Tip of the Week: How to Take Better Notes

Are you a person that has traditionally written down things in notebooks? If you are, you probably have dozens of notebooks that are half filled with information, most of which you’ll look at sometime in the future and you’ll be reminded just how helpful that note would have been if you had it when you needed it. Today, digital notebooks offer the same helpfulness, with a few added features that make them (dare we say it) a little better than the traditional notepad.

Here, we’ll go over a few tips to using digital notebooks so that you can improve the quality of the notes you keep.

Selecting Your Tools
Your first concern, when you set out to take your notes, is having something to take these notes on, and with. For many, this has typically been a sheet of paper and a pen, but what kind of technology blog would this be if we stopped there?

Naturally, technology offers us other options, offering wider functionality. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones now allow us to take notes in different ways. Instead of chicken-scratched scrawls of shorthand, notes can be typed and recorded much more efficiently and neatly on these devices, depending on the preference of the user. Plus, many of these devices feature a variety of note-taking options that your pen just doesn’t, like linking to relevant online content or other notes, access to cloud storage, and the ever-critical spellcheck.

Furthermore, when using these devices, you have a selection of apps to choose from. Microsoft’s OneNote and Evernote are two prominent examples of such, each with their own advantages and capabilities, plus many lesser-known ones to leverage as well.

Explore Format Options
Of course, with many of these applications, your options don’t stop there. Just as with a free-form scratchpad, the right tools can allow your notes to take on a different voice than just row after row of bullet points.

For instance, you could incorporate graphs, images, and other visual elements into your notes to add confidence and context to them. This enables you to better associate meaning to your words; and, as a result, make your notes more meaningful.

Keeping Your Notes Organized
The other benefit of using a digital note-taking tool is the fact that organization becomes that much simpler to maintain. Most solutions out there today enable their users to adjust their notes to keep them concise, cohesive, and comprehensible. Making your notes searchable, organizing them by date or topic, and other qualifications can all help keep you on track.

Washington Works can assist you in implementing business tools to help with all of your organization’s particular needs. Learn more by reaching out to us at 301-571-5040.