How do you stay organised?…

Tom Murphy

With the growing volume of e-mails, meetings, blogs, RSS feeds, tasks, projects, plans, media outlets etc. coupled with balancing work-life balance and your sanity – staying organised and on top of things is a challenge.

I’m always interested in finding out what systems people use to manage the crazy day-to-day requirements of modern living.

I have filed this post under “He would say that”, as my primary tool is Microsoft OneNote.  It’s the centre of my working day and I still keep finding new features and capabilities.

What do you use? How you you stay on top of things? Let me know!

 

Organisation Central

So what do I use OneNote for?

Here are just some of the uses and features that I use….

 

imageEmail Archive: using this button on the Outlook 2007 toolbar I archive all my e-mail in OneNote automatically (including attachments) making it easy to index, search, organise and browse

 

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Meeting Notes: I record, file and archive every meeting so that I can review the notes for actions, next steps and reminders

Bonus: If you record audio of a meeting on your laptop while using OneNote, it automatically time stamps the audio with any notes you make.

 

Project Planning: With OneNote I can pull together files, links, text, pictures and handwritten notes on a single page making it simple to get access to the information you need for a project.

 

Daily Notes: I have a new OneNote page for each day where I record thoughts, events etc.  If a particular item requires a project I can simply create a new linked page in OneNote and get started.

 

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Next Actions: Once I’ve finished a meeting I review my notes and when I spot an action item I can create an Outlook task directly from inside OneNote.  The task then appears in Outlook with an automatic link back to the relevant OneNote page (and you can also create meetings).

 

 

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Capture information: I can insert and attach files, scans, I can print documents into OneNote, I can capture web pages and articles for future reference (and OneNote automatically inserts the local URL).

 

Find everything: OneNote not only offers fast text search, it indexes PDFs and images and integrates with Windows Desktop Search so you can find whatever information you’re looking for, wherever you are on your PC, when you need it.

 

 

Tagging: In addition to fast search you can tag any item in OneNote.  Then at a later date you can run a report that pulls all your tagged items into a single page report.

 

 

 

 

 

OneNote on the go: If you have a Windows Mobile phone, you can take OneNote Mobile wherever you go and automatically add notes to your PC when you get back to the office.  You can also copy pages from OneNote to your phone to take with you on the road.

 

 

 

OneNote Powertools: Finally there’s a whole range of different add-ons for Outlook from utilities that let you import and export HTML pages, to gadgets that let you quickly and easily send a page to your phone. (See link below)

So… how are you staying organised?

 

Other tools I use:

 

OneNote Resources:

For those into David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach to work:

 

Note:

[Cross posted on my Microsoft blog]