Sharpening the Saw

A year ago I found that although the method I was using with OneNote was not necessarily broken, it certainly was not as effective as I needed it to be.  Here is how the original recommendations stacked up with regular usage:

• Keep It Stupidly Simple – As the amount of data captured increased, the notebook-minimalism approach just did not work.
• Quick Notes as the Inbox – This worked well, with Quick Notes becoming the clearing house for nearly everything.
• Set Up Send To – So, if Quick Notes is still a good idea, we still need to set up the Send To feature.
• Use Meeting Notes – Still a good idea.
• Tag Actions – Actions still need to be tagged, but custom flags (even a few) became a maintenance burden.
• Date Actions – To take advantage of sorts, we had to change our system settings for dates.  This had some impact on other applications, such as Excel.
• Search People, Place and Things – Still a good idea, especially if compared to a plethora of custom tags.
• Keep OneNote on OneDrive – Mostly yes, but in itself it is not adequate for sharing and collaboration.
• Daily Routines – Still a key part of staying productive.
• Work Journal – This turns out to be a personal tool that does not necessarily apply to everyone.

So, I committed to use 2019 as an experiment in rebuilding my productivity process in order to address these weak points.  Now, the list looks more like:

• Start simple, with “My Day”
• Start “My Day” with a daily routine
• Use Weekly Reminders
• Use Checklists
• Flag emails
• Use Meeting Notes
• Use Quick Notes
• Use Teams notebooks
• Track Project tasks with MS Planner
• Use “My Day” as a dashboard across O365

In the coming weeks I will be posting more about each of these.