All the Right Notes: On Notekeeping

As we all know, YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.

Since I think time records are really just an aspect of keeping notes, I would expand this maxim to YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF NOTES ARE NOT KEPT. One of the most important things that a DM does is to keep notes during play and reflect on them in between sessions as a form of homework. Indeed, this may be the most important thing to do to keep a long-term campaign going, beyond the really basic stuff (like showing up).

I am curious about others' note-taking practices. For my own part I have never made a science out of it - my notes are just jotted down in a notepad whenever it feels like something is important to remember. This could be an NPC's name and motivation, a running tally of character XP and HP levels (I usually periodically note these down, perhaps once or twice a session), an event, a reminder to myself that such-and-such an ocurrence is happening 'off camera', the current date in-universe (I tend by default to start each campaign on 1st April and then keep a count, so that I know that at the moment it is Day 134, or whatever, and can extrapolate from there to an actual calendar date), occasionally something funny or remarkable which somebody has said. 

What I typically then do, in advance of each session, is review the notes from the previous week (sometimes of the couple of weeks before that) and refresh my memory, then add some supplementary notes about where things might go in the session that is upcoming. So I might recall that, oh yes, Baron Blueflame has decided he wants to kill one of the PCs and steal his magic battleaxe, and is plotting to do so with the Gurning Goblins of Mount Gababababab, and so I make some notes about how that plot is advancing.

This has the very important practical effect of helping my poor, tired, derelict shell of a mind to retain some thin fragments of information, as otherwise it could get rather messy. ('What? We're playing D&D? Is it time for tea yet? It's egg and chips on a Wednesday. What, today's Thursday??') 

But it also helps maintain the necessary fiction that the campaign is living and breathing and not merely set in aspic. What I have noticed is that, when I have properly done my homework, read through last week's notes, and put time and effort into thinking about what everything means, the next session starts with high levels of energy and focus, and goes well. If on the other hand I have not had much time and have just glanced at things 10 minutes before the session, there is more of a sense of slackness about things. 

Share your own note-taking practices in the comments!