WebedtecH

When someone asks you, “What’s the best way to capture and organize my notes?”  I answer with a question: how do you want to use them in the future?  You see, capturing notes is a very personal process not only assisting in memory retention but requiring a method that matches the recorder’s way of thinking for easy recall.  Every major personal productivity guru on the planet dictates that one of the linchpins of success is the capture of information quickly, accurately, and efficiently.  This always raises the battle, “paper or computer?”  I do not believe the two are mutually exclusive and with a little introspection you can find a balance between the written and the typed.

As you can tell from some of my other posts I have been a long time pen and notebook fan.  Additionally I have used PDAs for years.  The shift back and forth between the two platforms has taken me to both extremes:  all paper to all digital and in-between.  Where I find myself now is in-between both solutions but this time I have done it on purpose.  Using Evernote I have found the way to write my notes and retrieve them too.

Here’s the dilemma.  Keeping your notes in wonderful notebooks like a Moleskine causes a problem with retrieving them when you need them, especially if you go through a lot of notebooks like I do.  So the question is how do I take prolific notes yet  keep them all at my fingertips?  That’s where Evernote comes in.  I use my home scanner to scan each relevant page in my notebook into Evernote and then tag and mark the record accordingly.  Having done that I can recall the information from my phone or desktop at any time without having to keep all the notebooks with me.  The added bonus is the notebooks act as a permanent record and backup of the information.

This model is pushing me towards the direction of notebooks with removable pages like the Rollabind line or ones small enough to fit two pages on an 8 1/2 x 11″ sheet of paper.  In either case, I feel free to write as much as I want knowing I will be able to store and retrieve as I see fit.  This is liberating in the sense that creation of content on the computer can be transitive and linear, whereas pen on paper feels permanent yet fluid.

Would I choose between them?  If I were forced…I would have to go the paper route.  Beyond my own personal preferences it is easy enough to set up an organizational system on paper and retain the records as long as you need to.  Yes digital can do the same but paper never runs out of power.  With the right ink and paper they can be forgiving to water in ways bits and bytes cannot.

I’ve used  this same notebook for a while and the only defect I found was the pocket in  the back…but for a different reason.  Over time due to  the flexible nature of the notebook the seam along the bottom edge of the pocket split requiring me to tape up the edge so the contents did not slide out.

Perhaps it’s a flaw just due to the bending and flexing but it is a downside to an otherwise very nice little notebook.  I’ll buy more, but I’ll make a point of reinforcing that pocket edge before I put anything in there.

Miquelrius Flexible Notebook.

Here’s a little hack for you Google Calendar users who also like the offline convenience of your Moleskine or equivalent organizer. A print out of the two-week view of your calendar will fit nicely in the back of your Moleskine with the right sequence of folds and a little trim on the sides. The process is:

1. Print the two week view in landscape mode. I recommend using as small a font as possible to give you the most space.
   
2. Fold the paper lengthwise along the top of the first row of dates.
   
3. Fold the paper lengthwise again along the second row of dates. You should now have a page that is 11″ long and about 4″ wide on one side and about 5″ on the other.
   
4. Fold the excess information at the top underneath so it is out of the way. You should now have two rows of dates, one for each week, visible as you flip the paper over and back.
   
5. Take a pair of scissors and trim off the hanging tabs at either end (they were the page borders)
   
6. Now just fold it on the line between Thursday and Friday (Days four and five depending on how you have your calendar arranged)
   

It should tuck nicely in the back of your planner for easy reference. Next step…monthly calendar origami.

I’ve been looking for a way to combine the interests of my two core audiences here at WebedtecH.com, the educators and the organizers. So…let’s see what happens when we specifically apply these techniques to students, teachers, and administrators. My darling 15-year old daughter got the ball rolling for me when she sent me a text asking if she could have one of my “little black notebooks.”

Now, as most teenagers do, she carries a cell phone around with her almost all the time. Combined with internet access on the phone and you would thing she would be a perfect candidate for web based solutions she could access while mobile. But here’s the rub. School policy doesn’t allow use of the cell phone during class. I’m not debating the merits of that policy (that’s for another time) but it poses a problem. What is the easiest way to keep things organized when you’re NOT always connected?

I spend a fair amount of time with teenagers and have found (as many of us know already) they can be random thinkers, desiring to fit with others while stretching to show their own identity. Structure can be limiting and limiting means disuse. So what’s the solution?

A plain Moleskine (or inexpensive equivalent) is a great start. They have the freedom to customize the books however they like. They are not bound by forms and templates and can capture what they need to know and how they need to know it. I’m sure there are many who feel without structure the students will be lost and miss valuable information. Ah, but do they have to?

By teaching our students the value of just capturing information rather than getting hung up on the formatting and structure, we curtail the “Hunh? I don’t remember that.” When they ask, “When’s the test again?” you can respond, “Check your book. You did write it down didn’t you?” Some may argue it is coddling the students…I disagree. Far too many professionals in the “real world” can’t handle basic information management and consistent capture is the key starting place for this skill.

Modern life by its very nature is chaotic. Overlapping schedules, multiple commitments, planning months in advance, all these things crush down on us creating stress and distress. One of the greatest accomplishments of your personal system is to get your (and other peoples) calendars under control. I’m not limiting these techniques to Moleskine specifically, but any more the name is synonymous with the little black organizer book that has become so popular. So regardless of your journal’s manufacturer you can do follow these tips to get your calendar under control.

Decide what time interval is most important.

Some people live their lives one day at a time, some live from weekend to weekend, and some live a month in advance. Each breakdown of our lives has strengths and weaknesses we need to account for when setting up our planners in the most efficient manner for us. If you run a very hectic life or are responsible for tracking the lives of others (Moms and Dads, you know I’m talking to you) a daily planner can get you through the schedule planning with a minimum of muss and fuss. Some challenges do arise with this however.

How do I put more than one person’s schedule on a daily calendar?

I have seen lots of advice on this matter but the two most effective methods I’ve found are color-coding and the column approach. If you are able to keep more than one color pen with you at all times (one of those nice multi-function pens may do the trick) you can color code the entries in a way that jumps out at you on the page. My personal preference is the column method. This approach breaks the daily calendar into two or more vertical columns, each representing the schedule of one person. In my case with three kids and a spouse I wind up with five columns. The next step is where personal preference starts to kick in. You can create rows across the columns to designate each time slot or use the columns as designated lists. The upside of this technique is being able to see all the schedules at a glance. The downside is if you have a small notebook it can become very cramped if you have lots of entries. This is where again I suggest you deviate from the norms…if you have a grid layout book turn it on its side (landscape mode for the techies out there) and create the columns across the page.

Do I need to fill out a year’s worth of daily calendar pages in my planner?

NO. As much fun as it may seem to sit for an evening drawing lines and numbering pages (what? I think it would be fun.) you don’t need to go that far in advance. The question becomes…how far DO you have to go? Take a look at your current schedule. Count how many items you have booked for next month already. Do the same for the month after that, and so on. What you are looking for is the month where you drop below 15 items already planned. That is how far out you need your daily calendar. From that 15 event month on you can use a monthly or weekly layout for your capture (I’ll explain how to do this later) rather than all the numbered pages. The catch is once you cross that 15 entry line you will want to create a section for that month on a daily basis in your planner. Ok, so where did the magic number 15 come from? In most pocket planners you can comfortably write 15 lines of text. 15 also happens to conveniently work out to about half a month of events. Nothing mystical…just an easy to remember line in the sand.

So how do I reschedule something in this mess?

It really isn’t as hard as it would seem. Rather than erasing entries and trying to make the page look pristine, just draw a line through the entry and make a small note as to the day it was transferred to, or as I do, the page number of the calendar the entry is now on. Make sure you jump to that page and record the new entry though. The benefit of this method is when the day comes around the event was originally scheduled for you can still see it; it acts as a tickler for the event without any effort at all.

But I don’t have enough stuff for a daily calendar…or…I have a calendar at work that’s separate from my personal one.

In either of these cases, when a large block of your time each day is spoken for by another calendar or your activity load isn’t that heavy, you can use a weekly or monthly calendar to the same effect. One of the things I have adopted is the transfer of the first meeting or event for my next work day into my personal calendar for that day. Why? Because when am at home I can quickly open my planner and see what the first thing is on the agenda for the next day at work AND when I need to be there. Stress, at least the early morning kind, be gone!

It all sounds a little too easy. How do I handle repeating events?

Ah, the classic territory of the electronic organizer. One of the most touted features of smart phones, PDAs, and online calendars is entering an event once and having it fill in on every occurrence. This can’t be done with paper you say? Nay, Nay I Say! (Thank you John Pinette.) Here’s how it works:

Create a page that is just for the recurring event…let’s say soccer practice (or a business meeting…whatever example makes you feel more at home) On this page write down the frequency of the occurrence (Every Wednesday from 7-9pm) and other vital information (address, contact numbers, things to bring, etc.) Note the page number of the page you wrote the information on. Now all you need to do is go to each day it should occur on (again, every Wednesday) and make a note of that page number. If you want to get even fancier use different shapes or symbols along with the page number to identify different people.

There are even more tips I’ll share over the coming weeks but I don’t want to short change the other topics I started with in Part 1. Next up, tracking passwords and accounts.