I found an unusual winner in the note-taking apps category
Over the course of the past 8 odd years of my career as a product guy, I’ve passionately tried out note-taking apps to de-clutter my mind.
I hound Product Hunt for anything new that comes out and try to use it in hopes of finding the one I would love. I’m confident you cannot name a good note-taking app I wouldn’t have tried extensively and given up.
I expected too much from it. The more I used an app, I wanted it to become the center of everything I do as my “thoughts” lived there, so to say.
- I wanted to recall everything I’d ever written at the right time (this isn’t searching but more about discovery)
- I wanted to add notes at the speed of thought and
- in the same structure, I was thinking about it. So… divisions, headings, images, tables, collections, lists and much more
- I would always end up jotting down quick todos in the notes app as well
- Most times there are actionable items inside my notes, which would get forgotten or missed out
- I’ve always gone away from products which traded more features, more flexibility for simplicity of use
Now, you’re thinking — Well Rohit, you haven’t seen this awesome app I use which has everything you need.
Take your pick
- Notion
- Bear
- One Note
- Apple Notes
- Zoho Notebook
- Evernote
- Quip
- Dropbox Paper
- Google Keep
- SimpleNote
- Google Docs
- Others? (Please comment!)
I chose Trello. And I’m hooked.
Trello is usually known as the beautiful forest of cards where teams get lost trying to maintain their release cycles. I found it to be absolutely fantastic for keeping all my notes organized!
First off, it just works!
I love how the Trello team pays attention to the speed of use. I don’t encounter bugs, have never had an issue of any sort, and it’s always been freakishly fast! I remember as an engineer I would hound Trello for how they were delivering my data in a beautiful format so fast. Someone on their team even made it a goal to deliver the entire Trello experience in under 4kb. 4kb. Really?
I can organize my thoughts quickly
I create different lists for different parts of my brain, enter a title and leave it. If & when I have time, I’ll go in and add more color to that thought.
I’ve become very used to Markdown to format my content. Since the card description supports it, I can write down my unstructured or structured thoughts very quickly.
There’s no need for a mouse to highlight stuff and format it, I can type it all out and be confident it’ll be readable when I come back. I even add images and links as I go and really get into it sometimes!
Tip: I keep a lower zoom level for Trello which accommodates more cards in one screen but still stays readable
I can get to stuff fast
Discoverability is where I’ve found another big win. As opposed to the one long list + search for what you want, I’m given a much better view into my thoughts in the form of a nice simple matrix.
The scannability is awesome. I can focus only on a part of the board and dive-in when needed. Or take a high-level look at something I’ve not thought about for a while.
The search is faithful as ever when I need it, but I seldom use it. Surprisingly.
I’m able to constantly iterate
Since I have easy scannability, I often end up revisiting notes written a while back and updating them with new information I have. I’d edit the description, add some links or attachments and even go ahead and make new checklist items. Over time my wisdom, my ideas, and thoughts evolve which echoes on my Trello board.
Also, I don’t need dedupe anymore as everything is by default in one place. When lists get too large and its hard to keep track, I clean up by merging cards with similar ideas and even archiving them when I know they’re stale.
Tip: Trello lets me search on archived cards, which is pretty cool IMO
It allows me to be action-oriented
While taking notes, whenever I have an urge to do something I create to-dos on a checklist which I can always come back to and check off. Since I have a nice pending indicator on the main board of how many tasks are remaining, I can get a sense of what notes of mine need action.
When I want to be urgent about these tasks, I add a deadline to the card and work off that. It shows up as an alert when something goes beyond scheduled and I’m able to act on it sooner.
Tip: I try to add more important cards on the top and often drag-drop to establish priority. Makes it for a good queue which again echoes the priority of the various thoughts in my head at any particular time.
Afterthoughts & Asides go in as well
While my notes are always a work in progress, I can always add digressions and side-notes as comments on the card. Conversations with people or related notes go in there to form a 360 view for that. This allows me to focus on a card when I want to get something done.
And yes, markdown there as well!
Sharing ftw!
This is critical and one of the facts why I kept rejecting so many apps. Some of them allow me to copy, but pasting it in emails spoils the entire formatting. Or some want me to share a link to the note and be a source of lead-gen when I wanted someone to take a look. (Yes, I’m looking at you Evernote!)
I’ve found 2 ways to share via Trello very helpful. One, I can easily copy paste note content into emails & chats. And two, I can always export an entire note as a PDF and attach it elsewhere. Doing the PDF export also helps me to outline my structure of thinking to others making explanations easier.
So there you have it. The BEST note taking app which actually helps me keep my head full of dreams in check is none other than Trello. Please never become JIRA. 😉
Instead of a potato, here’s Coldplay.
Wasn’t expecting this to shape up like a love letter to Trello, but this was nice.
