Me, I have several notepads:
- One on my desk at home
- One on my desk at work
- One in my rucksack.
The rucksack one gets the least use, but it’s there for when I go to meetups, or if I’m having a chat with somebody in a pub and need to note something down. It’s there just in case!
Pages usually get scanned into Evernote (or recorded elsewhere) and ripped out of this one. I try to keep on top of it and keep it full of blank pages.
My other two notepads get the most use. I use them for jotting down things I need to make sure don’t get forgotten. They might be test steps I’ve taken, version numbers, build numbers, test plans. Reminders of things I need to go back and look into. Reminders to speak to people tomorrow. Things I need to remember from a meeting. Things I need to remember to mention during a meeting.
Normally things have to be transferred elsewhere (either in a Jira ticket, in my computer based todo list, or elsewhere) otherwise they tend to be forgotten about and lost in the pages!
I tend not to have any kind of specific layout. I’m quite bad at that. I just make sure everything is dated, but other than that I just scribble away. I wish I had a good way to lay things out, separate things, and make sure things don’t get lost…