The most important stuff is generally stuff to be memorized, which takes longer than just copying it once but means it's always there when you need it. Even if you only partially memorize it, you remember "oh yeah, there is that one idea..." And the tricks to memorizing are basically forms of "monkey-see-monkey-do". Involve more muscles and sensory info. Add short spacing periods so that the idea lingers. Place it spatially. Writing definitely helps for this since it's slower, physically involving, and you can style it with different formatting and stationary. Real media also works better for these aspects of writing and drawing because the hand-eye coordination is more connected; once it has to go through the computer there is digital goop in the way making it a little laggy, a little aliased or oversmoothed. You go to do something and get interrupted by everything else the computer does. So I do end up with use-once paper just for the purpose of training my brain better.
If I need to organize my paper I stick it in a manila file, label the file, and put a binder clip on. Then it has both spatial position and index. If it gets bigger than that we can grow to a file bin, hanging-file cabinet, etc. But nearly everyone's essential personal or project data is going to max out at one or two cabinets. Above that you are most likely becoming an archivist for other people's data and probably getting away from the task at hand.
For the stuff that is "linking together existing sources", where you can start consuming a vast amount of external data, I have taken to stuffing it in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheet cells are versatile enough for nearly any discrete-informational task and you can organize them into cheat sheets pretty easily. But they aren't so structured that you have to spend a lot of time preparing the structure either, which a lot of dedicated note systems seem to fall into: again, you have to set cutoffs wherever you start turning into an archivist. It can make sense to professionalize it as part of an organization, just not for yourself.
If I need to organize my paper I stick it in a manila file, label the file, and put a binder clip on. Then it has both spatial position and index. If it gets bigger than that we can grow to a file bin, hanging-file cabinet, etc. But nearly everyone's essential personal or project data is going to max out at one or two cabinets. Above that you are most likely becoming an archivist for other people's data and probably getting away from the task at hand.
For the stuff that is "linking together existing sources", where you can start consuming a vast amount of external data, I have taken to stuffing it in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheet cells are versatile enough for nearly any discrete-informational task and you can organize them into cheat sheets pretty easily. But they aren't so structured that you have to spend a lot of time preparing the structure either, which a lot of dedicated note systems seem to fall into: again, you have to set cutoffs wherever you start turning into an archivist. It can make sense to professionalize it as part of an organization, just not for yourself.