ADHD sufferer here, taking notes is ESSENTIAL.

I don't have a system though, just a series of OneNote notebooks that I organize when I can get to it.

I would be really glad, if you could try out OrgPad.com and give us some feedback. (Disclaimer: I work for OrgPad if that wasn't obvious.)

We think, OrgPad has a number of strong advantages above OneNote:

- it is generally way simpler and tries to actually help you and not throw sticks under your feet

- OrgPad has well thought out animations that make OrgPad feel more natural

- OrgPad enables you to think a lot more visually, this has a nice property that if you use OrgPad honestly, it is as if you looked onto your mind in a mirror

- it will actually develop further and improve constantly

There is of course a lot more. We use OrgPad for everything, from management of the company, software development planing and progress tracking, note taking/ documentation to personal bureaucracy.

For more information you can look at The Vision of OrgPad: https://www.orgpad.com/s/VjMKIa7bfnN For pricing information, you can look at: https://orgpad.com/s/pricing you can start to use OrgPad for free, for extensive usage, you might want to upgrade to 6 USD/ month or 60 USD/ year once we go live with the pricing which should be at the end of this month. You can also get in touch on our social media: https://www.orgpad.com/o/DGdsoOCsdCzolePMNiS1LM

One may embrace and become more dedicated to a note taking practice after realizing how much useful information would've been lost had they not jotted down some notes. It stems from a deeper acknowledgment of the limitations of the mind and the practicality of the pencil.

Taking your question from the reverse perspective, we can say that one does not take notes for at least one of two reasons, either because they think they can afford to forget the information they've already spent time to acquire, or they trust their mind to recall enough of it when they'll need to.

Can only speak for myself of course, but I'm not a student, nor are my notes for work (I do take notes at work, but they really dont need anything resembling a system at all).

These are more so notes for personal projects, ideas I have, things I need to do/todo lists, that kind of thing.

The basic idea is to try not to hold everything in your head, because it limits your ability to think clearly if your stressing about not forgetting stuff. I don't know how true that is, but I can say that for me I'm less stressed about something if I know I have it written down somewhere, even if I never come back to it. Its almost like I make it future-me's problem, rather than something I need to deal with now.

I had this realization after my second attempt at implementing Zettelkasten. Most of my job is managing people. I take notes and to-dos, but nothing on the scale that ZK facilitates. Even when I do IC work, I rarely take in depth structured notes.

To a large extent it probably depends on the nature of your work. I found that once I transitioned to more horizontal roles at work, taking good, organized notes became more essential.

I don't think the specific system matters all that much though. The recent popularity of Zettelkasten is not really about systems per se as much as it is about recognizing that being able to refer to other things, or tell what other things refer to the current thing, is valuable. For people who just sort their e-mails into Outlook folders and have never thought more deeply about any of this, it is often a helpful shift in one's mental model.

If I don't write down everything I need to do, I will forget 1/4 of it, sometimes including crucial or time-sensitive items. Same goes for context, info that needs to be included in X deliverable, etc.