One Note to rule them all

I love being organized. I am not perfect at it, but I strive to keep my home, desk and computer organized. Long time ago, during my PhD studies, I one day had an epiphany that science is just organized knowledge. Later I learned that I was not the first person to extrapolate this from my experiences. The thought is all over the internet.

It is easy to keep the desk organized, a whole other matter to get information bits organized. The bits you encounter when looking for something else on the internet and immediately know you can use this information later. It is so easy to end up with dozens of browser windows open 'for later'.

I have tried different apps on my phone and computer, but none of them have really stuck with me. Except One. This software has been lurking in my computer for years (installed by a departmental IT officer probably), but I have never seen it. REALLY seen it.

I am talking about OneNote. If you have Microsoft Office, you have access to it.

It is worth taking a look and trying to use it. There are dozens of good YouTube videos to learn the basics and it can be used as a desktop app or - what I find easier - on the web browser. It is very easy to learn to use and you can clip links, screenshots and save whole web pages. It works across all your devices. 

The structure of OneNote is very logical and easy to use and it works really well in everyday life situations. Below I give a short outline of its features and its structure.

Notebooks. OneNote consists of Notebooks, which have sections (chapters) and pages. You can create different notebooks for different purposes. I have individual notebooks for home, this blog and exercise, to mention a few. I also have one notebook for my professional development, where I collect courses I have attended, useful websites for career development, internet courses, TED talks etc.

Sections. All Notebooks have sections that are colour coded and you can create as much as you like. They are like chapters in a book and you can add as many pages as you like. My home Notebook has sections like: To-do-list (call for electrician about new socket, find a new cleaner, organize wardrobe), recipes (family favourites, baking, breakfasts, Jamie Oliver's best recipes) and travel (holiday in Fiji, Girls weekend at Sydney, Son's wedding at Sunshine Coast).

Subsections. Every section can be divided into subsections. that also have colour coded tabs. My recipes section is divided into subsections, for example, the breakfast section consists of healthy breakfasts, quick breakfasts, low carb breakfasts etc. I could also have created a whole Notebook for recipes if I would cook a lot. But I don't.

Pages. Every section/subsection has individual pages that can be titled to indicate what's inside. For example, in my Home notebook Travel section I have a page for 'Holiday in Fiji'. In there I have collected useful web pages of what to see and links to menus of different restaurants that have been recommended to be good.

All pages have a title on the top and then a blank canvas where you can write, draw, add photos, add links, clip web pages or copy documents. Many recipe websites support the clipping function in a clever way that you can get only the recipe, not all the junk that many pages are full of nowadays. Notebooks and sections of it can also be shared with family members and colleagues. I have shared my TED talks sections with my kids and colleagues and some of them with my friends.

When I found OneNote, my life got so much easier. If I come across an interesting webpage that might be useful one day, I put it in my Web links notebook, in the section 'Organize later'. It prevents me from getting distracted at that moment and few times a month I go through these webpages and categorize them into proper sections or discard them.

Let me know if you have found OneNote useful or whether you have some other platform to store your information. I am always up to trying something new!