I have a pile of papers from my last Pathfinder character sheets, earlier DnD character level sheets, and some old bank mail sheets that I’ve jotted down notes and doodled on. It lives on the left edge of my computer desk. And of course, it lives atop other things I intended to take care of, over a month ago. Hahaha.
edit: Just found another piece of paper that had a bunch of things going on. A section where I was working out a framework and wording for a birthday message. A hell of a lot of practice cursive signatures so I can have “a cool stylized yet simple” signature. Doodles of all sorts of things. Most are playing with space (or volume if you may) and layout. Some are works on semitry. Then I spent time looking and crafting two names for a fantasy setting story I’m “working on.”
edit2: grammar
I use the back of paid bills, opened envelopes, receipts etc to jot down notes, phone numbers, names, dates, or todos whenever I need it (usually during a phone call or while “cleaning” or reading emails on the bus).
I keep them visible on the table or in my bag until they have been completed and then thrown them away. Or until I lose them, and if nothing bad happens it probably wasn’t that important to keep anyway. I try to transfer important notes to more durable versions, or gather todo-scraps or half-done lists into one clean list on a bigger scrap frequently.
I tried keeping notes on my phone or in a notebook, but it’s never there when I need it plus I get overwhelmed with decisions regarding organising when so many different notes need to be gathered in just one place (how do I separate work from private from volunteer-notes? What do I do with things that will be outdated in a week? Do “buy soil or make own?” really belong in the same book as “breathe, you fool!” and “monday: bus 7:37, pack bag and pee 7:20”? And how do I find the notes I need to read often among the notes I only need to real when they are relevant?)… so I just never get a good system going.