I rely very heavily on todo lists at work. I'm responsible for a large amount of code and feature requests come in from all over, that have to be balanced with the overarching goals for developing the project.
My notetaking method: Pen and paper - copious amounts of paper, each with a monotonically increasing number in the corner. I have two 22" 1080p monitors in landscape mode, so that leaves room for a (full-height) file tree and two text buffers on the left screen, and a web browser and two console windows on the right screen - i'm not going to sacrifice any of those for note-taking software when i have the ultimate in note-taking hardware right in front of me.
My approach is basically, write down any tasks, regardless of how big and small. Be consistent yet flexible with the page layout. Every so often, take a break from work and cross off things that are complete; if a page is mostly crossed out, manually rewrite the remaining things onto a new page. This forces you to look back over old feature requests and evaluate them again in a modern context, rather then just having them build up in a bug tracker.
"My approach is basically, write down any tasks, regardless of how big and small"
I do the same thing using 3x5 cards. There is a loose system with the cards depending on the things that I am tracking. One card might be a list of all the things I just thought of that need to be done. Another might be a list of things that I know I need to do at some point in the next month or year. The thing that seems to work best for me is not having a particular structure to the cards.
Mini post-it notes tapped on my desktop also work.
In any case as you are saying having a physical piece of paper seems to work very well.
Oh yeah - I rewrite the cards as well as I cross of a few things that have been completed.
My notetaking method: Pen and paper - copious amounts of paper, each with a monotonically increasing number in the corner. I have two 22" 1080p monitors in landscape mode, so that leaves room for a (full-height) file tree and two text buffers on the left screen, and a web browser and two console windows on the right screen - i'm not going to sacrifice any of those for note-taking software when i have the ultimate in note-taking hardware right in front of me.
My approach is basically, write down any tasks, regardless of how big and small. Be consistent yet flexible with the page layout. Every so often, take a break from work and cross off things that are complete; if a page is mostly crossed out, manually rewrite the remaining things onto a new page. This forces you to look back over old feature requests and evaluate them again in a modern context, rather then just having them build up in a bug tracker.