Note taking and task management
I’m one of those people that loves nice stationery – productivity pr0n as Merlin Mann would describe it. Trouble is, I never have it with me when I need it; you pop over to the staffroom for a coffee, and get collared on the way – “Could you just do xyz when you have 5 minutes?”. Normally said in that condescending tone which applies you’ll never have 5 minutes and it’ll never happen without being nagged a hundred times.
Truth is, it will happen.
If I remember what it was I was supposed to be doing.
David Allen and his GTD fans would say I need a better capture system. By better, read always available.
My problem is not that I have a bad memory – but that I have no alarm system. If I bump into someone who asked me to do something, I slap my forehead and pretend I was just on my way to do said job – I can remember the conversation perfectly, I’ve not had a trigger until that point to recall the conversation. I just don’t get any subconscious prompt to say “Go do xyz for Person A”.
Part of the reason for this is that I work cross-platform – Mac. PC. Linux. Solaris. Paper. PostIts. The paper is my attempt to keep everything in one place. Never works – see above. PostIts is everyone else’s attempt to make me do things. But they stay in one place (under the wheels of my chair or stuck to a shoe, normally). So, it has to be computer-based. I’ve tried ToodleDo, but there’s no real alarm system apart from daily e-mails.
I do get myself organised about once a month. I grab whatever system I’ve not used in a while, shoehorn all my tasks into it, and get busy being organised for a few hours. But I don’t really get anything done, I just *feel* like I have.
Coupled with my dreadful task management skills, there’s the whole issue of notes. I like making notes in a notebook with a nice fountain pen. Preferably a nice moleskin or such like. But, invariably, my notes get intermingled with todo items, which never make it back out of the notebook. Plus, I can never find the notebook when I need it, or I’ve left it at school when I want it at home, etc.
I’ve tried big notebooks, small notebooks, Hipster PDA, Palm pilots, etc. None of them work. I’ve tried OmniFocus on the iPhone/iPodTouch, as well as Notes.
So, a combination solution’s needed, I think.
Evernote is looking the most likely candidate for me right now. I’ve been a fan of MS’s OneNote, but it’s Windows only, which is a pain, even when using it under Parallels on the Mac, it’s just too much of a pain to keep it mobile. Evernote isn’t as feature rich as OneNote, but it does have iPhone/iPodTouch, Mac, Windows and Web clients, which makes it about as portable as you can get. I always have my iPod with me; hopefully to be turned into an iPhone some day soon.
I’m going with, effectively, context-based notebooks; school, home, computer, with Task pages in each context, and then general notes.
There is still no alarm system, which is going to be a problem, potentially.
There are some workarounds – drag and drop the task note in each context to Outlook’s Todo bar, for one. But, that’s not a reminder for an individual task, that’s a reminder for a collection of tasks. I would, I hope serve to remind me to review my task list, I guess.
As each note seems to have a URL associated with it, I’m considering writing a URL scraper, then using something like remind to e-mail me whenever I have a task due.
It’s not ideal, but it’s better than anything else I’ve got out there. I think I will continue to keep a Hipster PDA on me, just in case; it’s easier for taking note of multiple actions in a meeting.
My only real concern with using a computer based solution to note taking is that it limits the way in which I can take notes. Mind mapping is one of my favourite ways of either taking notes or creating/notating ideas. Mindmapping is not a tool that sits well with the iPhone. It just about works on a computer, but it’s just not the same as using a pen and paper. Prezi, whilst designed for presentations, might just be a way forward there, but I think for recording purposes rather than creation; nothing quite beats pen and paper for quickly fleshing out an idea. My preference for mindmapping is to have continuous roll of paper to my right – start drawing on the left hand end, keep going ’til you’re done. Folding artist’s sketchbooks are quite good for this too as you can get the same effect.
Suck it and see, I guess!
Gary L 12:06 pm on June 4, 2011 Permalink |
I have a single medium sized moleskine. Hard-cover with squared paper which I seem to like for some reason. All my work TODO’s go in there, along with meeting notes. I take the book with me to every meeting.
If someone asks me to do something when I don’t have my book (like if we’re in the break room) and I do want to remember to agree to take on the task, then I’ll just ask them to email me. When I get the email, it goes in the book.
Sketches (of graphs I want to make) or mind-maps can generally fit on a single or double page of the notebook.
An additional thing that i have started doing in the past week, is to note down what I did in the day in a log, which i keep as a text file in emacs using org-mode.
The purpose of having the log on computer is that it becomes easily searchable. Additionally, I can easily see what I did the previous day, and what remained undone. In the log, some of the tasks are marked “DONE” others are marked “STARTED” (for a task which I began, but remains unfinished).
Fewer is definitely better (for me) and I really do like crossing out tasks in my book, there is something different about writing with pen and paper, at least for our generation.
In email, I really only have 3 folders that I use apart from inbox (which is not at zero, ever)
At home, I have a wife to remind me of all the tasks I need to do.
Adrian 12:24 pm on June 4, 2011 Permalink |
I’m still searching for “the system”. It’s been made worse by getting an Android phone, because that limits the technology choices.
E-mail is 3 folders; Inbox, Sent, Done. (actually I do Done by year because it ends up as a huge folder otherwise).
Nozbe’s been pretty good for me; I try to keep all my notes and clippings, etc, in Evernote tagged by Project name, which works really well with nozbe’s integration. However, the Android app sucks big time.
I find having something that enables me to add items to my Inbox with me ALL the time is the crucial factor to being usefully productive; most of my ideas occur when away from the pressures and distractions of noisy children at school – usually whilst walking down the high street, or during the endless sermons I have to endure.
Carrying a notebook with me all the time is a bit too cumbersome – I love the little Moleskine notebooks, but they ain’t half bulky in the pocket. Perhaps I need to wear a jacket more so that I’ve got an inside pocket…