How I Get The Most Out of Free Note Taking Apps and my iPad

Andrew George
Efficient U
Published in
8 min readMar 7, 2022

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Plus, how the iPad changed my workflow

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Note taking is a core component of my workflow. I truly started to geek out over the subject when I was gifted the Rocketbook Wave — a reusable notebook whose ink lines disappear after a zap in the microwave, but not before uploading your handwritten gems into the cloud. That too was a game changer, and I reviewed other paper to cloud notebooks for a few years, examining paper quality, versatility, and, of course, the apps that accompany the notebooks.

Around the same time, the Apple Pencil and the iPad came out. I contemplated purchasing a setup, but couldn’t really justify the $700 plus I’d need to shell out just to draw and handwrite digitally — I also already had a Mac and an iPhone, and an original iPad Air. But, when that Air essentially became obsolete, and with the arrival of a new member of our family, I needed a more robust mobile solution since spending time in my home office became more of a practical struggle.

I bought the pencil, skeptical that I’d actually use it, but figured “why not?” — at worse, it would become an expensive colouring and drawing tool. But, after experimenting with some apps I found that the pencil would actually change my workflow for the better.

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