Helps me clear my mind, and it saves me a lot of time in the morning, because I can start work and have some wins for the day within 15 minutes...and that momentum carries me through....
Also, the shut-down period is nice, because when I'm tired at the end of the day, it doesn't take a lot of energy.
I also put references to my (page-numbered) paper notebooks in my notes file, and vice versa, so stuff that would be very long to transcribe doesn't usually have to be transcribed at all.
I also have a pretty strong aversion to headless-chicken-mode, having seen it as a pathological disaster spiral at a couple of places where everything is urgent all the time, and so you never have time for anything. Being in too much of a rush to do things properly is a trap.
I find as an employee I have to fill and empty my head a lot. I have a good short-term memory, but things that I don't write down tend to slip out after a week or two. "Oh, I worked on that thing? I don't remember that."