We write things down, both to help us remember, and to help us forget.

I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.

Did I say that? One says so many things, and the problem is they all get written down.

That you should write down valuable ideas that occur to you as soon as possible goes without saying: we sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.

I have written this work not to teach men what they do not know, but to remind them of what they already know and is very evident to them, for you will find in most of my words only things which most people know, and concerning which they entertain no doubts. But to the extent that they are well known and their truths revealed to all, so is forgetfulness in relation to them extremely prevalent. ... It is possible that the reader will find that he has learned little after having read it that he did not know before. Its benefit is to be derived, rather, through review and persistent study, by which one is reminded of those things which, by nature, he is prone to forget and through which he is caused to take to heart the duty that he tends to overlook.

Moreover these same disciples and their earliest colleagues wrote down from memory all the public sayings and parables of the Master that they had heard, and collected with great eagerness any reports they could find, writing down these also, and circulating them all among those who gradually attached themselves to their small community. Various collections were made, any member writing down what he himself remembered, and adding selections from the accounts of others. The inner teachings, given by the Christ to His chosen ones, were not written down, but were taught orally to those deemed worthy to receive them, to students who formed small communities for leading a retired life, and remained in touch with the central body. p. 140

Yeah, yeah, you have the memory of an elephant. Or you’re so smart that you remember everything, right? WRONG. Not writing down your thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc, is stupid. Why? Because you’re wasting a lot of brain power when you rely on your memory. When you write everything down, you can use your brainpower for other things. Like solving problems. That’s actually useful and advances your career.

It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.

Write what I tell you in your book of memory.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.

We forget what we have heard if we do not write it down.

Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.

Another old-fashioned practice I maintain is carrying a notebook, a small one I keep in my shirt pocket and never leave the house without. In it I register all the little things that strike me, not in great detail but just quickly. The following morning I'll review what I jotted down and look for the most meaningful moment in the previous day, the one in which I felt truly present. It's worth mentioning that this is my edit. It wasn't easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary.