Ever go looking for something you wrote down, but you just don’t know where you wrote it down?
Taking notes is crucial to your productivity, however you need to be consistent in where you take those notes.
To minimize your efforts, you need a notebook.
In fact, what you need is one place for your notes.
Notes Here, There, and Everywhere
If you want your notes readily accessible when you need them, then you need to keep them in one place.
When it comes to note-taking, the medium doesn’t matter as much as the location.
“It doesn’t matter where you take your notes, as long as you keep them all in the same location.”
If you prefer pen and paper, then you could go with a Moleskine notebook. (If you have never tried a Moleskine, read my post here.)
Or if you are going paperless, then maybe Evernote is your goto place for notes.
Again, your note-taking tool itself doesn’t matter. What is key is that you don’t have notes on random pads of paper, Post-It notes, and even the back of napkins.
When you take notes in many places, you have many places to look when you need them again. (Tweet this Quote)
One Place for Your Notes
Capturing notes is a key component of any time management system.
Be prolific with your notes, but be consistent where you take them.
Question: How many places are you taking notes during your day?
This is one of the keys to productivity that I learned from David Allen years ago. Keeping all of your stuff (notes, to-do’s, etc) in one place is important. If you mind trusts that everything is captured and will not be lost, it will be free to not think about all of your stuff and can focus on the present. Thanks for sharing Craig.
I’m admittedly terrible at this. I keep switching back and forth between physical and digital note-taking methods, and even between different apps, just to say that I’ve tried everything. That being said, I suppose it’s important to point out that making notes can be done on literally anything (napkin, spiral notebook, smart phone, computer, etc.) as long as it is captured in a single location (Dropbox, Evernote, etc.). Do you agree or find this to be a somewhat meaningless distinction?
Suffer from the same problem. I have started using Evernote more and more but still using a trusted yellow pad on my desk!
This was the crucial message of the original Franklin Planner training class. Everything in one place – your Planner. This method has been widely abandoned in favor of digital methods, but nothing matches the paper planner for associating notes with dates and events. I carried a paper planner for at least 15 years, and even though I have no actual need for one I still yearn for it. I want to write down the name of the customer service rep who promised me my problem was fixed, and I want that promise fixed to a date and time, in the effortless way of a paper planner. I want to track exactly how many days a month my Internet goes out, what I ate, and which tasks I bothered to accomplish.
Hey Craig, ever since I shifted to OneNote things have indeed become faster.
Hey Arijit, before shifting to Onenote, what were you using before?
Hi Enwongo, I was using MS word earlier – sometimes Notepad. My word files were kept in different folders and that used to work quite well. Why onenote is far better is because, you can access all your documents from one place.
Each file has different tabs and each tab has pages. Even within a page you can create sections and within sections you can have bullet points, checkboxes and loads of other symbols (create your own coding system!)
I still use a notepad to write down stuff when I am making phone calls, because that’s easy (I need both my hands to type!), but it’s all transferred to a CRM or to OneNote once I am done with the call. If I am on skype, I don’t write and use onenote directly.
Hope this helps!
I just started disciplining myself to do this! It has really been helpful. So funny to see your post about it…like a confirmation, lol.
I’m a OneNote person. I too used the paper notebook for a long time, but found it increasingly harder to find a particular note after a few weeks or months.
Since switching to OneNote, finding that elusive note is much easier.
Hi Joeleo, I noticed that you and one of the commenters here also mentioned switching to OneNote. I am interested in knowing from “what” you switched to and how your OneNote workflow is like.
Evernote. When I take notes anywhere else I immediately snap a photo of it, and create a note in Evernote. I take notes, make to do lists, and brainstorm all in Evernote. I get confused when people tell me they don’t use Evernote or an equivalent program.
I used to use Evernote, now I have returned to OneNote (first used it in 2004) as it is available across my three main devices. So now I keep all my notes in ONE place across my three devices: Lenovo Notebook, Galaxy Note 2 and Note 8 (I no longer use S Note, good, but not necessary with OneNote back.
So challenging. I attempt to only take notes in a moleskin type notebook. I find myself taking notes at presentations on evernote. I use flip charts and dry erase boards often to teach concepts and take pictures of those as notes on my iPhone. I sometimes use sticky notes and index cards. I would really like to be better at this. I think evernote is the tool to compile all of the other media… Then, there is the tag system… another post.
I really love paper note books. Moleskine are a bit pricey but you can get similar stuff for less. Having a nice feel and quality paper makes note taking more pleasurable and therefore an encouragment to do it a not lose those valuable thoughts.
I am trying to put all my notes in one place but its so hard since I have notes on different things. I am doing various articles and data input so I am thinking to using one spiral per article I am working on. For example. one spiral would have all search terms i’ve used while i am gathering articles for the literature review and will also have all the stats information/notes i find to use for the article. my regular notebook will just have random notes I take everyday. Does anyone think this will be okay?