Introduction
Nice to have you with us again for another episode of Digital 4 Productivity and the third chapter of “Using digital tools effectively”. And you know, it deliberately doesn’t say efficient, but effective, because it’s about using the right tools in the right way, of course, which brings us to the topic of efficiency, but it’s first of all important to do the right things. And in the first episode of this book, in the zero episode so to speak, we gave an overview of the book and then in the first two chapters we looked at how you can solve the issue of the message flood on the one hand. So “Stop the flood of messages” was the first chapter and the second chapter was “Coordinate your end devices”.
Top 10 tips from chapter 2
In the tried-and-tested form as an introduction, before we deal with the topic of notes today, here are the top 10 tips from chapter 2 once again, where the aim was to always have the devices coordinated with each other, because we can find many of these things again in the topic of notes.
Yes, the first thing you always ask yourself when you buy a new system is which system do I replace? Preferably two. You remember the 1-2 rule. If you want to have a new device every year, renting through Grover might be a good option for you. Then you are very flexible and don’t necessarily pay more, or even less, if you get a new device every year. There is no perfect operating system. Neither being a hater nor a fan boy will get you anywhere. Windows and Apple both have their strengths and weaknesses. Never store your data exclusively on end devices. This is simply dangerous and if you do it differently, you not only have the possibility that other people can access it, but you also have a data backup. This is especially true when it comes to notes, because I often find that a notes app is accidentally deleted and all the notes are gone. So that’s why this can be solved.
Yes, always use cross-platform systems. So, for example, I’ll make them fixed again and there’s always the bridge between the last chapter and this one. If you decide to use GoodNotes or Notability, for example, then you are in pure Apple systems that are available for the Mac, but not for Windows. So that means you’re back at a dead end if you decide at some point that you want to work on Windows again. So you work with systems that are ideally available for all platforms. That’s not always possible, but if it works somehow, like OneNote, a note-taking system that is really available for all operating systems. Yes, then check what you already have. OneNote, for example, is part of Microsoft 365, so if you already have it and are paying for it, then please feel free to use it.
Why should you set up data access from on the road?
Yes, set up data access while on the move, secure it via VPN and encryption solutions. You don’t really need this for notes. However, if you have systems such as a document management system where you have customer-related notes and there is no app for this, then it is important that you can access them remotely in case of doubt.
Save yourself the most expensive end devices
Yes, as a rule, don’t buy the most expensive end device, but the maximum, I always say as little technology as possible, no more, but also no less. Ideally, buy what you need and always set up your mobile devices so that the data is always automatically charged on the device and always automatically synchronized, ideally with an integrated SIM card. You know this from the iPad, I’ve been preaching it for a long time. But there are also notebooks, unfortunately not in the Apple range, but I have an HP Elite Book, for example, and I also have a SIM card in it. And that means that the moment the box is switched on and online, it automatically pulls the data. The only thing you always have to remember is that, unless you switch it off completely, an iPad is always on and pulls the data in the background. You don’t always leave a laptop on because the battery simply doesn’t last as long. So sometimes the devil or the benefit is in the detail.
Chapter 3: Make yourself effective digitally Notes
Yes, this brings us to the third chapter, namely “Take effective digital notes”. And here is a tried-and-tested introduction to the chapter. Do you know that? Whenever you think of something that you don’t want to forget, you rush to find a scrap of paper on which you can make a note of what’s important. Yay, now I have it in black and white. When you need this note again, the search starts all over again. Where has this piece of paper gone? Then jacket pockets, drawers and cars are searched. Of course, the note is at home when you are in the office and in the office when you need it at home. That’s why you’ve now switched to a notebook that you always have in your pocket. Great idea. The only annoying thing is that your assistant now has to keep asking you what you wrote down in the last meeting. Fortunately, thanks to your iPad, that’s a thing of the past. Now you have everything with you electronically if you have your tablet with you. Recently, your tablet didn’t start up as usual, which made you feel a little queasy. What if all my notes suddenly disappeared? I only have them on my tablet. And think about whether you should copy your notes to your smartphone and, above all, to the company computer in future. IT will probably block that. So perhaps you find yourself in one or other of these scenarios. I’m always amazed when I present the possibilities of OneNote as a synchronized notebook that many people look at me as if I’m somehow presenting the latest rocket technology. I’ve been using it for 20 years, I think. Even as an employed manager, I’ve been using OneNote on Windows phones for ages, when they were still around, on Palms and things like that. So you realize that the bottleneck isn’t always the technology, the bottleneck is often the people who don’t use the available technology. Yes, what are the three main problems with digital solutions? Point number one, we capture digital notes illegibly or too slowly. In other words, what I always experience is that people simply use the notes app one-to-one, because that’s the first one they have. And then you have to think about how do I email it on again? Or you end up making handwritten notes that are simply no longer legible. At least that’s how it is for me, instead of asking myself the question okay, how do I do it properly?
Yes, then the note apps, that’s the second big issue, are often not compatible with each other. For example, I have GoodNotes, which is great on the iPad if you have a Mac. But this format is only partially compatible with Windows. Of course you can export them as a PDF file, but you always have to remember to do it. And even if you have automated it via an auto-backup, you can only ever make these notes on the iPad and cannot change them again on the PC. So when I look at the tax consultancy sector, it’s often the case that appointments are prepared and things are printed out from the workstation that used to be printed on paper are now printed digitally in OneNote notebooks. I can then comment on them with the client and then I have the option of importing them back afterwards. So in both directions. So you should always make sure that you work across all operating systems. So all solutions that cannot be used on all operating systems should really only be used in absolutely exceptional cases. Now you might be saying yes, I decided to use the iPad today and that’s a great solution.
Yes, if you opted for the Blackberry a few years ago, it was a good decision at the time. In the meantime, they no longer exist and the same could happen with the iPad. The probability is certainly lower, but even there the question is, okay, will it always be so dominant? And that makes it all the more important to work with cross-platform systems wherever possible.
Allow others to access your own notes
Yes, third problem. Others can’t access our notes. In other words, I often hear people say, yes, I’m perhaps using a Mac myself, I have my GoodNotes there. Yes, but the question is, can the assistant or the team access it? And that’s why I’m a big fan of working with systems like OneNote, which you can integrate into Microsoft Teams, for example. And then you can say, there are notebooks that only I personally have access to, and there are some that my entire team has access to, so you can save yourself a bunch of CC emails there. So that’s what these three systems are called. That’s why I always say, please don’t think in terms of note apps, but in terms of note systems, i.e. systems that allow you to write and access notes on all your end devices and, on the other hand, ideally also allow others to access them.
Yes, that is to say, these are the usual problems that I have there. And what are these things to say? What is number one to say? Exhaust all the possibilities of the note-taking systems. Point number one.
Convert handwritten notes into typed text
This means that you should ideally also use the option of being able to convert handwritten notes into typed text immediately, for example. This is now possible in most applications. It works natively on the iPad. This means that wherever you write a text, you can convert it into handwriting. I find it even better in OneNote. You can go to the pencil area in the notes application on the iPad and then there is a pencil, it says A for Apple Pencil and then you can simply write with the Apple Pencil and it immediately converts it into typed text. People often ask, does it have to be the Apple Pencil? Yes, sorry. Yes, it has to be the Apple Pencil. All other pencils are simply significantly worse. You can definitely use them if you say you have five children, like my esteemed colleague Thomas Skipwith, who has lots and lots of children. And if you have five children at some point and everyone wants an Apple Pencil, then it’s going to be expensive, you can also use cheaper ones for school. But if you are one of those who need a pencil for productive work for yourself and your iPad, then ideally it should be the Apple Pencil. Yes, then choose cross-platform systems. So here there are, I’ll say for me, two top dogs. One is Evernote, the other is OneNote. However, if you only have text notes, the text notes function in Outlook may also be enough for you. This is a function that I have used for years. Before OneNote came along, I always worked with Exchange and had my text notes in Outlook and I had them perfectly on my palms. I later had them on my tablets in a wide variety of operating systems.
These are Evernote’s greatest strengths
If you need more than text notes, then either Evernote or OneNote is a good solution. When is Evernote a good solution? Evernote is a good solution if you don’t use Microsoft 365. And Evernote has a great strength for me. There is an Evernote for Business mode where I can say, okay, there are business notes that, when an employee leaves, stay in the company. And when an employee leaves, they take their private notes with them. I recommend that if you use Microsoft 365, then I say to employees, please use your business OneNote exclusively for business matters. And everyone can also create several notebooks. That’s even a bit easier than an Evernote, where I say, okay, I practically have private notebooks, they’re private, business ones are business, or maybe I use Evernote privately and OneNote for business. So ideally, you should always use cross-platform systems and think about how you’re going to get out when you start, so separating business and private notes is an important issue. After all, when an employee leaves, they generally don’t want to steal data, but at least want to take their private things back with them. And if you only allow the employee to either take all their data with them or none at all, then business data will automatically flow out without the employee necessarily always wanting to do so. That’s why you need to make sure that you separate this properly and cleanly, also bearing in mind what happens when the employee leaves the company.
Set up sharing of notes or shared storage location
Yes, the third issue is that not everyone has access to these notes. Do you ensure that notes are shared? Do you use shared ones? You can share them or you can save them in a shared storage location. Or the highest school for me is in Teams. I think it’s a great solution that you can also have OneNote notebooks in Teams. Since one of the last updates, this has even been created automatically. The moment you have a Teams, OneNote is also created automatically. So this is something that used to have to be done separately. Nowadays, it is automatically included and anyone who has access to this team can then also access these notes. And so that makes sense. Yes, where you have to pay attention is that with Teams there is always the idea that you say, “Gosh, would I like to create private channels here again, to restrict certain groups of participants? I like the basic idea, but it has major disadvantages for me, because the private channels in Microsoft Teams are very functionally restricted. For example, if you hold a video conference, you can hold it spontaneously. But you can’t schedule one or you can’t set up a planner in a private channel. I hope Microsoft will change this at some point, as soon as Microsoft offers the same range of functions for private channels as for normal channels, it will make sense. Until then, I always say “no”, I’d rather create another Teams. But don’t always think about saying: “Who is allowed to see what?”, but rather: “Wait a minute, define the few exceptions where you say that not everyone is really allowed to see them, such as contracts and salaries. So yes, but everything else. So there are many things where I say, if you’re afraid that employees will spend the whole day searching through the network drives for information that they’re not allowed to see, then you have a different problem.
Tips and tricks for using the note-taking software
Yes, then maybe a few tips and tricks for using the note-taking software. So to say ideally OneNote is really the absolute recommendation for me. I haven’t mentioned Notion here yet, or only briefly. Notion is another system that is now very popular and can also be used on a browser basis. There are also many support areas that are organized via Notion. So for me, Notion, Evernote and OneNote are the three top dogs that you should take a look at. If you’re on Microsoft 365, I always recommend OneNote and it keeps getting better with every version. Let’s talk about the different versions again. With OneNote, there used to be the version, the big version, that was sold with Office. And then when Evernote started giving out free note-taking systems as a competitive solution, Microsoft said, I don’t want to give away my big OneNote version now, I’m going to offer a OneNote app that has limited functionality. And then, and you can also see this in other areas, Microsoft is now reaching a point where they are saying that they want to reduce this proliferation of different apps a little and want to work in a standardized way. And then it’s now the case that Microsoft wants to standardize more and more. In the case of OneNote, Microsoft said, I want to do it in such a way that I only have the app and we add functions that were available in the large version. And there was rightly a huge outcry, because the app could only be synchronized via the Microsoft Cloud, for example, and could not be exported locally. And fortunately, Microsoft then turned this around and now says that the large application is available and the small app will be discontinued. So from this point of view, my opinion of OneNote has also changed, because if OneNote had discontinued the large application, I wouldn’t recommend OneNote. In the meantime, I think Microsoft has made a very, very wise decision to make OneNote strategically viable in the long term.
Google Keep
Yes, Google Keep is a solution for pure Android users. I recommend it more for private use. And you can also use Microsoft 365 in the private sector. So just before Christmas, there’s always an offer for €99 for five licenses with full Office, with Exchange, with all the trimmings. It couldn’t be cheaper. So it’s really good.
Yes, Dropbox also comes with notes. But to be honest, that’s also the weak point of Evernote. They’ve always tried to add new functionalities, but then they’ve always cut back on focusing on the core topic. Whereas OneNote, in my view, has a good development in that it is a note-taking system at its core, which is constantly being expanded in stages, but remains a note-taking system for the time being. So it makes sense against that background. Yes, then if you’re on the iPad and you just need a white sheet of paper, then I recommend Unlimited Whiteboard. I used to recommend Thoughts. I still think Thoughts is good, but unfortunately Thoughts is no longer available in the AppStore, so I looked for an alternative. Thoughts had the great advantage that I could just start writing and I could then move my whiteboard in all directions.
Unlimited Whiteboard
With Unlimited Whiteboard, it practically starts at the top left, which means I can only move to the right and downwards. This makes it all the more important that you perhaps, if you know I want to go in all directions, that you simply move a little to the bottom right first so that you are in the middle of the sheet and have a little more space to move further. But of course you can also move it afterwards. So that works too. As I said, I don’t recommend GoodNotes as a note-taking system, but I do recommend GoodNotes as a note-taking app. For example, if you are presenting things, GoodNotes has a great presentation mode where you may already have prepared elements that you can add. And with Goodnotes, for example, you have the option of saying, when I zoom in, should it also be zoomed in on the projector or should it only be zoomed in for me? So this really is a great solution for presenting as a supplement to PowerPoint, as a note-taking app, not as a note-taking system. Notability also has the option of recording speech. Incidentally, you can now also do this in OneNote. So OneNote also includes many of the options.
Large PDF files are not suitable for note-taking programs
Yes, perhaps another reference to the topic of PDF files in the notes. I always see a lot of people editing large PDF files in GoodNotes. That’s not what these things are built for. This means that if you end up with a really large PDF file, in the worst case scenario you may not even be able to export it. So please edit large PDF files in PDF Expert, in the Adobe apps, that makes much more sense than with GoodNotes. So of course there are always points, similar to when you make a table, then sometimes the question arises, do I make it in Word because I want it to be nicer? Do I do it in Excel because I need to do the math? And if you want to do the math properly, then go to Excel, and I say, if you want large PDF files, please go to PDF apps like PDF Expert. The leading PDF editing and annotation program for me, rightly so, on the iPad, on the PC and on the Mac I would recommend Adobe Creative Suite or otherwise you have the option of also working with PDF Elements from Wonder Share. This is also available across all platforms for significantly less money than Adobe Creative Suite.
The pens & smart writing sets
Yes, then there are these Smart Writing sets. I’m a big fan of Montblanc, as some of you may know. I always think it’s a shame that, as digital as I am, I hardly ever write with my pens anymore and I had also looked at the Montblanc Smart Writing Set. I have to say it’s a cheek, because this pen, which is available for, I don’t know, €400 or something, is really the cheapest, I’ll say the lightest plastic rubbish. So, I’m sorry, it’s a far cry from the quality standards I’m used to from Montblanc. Even the book, hard leather, it’s almost like hard plastic in a car. So I really have to say it’s a cheek on Montblanc’s part. It’s simply not classy at all. The Moleskine solution, for example, is more elegant, even though it only costs a tenth of the price. I used the Live Scribe pens for a long time. They have the charm that they are very reliable, that in the first generation you had a connection to the PC. In the last generation, Live Scribe 3 and Echo have the option of transferring via Bluetooth to iPad with OneNote integration very well. I’m currently in the process of ordering a new one, the Nuwa Pen, but it hasn’t arrived yet. It’s a Kick Starter campaign. It has three cameras in it and the idea of the Nuwa Pen is that you no longer need special prepared note paper for it. Because with the Live Scribe, you always need this Live Scribe paper, which has very small, almost invisible dot patterns, and the system always recognizes which notebook you are in and which page you are on based on these dot patterns. And the Nuwa Pen makes it possible to write there, no matter what you’re on. I find that really exciting. So with that in mind, as soon as I have it, I’ll report back.
Top 10 tips from chapter 3
Yes, in conclusion, what are the top 10 tips from Chapter 3 on effective note-taking? Yes, think about what kind of notes you want to create. Several note systems can also be useful for this. For presentations, perhaps GoodNotes, for your notes, which you might also want to save as web clips, for example, as a note-taking system, I think OneNote is more suitable. And if you work with paper pens, for example, OneNote should always be the final storage destination. Yes, are you creating a replacement for the white sheet of paper for quick visualization and video conferencing? You can use the Unlimited Whiteboard not only in face-to-face meetings, but I often connect my iPad to my computer via Reflektor so that I have my iPad practically mirrored on a screen. I have my Unlimited Whiteboard on there, where I draw on it and then I transmit this screen in a video conference. If you then transfer the entire screen, another tip is to use the Logitech Spotlight Presenter. This gives you a virtual flashlight. And if you share the screen rather than the application, this is even shown in the screen sharing.
Yes, then that’s important. Always use the note systems that are available on all of your current systems, but ideally also those that you can use on other operating systems, even if you don’t use them today, in order to be future-proof and not go down any one-way streets. Work with note systems that have a web clipper and can archive web pages. You can say in OneNote on the iPhone, on the iPad, for example, in the PC browser at any time, I’ll save a page and then it will be saved in OneNote as a complete PDF file, which I think is excellent. You can search in it, you can make comments and if the page is no longer there, your note is still there. And you can also access it offline if you have OneNote, because OneNote is automatically synchronized offline as well.
Yes, then you work with note systems where you can also work with team notebooks and shares so that others can also work with them. When I look at my colleague Lang from Meisterkanzlei, for example, they have a One Note notebook for each client and this notebook is then available to everyone via either a network drive or now via Teams, where everyone who looks after this client can also access it. Yes, if you use Microsoft 365, definitely take a look at OneNote, you’re already paying for it anyway. If you like handwriting, try the Apple Pencil, possibly in conjunction with the Paper-like screen protector. Many people say oh, this smooth glass for writing feels strange. There is a roughened, roughened film from Paper-Like. If you put it on the iPhone, then it is, or on the iPad, then you have a rubbing feeling / writing feeling like on paper. Many people swear by it. On the iPad, in most note-taking apps, the full-text search in handwritten notes works brilliantly. So you don’t always have to convert a typed text. So if you work in Good Notes, for example, you can write by hand and it will find it afterwards. You can also write by hand in OneNote and it converts it automatically in the background. However, I always recommend that you use the options in OneNote, for example, to go to the A-Pencil for Apple Pencil and then it will immediately convert it into typed text. Yes, if you prefer to write on paper, try the digital pen solutions. The Nuwa Pen, as I said, is the most promising in my view. I can’t yet tell you from my own experience what it’s like. It’s in the pipeline. As soon as I have it, I will definitely let you know.
Conclusion
Yes, we’re not at the end of my life, but at the end of this chapter, where we have dealt with the topic of notes. And next week we’ll take a look at how to structure your digital file storage.
Yes, if the topics are of interest to you. For one thing, and I’ll put them in the show notes, you have a chatbot where you can ask more questions about the book. And on this page you will also find the link to order the book. Preferably from a bookseller you trust around the corner. If that’s too far away, you can of course also order from Amazon. I have also included the button on my page and you will also receive a whole host of video content with the book.
Yes, I wish you a lot of inspiration so that technology doesn’t make your life easier, but rather, stop, doesn’t make it harder, but rather makes it easier. That’s the idea. That is my mission, that technology is not an annoyance, but that technology makes you more productive.
With this in mind, I’m looking forward to next week at Digital 4 Productivity.
Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
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