"Do you want your life to be organized?" Zobel once told Arturo Luz. "Have a place for everything. That's the secret!" Zobel did follow his own advice. The illuminations and observations all recorded in notebooks and letters he wrote to friends are yet to be mined by scholars. He kept and meticulously arranged files for all his activities, his paintings, and the various subjects that interested him. Once, in Manila, a painting signed as a Zobel posed problems for authentication because it did not look like a Zobel. Proof of its authenticity eventually came from Zobel's own records in Spain.

The organization was obviously a need to one so steeped in other subjects besides his painting. Alongside the history of painting and art history in general, the interests he nurtured included archeology, architecture, comparative religion, philosophy, and history. "He was a voracious reader," his niece Rocio Zobel recalls.