Kevin’s note about note taking pointed to an interesting paper note-taker and how that system works well for him.  I have to admit I got a bit dizzy looking at some of those busy note pages shown in the article but my motto is "always use what works best for you".  That said, the paper notepad doesn’t cut it for me because left to my own devices I am far too disorganized to be able to maintain a paper note system.  I did that in the past and spent much of my time, often unsuccessfully, looking for that nugget of information that I needed and knew existed in my notes somewhere.  Several years ago I gave up on that futile effort and my digital note system has worked flawlessly for me since.  Here’s how my digital notepad works for me.

It’s no surprise that my note taking system is comprised of just a couple of tools, a Tablet PC and Microsoft OneNote.  I have yet to find a more powerful combination that has ever been released for the serious note taker, digital or paper.  Taking notes is as easy as it is on paper yet the notes are well organized and more importantly searchable electronically.  I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have been searching all of my notebooks for a given phrase and quickly found every note that contains it.  I am constantly finding pearls of wisdom I wrote years ago that I had forgotten about.  This is something that is incredibly difficult to do with a paper note system.

The Tablet PC makes for an easy to use notepad that is always waiting to capture my thoughts and notes.  I use the pen almost exclusively, although if it fits the situation better I swivel the screen around and type away.  I find the free form inking of my notes provides constant stimulation of the thought process and just like on paper I can doodle or add sketches that will further add to the ideas being captured.  What many people don’t realize is that inking notes on a Tablet is exactly like the process on a paper equivalent.  The note taking is the same, it’s just what you can do with the digital notes that differs and adds so much value to the process. One of the greatest differences between paper notepads and my digital notepad is how the notes are separate from the hardware, or the notepad.  When I used paper notepads when one got full and I got a new one I would quickly miss having my most recent notes with me.  Using OneNote with a Tablet when I get a new Tablet PC, something some would say happens far too often, it is a snap to put my OneNote notes onto the new "pad".  I have every note that I have taken digitally for the past four years.  Think about that with a paper equivalent.  I would need a wheelbarrow to carry all those paper notepads.

What about those times when you can’t have your Tablet with you?  I can hear that question now and it’s a good one because even though I usually have my Tablet with me there are always situations when I won’t take it and need to jot a quick note or phone number.  In these instances I do what anyone would do, I grab the first piece of paper I find, sometimes a napkin, and jot my jewel right down.  What is amazing is what happens after I do that.  When I get back to my home office I scan that note right into OneNote where it becomes a note just like one taken digitally.  This extends to notes I might import from my camera, say there’s a sign with information I want to capture.  I snap a photo of it with my camera and import it directly into OneNote later where all the text in the sign is just as searchable as my own notes.  There is no equivalent with a paper system for that.

Look at the image above of my OneNote work window and you’ll find some tools that are one click away that extend the utility of my digital notepad beyond what is easily done with paper.  First of all note the vertical toolbar on the far left, the My Pen toolbar.  I can change the color of the ink and even the thickness with just a click on this toolbar.  The ease of this process has led me over time to augment my ink note taking with color.  I normally use a blue thin point pen but when there is something I think will lead to an action item for me I tap the green pen.  I refer to that note page later and the things I need to do as a result of a meeting are sitting there nicely in green and easily noticeable.  Maybe I note something that is critical that someone else must do and I need to make sure it happens.  That gets the red thick point pen with a click so those notes are the first thing that jump out on the page.  A simple tap on the screen gets me back to my normal pen during the note taking so nothing is interrupted with the process.  I even add things like doodled stars for something that I want to stand out, just like you might do on paper.  The process is much easier digitally because I don’t have to carry a pocket protector full of different pens like my paper note taking brethren.  If I wanted to carry this reminder system further in OneNote it’s easy to flag an item, even one inked, as a to-do item that will automatically be reflected in Outlook.  I don’t use this much but sometimes if I feel an item is very critical I will.  That’s a powerful extension of the notepad.  Now look at this image:

See how the inked phrase "Intro music" is highlighted in yellow?  That’s because I ran a search for that phrase and told OneNote to search all of my notebooks.  In less than 30 seconds it searched four years of notes and returned every instance of that phrase, including whether it was written in ink, typed text and scanned documents.  That is so incredibly powerful that I can’t begin to do it justice.  You paper note takers imagine searching every one of your notepads in 30 seconds and having a given phrase you’ve written returned in a nice concise list for reference.  That is heady stuff indeed.

I mentioned multiple notebooks in the search above and in OneNote 2007 you can have as many of them as you want, and you can have them open or closed at your discretion.  This is very powerful and why my notes are so easily organized without me doing a lot of work to make that happen.  Every major facet of my life has its own notebook, I have one for work projects, one for writing projects, etc.  This keeps me focused on the task at hand without having to think about it.  Each notebook then has sections I create as I go and each section has as many note pages as I care to add.  This not only makes it easy to organize my notes but also gives me logical criteria for the searches I do almost every day.  If I know the note I am looking for relates to a work project I restrict the search to that notebook.  Maybe the nugget of information I am looking for is pertinent to a particular section only, again I just restrict the search to that section.  This lets me put my hands on what I am looking for in about 5 seconds.  That is incredibly useful and something you can’t touch on a paper pad.

I get a lot of documents sent to me via email and I put almost every one of them into my notepad in OneNote.  These documents are usually Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations or PDF documents.  It doesn’t really matter what format the documents is in, the Send to OneNote printer driver will suck it right into my notes.  I use this many times a day and as a result Send to OneNote is my default printer.  I just open the document from the email, print it to OneNote and then file the email.  I have Send to OneNote print the document so it appears in OneNote as an image that fills the entire note page which lets me ink my own notes right on top of the original document.  I do the same thing when someone gives me a paper document but in that case I scan it right into OneNote using my scanner in my office.  It brings it into my note page just like Send to OneNote and I can then ink away on it.  What makes this so powerful is that not only are my added ink comments searchable but the original document, even though it is at this point an image, is totally searchable too.  OneNote performs OCR on the document when it’s scanned in and the text then gets indexed for searching just like my own notes.  Try that with a paper system where you staple a paper document into your notepad.  I don’t think so.

My note system works flawlessly for me.  I have thousands of pages of notes, both text and ink, and they are all with me in my digital notepad.  They are all searchable and visually as stimulating as any note written on a piece of paper.  I find that referring back to an older note and looking at my messy ink and little doodles that accompany that ink often stimulates my memory to the event where I took the note.  There’s just something about seeing my scrawl that makes me remember the discussion that took place while I was taking my notes.  That is the same process that can happen with paper notes so not even that ability is lost with my digital notepad.  And I haven’t even touched on the ability to record notes right into my ink pages.  That will have to wait for later.