editor and devise a quick text language for linking and metadata (maybe based off something like yaml to cut down on parser writing). The open problem is how to stop losing the fleeting thoughts of smart distracted people. It's a big schlep, cue in Paul Graham essay.