I began note-taking at school when I would make extensive hand-written notes (using colored pens) to study for examinations.

I continued this practice at college and credit my success at school and college in large part to the confidence I created in the "memory" that my written notes gave me.

I continue to feel that I have a very poor memory and so note-taking has become a lifelong skill|tool.

Hand-written notes are best for me to actually remember (without recourse to my notes) but I almost entirely swype|type notes today because of the benefits of accessing them anytime (any device), searching etc.

I try to keep my note-taking DRY and prefer to update|correct older notes rather than recreate content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself

Here's my current practice:

1. I write technical blogs partly to share but equally to document for my own purposes; I have a blog called "snippets" (co-opted from a Google practice) where I document tips-and-tricks from coding (e.g. how to set up Protocol Buffers proto_paths when using Visual Studio code)

2. I keep arbitrary notes in Google Keep. My shopping list was migrated to Keep too and, I write trip packing lists and the humans' names at the dog park (keyed by their dog's name, of course) there too.

3. Google used to have (!?) an excellent practice that everyone in a meeting recorded meeting notes in real-time in Google Docs. I would comment-ping people with to do items.

4. Until recently, I used Google Docs for record my programming notes. Every day, I would add a new H3 header for the date with "Actions", "To Do", "Miscellany" sections. I have 3 years of one project's development recorded this way and it served me well. However, as the document grew in size, it became unwieldy and I was forced to split it into two documents (before|after) which made it less useful. I've begun (though it's also imperfect) using Markdown and a Hugo static site to record the same content. Now, each day is a dated Markdown file. This scales better. I prefer using Markdown. It's just as accessible but it's not as good for searching.

5. I contribute to Stack overflow and I've a GitHub repo for every answer I've ever worked on. When I write code or explore a technology, just as everywhere else, I document the solution (as a README) and commit it to the repo. This is mostly for my benefit because it allows me to quickly find technologies that I've worked on.

My coding velocity is slowed by my sometimes obsessive desire to make notes but, note-taking has paid me so many dividends over the years. For example, I rarely feel anxiety that I know I've used an obscure tool, programming language or some such but am unable to find a record of this; reading my extensive notes gives me a thorough play-by-play of what to do.