Note taking SUCKS!

The 3 apps that make it less sucky for me.

For most of my life I have been the worst note taker. Typically I would right down a couple sentences and then I would start doodling. This started when I was in school and transferred into work meetings. Even when I did take notes I wouldn’t know where they were when I needed them and I can’t think of a single time that I have ever effectively reviewed notes in any kind of effective way. Scratch that… I have never reviewed my own notes effectively. I HAVE successful passed many tests in college reviewing the smart girl in classes notes. In fact I passed a biology class by reviewing the smart girls notes and only showing up on the 2 test days in class… and I got a B! All that being said these 3 apps have made me a awesome and effective note taker. Here are the apps and how I use them.

Trello is one of the most powerful and flex able apps out there. I use it for so many things at work and at home. This app app is amazing for project management, collaboration and mind mapping. Here are some of the way I use it:

At Work

Meetings — At work we us it to create meeting topics through team collaboration and tracking action items that con out of the meeting.
Operational Processes — Colaborate process documentation through the development process and distribute to the operations team.
Ideas — Quicky document, outline and develop new ideas.
Project Management — There is multiple ways I use trello for project management and a ton of resources online to show you the different ways you can do this. I may dig into this later but for now I am going to leave it at Trello is Awesome for project management.
Employee Resources — I have a list of all forms and HR type documentation on Trello so our mobile team has quick access to everything they need.
Company Org Chart — I keep a personal company org chart in trello with employee notes and certifications that I use during reviews, terminations and promotions. It also allows you to keep a log of past employees that is quickly searchable.

At Home

Personal Projects — I organize my thoughts, develop ideas and track my progress on these projects.
Christmas List — I have used this for the last 3 years to collaboration with my wife on our Christmas lists. We set budgets, track what we’ve bought and know when we have completed shopping for a person.

I have used Notability for years. I used to use this exclusively for all of my note taking which it is great for. These days I have moved a lot of those notes and projects to Trello or Notes but I still think it is one of the best apps out there. Here is what I use it for right now.

Meeting notes — I use notability for taking meeting or interview notes because you are able to record audio at the same time as you are taking notes. This is awesome when it is critical that you remember something exactly how it was said you can simpley hit record.
Visual notes — building visual notes with notability is awesome because you can draw, highlight, add photos, add text boxes and a handful of shapes.
Document review — I use notability to review and marking up contracts and other documents.
Sign documents — Pretty simple… I sign multiple contracts a week on notability.

Notes is one of the default app that comes on the iPhone. Here is how I use it

Lists — I use the Note app for storing lists. For example I keep a list of books to read, things to look up, quotes, quick ideas on the fly, access codes, passwords, membership numbers, shopping lists, etc.
Short term memory — I use Notes for things I need to remember short term like measurements.

OS9 Features

I have started to used the checklists for some of my lists but I have not started using the sketching or attachments features at this point.

Thats it… 3 apps that can make note taking suck a little less. I’m sure there are 100s of other ways you can use these apps. If you use any of them, how do you use them? If you haven’t tried one of the apps, check them out and let me know what you think in the comments.