The Case for a Digital Notebook

I have a lot of different posting threads that I try to juggle simultaneously, but one that I’m thoroughly enjoying and should probably try to do more of is the reader submissions.  A while back, I added a resources page (since removed) to the site and made brief mentioned of it.  That prompted this reader question:

I read your post on Resources and picked up some valuable tools I am now using. Specifically, Toggl and Synergy.
Like you, I am a paid Sublime Text user and love Trello for managing my projects. I use Visual Studio for my C# work and WebStorm for all my JavaScript work.
I was surprised that you made no mention or recommendation for a digital notebook. I have used Evernote in the past and Ecco before that. About two years ago I switched to OneNote and never looked back. I find it to be much better and go to it numerous times each day now that it also works on the Mac and Android. I even kept formatted code snippets in OneNote which I am moving to GitHub Gists. Do you use a digital notebook?
Thank you for the very useful Resources post.

There’s been some elapsed time since that post and now, since I wasn’t entirely sure how to make the answer to this into a full-fledged post.  I’m still not entirely sure, and must admit I’m winging it a bit, but I think I can expound a bit on this.

The short answer is: “yes, and the tool is One Note.”  The longer answer is going to take a bit of a dive into the life of a free agent/billable consultant as compared to, say, a W2, salaried programmer.

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