The line sounds better in German („Wer schreibt, der bleibt“) and I hated it every time my ex-boss cited it. But he was and is true.

He told me a little story, how he learned the importance of recording:

When he was a teenager, he worked in an industrial plant in his holidays. The haedman came and showed him how to do process the work piece.
As a lot of work pieces were done, the department head came to check the work. And realised all the pieces were processed wrong. He called the headman and confronted him with the problem. The headman accused my ex-boss of having misunderstood the instruction.
My ex-boss was shocked but… fortunately he had kept the sample that was used for the explication (easily recognisable as it was an already rusty piece). And he had processed all his pieces exactly as the sample. So the headman was to be blamed and not him.

Some things should be recorded – independent if one has a malevolent headman or not. We cannot momorise all what we do each day. And after a few weeks most of the memory is gone anyway.

What is it you always write down and why?