onenote organisation
Andy Gray has a great post about how he has set up his onenote system. I too have something remarkable similar. The only addition I make is that I have an “area of focus” tab which contains directories that hold ongoing projects/groups that I am involved in etc.
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- In section. This is the virtual Inbox (along with the Outlook inbox). New stuff goes into here: notes I’ll take in a meeting, Side Notes, web clippings, printed pages from the OneNoteImageWriter power toy, etc. From here, stuff that’s worth keeping periodically gets moved to a more appropriate place (usually a project folder); stuff that’s been processed or isn’t worth keeping gets discarded.
- Lists section. This is the place for general lists that don’t fit elsewhere: books/articles to read, blog articles to write, shopping list, miscellaneous reference. I use keyboard/taskbar shortcuts for quick access to the most frequently used pages here, using a “OneNote Favorites” power toy that I developed (and submitted to the PowerToy contest).
- Projects folder. Each active project has a section here. Information that’s specific to a particular project – design notes, articles, meeting notes, ideas, reference links – goes in here. When a project is completed, that section gets moved to the archive folder. I have a small number of folders for some top-level organization and easier navigation (clients, household, etc.), but I’m striving to keep this pretty flat. There’s also a “Someday/Maybe” folder for projects that I might want to do someday, but aren’t currently active.
- Reference folder. This is the virtual filing cabinet. Information that I want to keep, but isn’t specific to a project, goes here. This includes things like general technical information, web links, part numbers, recipes, etc.
- DRE folder. This is the “daily journal” section (or “Daily Record of Events” from the Franklin Planner days). In this folder, there’s a folder for each year, a section for each month, and a page for each day. On the daily page goes the miscellaneous stuff that flows in during the day: a brief record of what I’m doing, the phone number from the voice mail message, the order confirmation number, the interesting quote from the newspaper. This is basically a searchable daily log; the more substantial project-related stuff goes in the corresponding project section.
It was far too much navigation effort to manage this in OneNote, so I developed another power toy (also submitted to the
PowerToy contest) that takes you to today’s daily page (creating it, if necessary) when you press Windows+J or tap an icon in the notification area of the taskbar. With this approach, you end up with something that sort of approximates the “infinite roll of paper” concept in EverNote (admittedly less elegant).
- Archive folder. When a project is completed, its section gets moved here. This keeps historical information available and searchable, but keeps it out of the way of active projects. This folder contains subfolders for each year, and then all of the completed projects go in the yearly subfolder for archiving. ”
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