You only need one word to answer this item: Evernote. It’s fast, it’s synchronized (with every device you own), the notes are always available off-line, and it’s full-featured. Basically, think of it as a funnel into which you can throw all your ideas, goals, things to remember, notes, and everything else. On the other side, you can retrieve everything. It has been said that the spreadsheet application virtually CREATED the market single-handedly for the personal computer. Why? Because paper spreadsheets were made SO obsolete by computerized versions. To me, Evernote is another one of those apps.
For me, OneNote does everything that Evernote does and a few things more. Because it is part of the Microsoft Office package that I use and is available on virtually all mobile platforms, it makes sense to use OneNote. Both are great ways to keep track of information of all kinds that don’t fit nicely in any database or standard document.