Carry around index cards & a pen. Write down thoughts, tasks, and notes on them. One thing per card.
Index Card-ification
In Daniel Levitin’s book ”The Organized Mind ”, he talks about having a stack of index cards on which you can write down tasks, thoughts, ideas, and whatever else. They function as an inbox. Also they only hold one small chunk of info. They have no order. They can be reordered and grouped as necessary to accommodate the concepts contained therein.
This is very similar to the Slip-Box Method, but functions as an Inbox for a GTD system, too.
Robert Pirsig, who wrote the “Zen Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” used Index Cards to write his books. He called the cards slips.
Externalizing thoughts and placing them into categories is a way to extend your brain. It allows you to balance the Yin of the Central Executive with the Yang of the Default Network.