How do you organize learning/research and document your projects?

[beatle]

Hi, guys!

As a long time lurker here I know that the members of this forum have great knowledge and have built great projects, so I hope you can share your habits on this matter as I have been pondering the right approach for a long time now.

I have had this hobby for some years now, but I am not knowledgeable yet so I have a lot to learn and explore, but as I have a terrible memory I seem to forget most of it quite fast. I do enjoy learning new things about electronics and I spend a lot of time reading various resources, but I sometimes find myself rereading, say, a book on power supply design and rediscovering much of it anew. How do you organize your learning process to avoid it? Do you keep a note book where you jot down cool circuit tricks and facts on components and such and just make general notes just as if for an university course?

I imagine that some of it is just a symptom of not only my bad memory, but also my lack of practical circuit building and experimenting to cement the experience, that leads to the question about documenting project design process. Do you find that describing what you are doing, your decisions and discoveries in a web blog, for example, helps you to learn more from a project? Or do you keep your design notes and write down discoveries you researched for your own future reference in some form?

Please share your methods! (And forgive my clumsy English!)

[Dave]

When it comes to general electronics knowledge, I am able to memorize most of it just after reading it once and taking the time to think about the circuit operation. If I read something useful and can't remember it exactly when needed, I often remember, where I found the info in the first place, and look it up.
As for project ideas, I have a folder in which I store my research, drawings, calculations, schematics, and everything else. I have these papers bunched together for each individual project idea. For these projects I also have files scattered all over my computer. Haven't yet found the determination to organize them.

[beatle]

Folders for projects sound like a very good practice! It has always bothered me that info exists concurrently in paper notes and computer files (CAD schematics and quickly jotted notes from some web page mostly).

Thank you for sharing!