Disclaimer:
I understand that the OP requests 'not software', though others have gone ahead and made software suggestions. That being said, I am suggesting a software, but specifically I refer to the concept and/or workflow that the software provides for the general purpose of organizing information. IMHO, it sounds like for the OPs purposes, the kind/amount of information that needs to be dealt with would be impractical without an effective software solution. This is why I am taking liberty to make such a suggestion.
Suggestion:
This is by no means a complete answer to your question, but it may give you ideas about organizing information in general ( as this is specifically how I have used it in the past and it work well for me ) - and that is Trello.
It's free to start. It's intuitive and quick to pick up an start using ( this is what ultimately earned my team's interest ). It's intended for collaborative note taking and prioritizing. It provides a lot of useful visual features and it may be quite helpful to organize and even search information. You should be aware that, depending the amount of information you need to manage, you may require pay options, though I have not needed anything beyond the free account. You can use it to organize any information you want, not just to take notes and/or create priorities and TODOs.
My team and I used it to develop and manage our workflow for developing a story for a game ( and the story itself ), including the story line, time line, story boards, member task scheduling, etc. Note that we organically derived a natural workflow based on member talents and availability as well as managed the products of that workflow through one and the same interface.