For about a year now I’ve been using Notational Velocity to track pretty much everything I do, and everyone I meet. If you haven’t checked it out yet, NV is a really intuitive way to take notes on pretty much anything.

There’s a single input box at the top of the application. Typing in the box will start a search across all of your notes: If you see the note you want, you can scroll down to it and view/edit it. If you don’t see the note you want, you can hit <return> to create a new note. The interface is so dead simple, and easy to use without a mouse.

I find that I use it to jot down meeting notes, details of tickets, thoughts on different projects, or specifics of how I know people. It having such a small barrier to recording a note has made it so quick to take something down that it doesn’t get in my way like other things used to.

Also - I sync it over Dropbox (for free) to all of my different computers, so when I make a change in one place, it follows me everywhere.

Check it out if you need a more natural way to take notes!