It's not a perfect system, but I find index cards to be superior to notebooks in almost every way. Notebooks are good for linear content, but for most of what you described index cards are better because they are modular, fileable, and sortable. Before the Internet, the world ran on index cards.
Cool quote in a book? Put it on a card and file it by theme. Reminder about feedback I want to write up for a colleague? Put it on a card. I did something really great at work and want to remember it at annual review time? Put it on a card and file it under Personal Achievement. Etc. Recipes, Writing ideas, presentation first drafts. Cards work well for all of that.
I'm really using a combination of two systems. The first is Ryan Holiday's index card system for harvesting the wisdom and interesting bits from reading. The second is an index card version of the 43 folders tickler file. It's not a perfect system, but I love t and I like that it is something I can keep doing forever independent of any stupid decisions by Apple or app developers going under.
To get started you need:
- Some nice index cards. I like the Exacompta ones.
- Tabbed divider cards. Smead makes really nice ones.
- A way to carry some with you all the time. Right now I'm using the Nock Co Fodderstack for this.
- A way to file them. You can get some crappy boxes on Amazon, or something nice and vintage off eBay or elsewhere. Index cards used to be a lot more widely used than they are today, so the old selection of index card furniture is much better than what's available new.
Cool quote in a book? Put it on a card and file it by theme. Reminder about feedback I want to write up for a colleague? Put it on a card. I did something really great at work and want to remember it at annual review time? Put it on a card and file it under Personal Achievement. Etc. Recipes, Writing ideas, presentation first drafts. Cards work well for all of that.
I'm really using a combination of two systems. The first is Ryan Holiday's index card system for harvesting the wisdom and interesting bits from reading. The second is an index card version of the 43 folders tickler file. It's not a perfect system, but I love t and I like that it is something I can keep doing forever independent of any stupid decisions by Apple or app developers going under.
To get started you need:
- Some nice index cards. I like the Exacompta ones.
- Tabbed divider cards. Smead makes really nice ones.
- A way to carry some with you all the time. Right now I'm using the Nock Co Fodderstack for this.
- A way to file them. You can get some crappy boxes on Amazon, or something nice and vintage off eBay or elsewhere. Index cards used to be a lot more widely used than they are today, so the old selection of index card furniture is much better than what's available new.
http://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remem...
http://ryanholiday.net/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-boo...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickler_file