Some time ago, I wrote a BYONDscape article called "The Memory Shed." (I later transferred it to Dream Makers: http://www.byond.com/members/ DreamMakers?command=view_post&post=36995 .) I still recommend the technique, but in today's busy world, it's not going to be the answer to all your needs. If you find you often forget things that you really shouldn't be forgetting, or you collect ideas that may need to sit in storage for a good while before you'll have a chance to use them, consider some of the options listed here.


Daily planner

A planner is great for keeping track of just when you have to do the stuff you have to do (appointments, holidays, birthdays, vacations, taking out the garbage, doing laundry, writing Dream Makers articles). You can buy one of these just about anywhere, though office-supply stores offer the widest selection. There are many styles from many manufacturers; some will show you an entire month at a time, while others use a full page for each day. The format I prefer is a slim planner about the size of a checkbook (http://www.ataglance.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ product3_10052_10002_129686), with a full week displayed on two facing pages. If you're diligent in noting upcoming events as you become aware of them, you can avoid many embarrassing schedule conflicts and unpleasant surprises.


Index cards

Index cards are portable, durable, and inexpensive. They're the simplest alternative to mastering the "Memory Shed." (A pocket notebook is close, but I give index cards the edge for being tough and not bound together.) If you're the kind of person who is always coming up with ideas, or collecting phone numbers, vocabulary words, or URLs, and then forgetting them before you have a chance to do anything with them, index cards make a fine "holding tank" for the random observations of the day. Add a binder clip and you've got yourself a genuine "Hipster PDA" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA) -- I've mentioned these before, at http://www.byond.com/members/ Gughunter?command=view_post&post=29904.

If you like something a little sturdier, treat your index cards to a "pocket briefcase." It's a leather holder just large enough to display a single index card, ready for writing. When the card is full, slip it into one of the pockets for future handling, and the next index card is now exposed for writing. Levenger has some rather pricey ones (http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/NAVIGATION/ Preview.asp?Params=category=11-76|level=2-3), but you may be able to find a functionally equivalent Buxton "note jotter" at Staples for around $10.


TreePad

http://www.treepad.com/

For organizing those really big projects, TreePad could be a better solution than the typical word processor. The idea of TreePad is that you create a collapsible tree (like the kind used to display nested folders in Windows Explorer, or better yet, in Dream Maker's object browser) and you can enter an arbitrary amount of text for each node. This is terrific if you're trying to flesh out the details of a fictional world, or bring an extra level of organization to your notes on any detailed project, or even if you're writing a book and just want to be able to jump easily between chapters. You can export your project in a "flattened" plain text or HTML file. Since you can configure and rearrange the tree however you like, it's a natural place to store all the miscellaneous notes you've scribbled on index cards. Start with the free Lite version; I used it for years before finally upgrading to the full product.


Sticky notes (a.k.a. Post-It notes)

I don't use sticky notes much myself, but some folks swear by them. You can put them just about anywhere without worrying they'll blow away, you can stick them to the desk to write one-handed (for those times when you're holding a telephone handset) without the paper sliding around, and you can maneuver them strategically on large surfaces like whiteboards. They're also handy for annotating books you don't want to write in, or you can leave them sticking out to create a handy tab index for your Blue Book (or any beloved reference work). The adhesive usually lasts through many re-stickings.


Stickies

http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/

This free program simulates sticky notes on your desktop. After installing it, you might want to spend a few minutes customizing the appearance of your notes, but other than that, it's pretty much idiot-proof. It automatically saves whatever you type into it. I used this for a little while until I found something similar that I liked even better, namely:


Jotthisdown.com

http://www.jotthisdown.com/

This is a free web site that simulates one large piece of note paper. When you make changes, click the link to save it. The difference between this and Stickies is that you have only one note (though you can fill it up with as much information as you like) and you can view your note from any Internet browser. This suits me a little better than Stickies because I can read and edit the same notes at home and at work. Of course, if the website goes down or goes out of business, we're all in trouble; but so far, so good.


BYOND Blogs

http://members.byond.com

If you have a BYOND blog (or any blog, really, but BYOND could use your money), you can post pretty much whatever you want and it's fully searchable. Here's a sample of why you might do that: http://www.byond.com/members/ Gughunter?command=view_post&post=31979 . The end result is similar to jotthisdown.com, but broken down into individual topics (and visible to the whole world).


Dream Maker

http://www.byond.com (of course)

Since Dream Maker allows you to create multi-line comments with /* and */, it's simple to collect all your notes on a project in a single .DM file within that very project. I think this idea may have come from Deadron; DDT has done this for past projects, and nowadays I usually do it with my personal DM projects as well. You can also use multi-line comments to write pseudocode (about which I keep forgetting to write an article) and then extract parts of it at a time to expand them into usable code.


Microsoft Excel

http://www.ebay.com

It's a big, bulky program, it has a thousand features I hope never to need, and it's not free, but I use Excel daily at work for keeping track of my voluminous "to-do" list. Excel's macro feature lets you create some useful shortcuts; for the to-do list, I can just type a control key combination to sort the list by status and priority, and save the changes, all at once. Also, Excel's support for multiple sheets in the same file allows me to cut the lines for finished tasks and paste them into an "Old" sheet, providing an ever-lengthening trail of evidence that I actually did something useful at work.


Email to yourself/Ink on hand

These are crude methods, but don't underestimate them! One of the dangers of using a planner, or the Memory Shed or many of the other techniques described above, is that it only works if you remember to check it in time. But most of us check our email regularly, and see our hands even more regularly. Since your hand doesn't normally have a blue, black or red message written on it (I assume), you're liable to notice when it does. What does it profit a man if he has a clean hand but forgets Mom's birthday present? Just wash off the ink before she sees it, so you don't get scolded.


H. P. Lovecraft may have been correct when he wrote "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." But it's good to keep track of the important stuff. Even with all these tools at your disposal, you may never gain complete control over all the data you'd like to herd. Your odds of success will improve a lot, though.