Tadao Umesao
The Techniques of Intellectual Production
Iwanami Shinsho, 1969
About this book
A systematic account of an individual's techniques for collecting information, organizing it, and turning it into new ideas: discovery notebooks, cards, clippings, filing, reading, diaries, drafts, and prose. It is less about tools than the habits that make knowledge reusable.
What stayed with me
It is a recurring starting point for the way I now leave fragments in Scrapbox, connect them with links, and return later to writing and projects. The medium may have changed from paper cards to the web, but the problem is the same: externalize memory and make it available for rearrangement.