Mostly Moleskine.

Computers have changed dramatically in my 11 or so years here, but files always get transferred on external drives. As I go through things looking to downsize from stuff I never used and never will, the notes remain, along with substantial context.

Just about everything remains undone from 10 or 11 years ago.

And almost everything "high urgency" lost its urgency.

I have gone through a raft of outliners and mindmaps. They seemed so confining.

File-based wikis [0] might have worked. MoinMoin, PmWiki, DokuWiki, TiddlyWiki ...

When I got mobile-centric for a while the wiki situation was bleak. Only Quine and Trunk Notes still run, but their lives have always been in critical condition.

I was an early Moodle adopter, and Moodle can to all kinds of things. I used to install it on laptops and office servers just to hold project docs.

In this age of "everything changes daily" the ability to export and import everything is a life-saver.

I'll review those 10 year old notes after I finish going through old zip drives, S-100 cards and so on.

[0] https://medevel.com/18-os-flat-file-wikis/

You could do it with something I built, called Genesis, but I'm sure you could achieve the same thing with a simpler system (if thats ALL you wanted) and use Claude Code to build it. Here's the link to Genesis if you want to check it out: https://github.com/WingedGuardian/GENesis-AGI

For really long-term stuff (like 5 years), I just schedule an email to myself—it’s surprisingly reliable and future-proof.

For anything up to ~1 year, I mostly rely on Siri to set reminders. It’s quick, hands-free, and works well if you’re consistent about using it. It sends a notification on my iPhone at the exact date and time, kind of fire and forget.

Not a perfect “brain dump” system, but this combo has been pretty low-friction and dependable for me.