Note-Taking Newbie? Your 30-Day Plan to Master Any App!

Once you've picked a Notes app, how can you start using it as effectively as possible? If you've been following along, you've already picked a note taker style, reviewed the most popular Notes apps, and picked your own to get started with. You should honor that work by committing to your new platform for the next 30 days. It's better to make progress with the wrong app for 30 days than to make no progress at all by switching after three days. We're not going to capture every single piece of information perfectly, organize it, or read 20 books in a month. We just want to get 10% more value out of what you're already doing. Here's how. Step one is to identify the most important inputs that already exist in your life. If you're a knowledge worker, the most common input is probably email. This is a category all its own. And if you're interested, I suggest you check out the full video that explains my entire email system step by step. But there are a lot of other possible inputs in your life. Here's a few examples. Social media, podcasts, videos, ebooks, paper books, conversations, work meetings, articles, chat messages, PDFs, newsletters, and even just thoughts you have on long walks. So in your Notes app, let's create a new note. Might be the first note that you create. To start categorizing these inputs, title the note My most Important Inputs and write down your top inputs in life where you receive the most inbound information on a daily basis. Now, as you come up with your list, try to rate them. Rate each one in terms of two things, its value and its volume. For its value, label it as high value, medium value, or low value. And same thing with volume. Is it a high volume input, medium volume input, or low volume input? And look, if you don't know the answer to those right away, just, just keep this note that you've just created open throughout just one or two days. Every time you get a new input, you have a conversation, you think of a to do. You read something, you watch something, or you have an idea, just ask yourself, where did it come from? And write it down right in that note. Okay already, this is fascinating. What does this tell us? Some of the inputs in our lives have more inherent value than others. If you're an academic, let's say there's probably countless PDFs and source texts you have to review. If you're, if you're, let's say, going to be a first time parent, there's probably more books and articles to read than you can keep track of. If you're learning to cook better, there's likely too many articles and recipes and grocery lists to keep track of. We have to consciously prioritize our note taking efforts. We cannot capture it all. And more importantly, we don't want to. We just want to Capture and get 10% more out of the most important and useful information that's already passing through our lives. Step 2 Capture what resonates next let's create a second note in our Notes app and title it Quick Capture. We're going to add to this note next. When a new source of information enters your life, you have a conversation with your spouse, or you go on a sales call, or you receive an important email, that information, that little piece of information has a suggestion for you. And the default suggestion is that this is important. Do this now. Drop everything. Instead of immediately accepting the default frame of that incoming information, you have a new option. You have a Notes app. When you encounter that information, open your phone or computer. Write it down. Don't act on it, just write it down in this new note called Quick Capture. If you're at your computer and you get an email, don't respond. Just write it down. Don't read the article, write it down. Don't watch that video. Write it down. This step shows why it's important to not switch your notes app for 30 days. A lot of us need to spend those 30 days just flexing our noticing muscles. We what's interesting and exciting to you? I call this phenomenon capturing what resonates. And it's probably the single most important skill in taking notes. Step 3 Reframe your inputs. So now it's the end of one day of strenuous noticing. You're probably tired. This is a big list of quick captured information. It's overwhelming. Realistically, the first time you do this, you'll probably give in and start doing some of these tasks immediately. If you couldn't resist doing tasks right away, that's okay. The ability to not immediately react to our inputs, not immediately do the urgent tasks, That's a muscle too. Let's create six new notes to start to put each of your inputs into the six main categories that you're gonna need for your productivity. You can title these notes tasks, read or watch later projects, areas, resources and archives. Each of these new notes represent your new categories of intention. First, tasks. These are any actions to dos that you need to take in the future. We can organize and sort them later, but for now, just move anything that needs any immediate or future action to this note. Separating tasks from all the rest of your notes is super important. Next, Read or watch later. This is a special category of tasks. Think of it as optional tasks, a place to store things that might be interesting to consume later, but you aren't going to watch or read now. Third Projects this is anything big that you want to do, a new idea or ambitious thing that you're working on now or in the future that will contain a lot of subtasks. Projects have a goal and they have a deadline. Things like planning and completing a specific piece of writing, finishing a multi week work project, or sending out a family Christmas card are all projects. Fourth Areas this is anything that's important to you to spend time and energy on, but that doesn't have a specific deadline. Your family finances are an area. Your your key life relationships are areas such as with your spouse or business partner. Your health is an area. Next, Resources this is going to be anything that you want to hang onto for future reference related to any of your interests, languages, history, sneakers, or film. Finally, the archives. This is where you drop anything that isn't needed to move any of your projects or goals forward. For example, if you captured something it seems interesting but isn't currently important or doesn't seem relevant to any of your current efforts, just move it to the archives. Okay, now you can see at the end of this process I have a bunch of to dos that I can work through all at once. Or I can sort them into sub lists of to dos that are for today, for tomorrow, for next month, for Sunday. I can add to DOS to a calendar app if I have one. But the key detail here the key thing to notice is that my actionable to DOS are separate from all the rest of my other notes. I also now have items that I can read later or watch later when I have time, if I have some downtime in my schedule, or if I want to spend some time reading or watching in the evenings or on the weekends or on vacation. I no longer need to feel overwhelmed or behind on my reading because it's always available to me if I need it when I want to read it. I now have a rough first draft of a project list. When I started this list, it was a bunch of random ideas and tasks and inputs. Now I can clearly see multiple important things in my life with actions that would move them forward, and I can spend my time intentionally working on these instead of vaguely hoping to do them someday. I now have an Areas list. If I ever need to find an idea related to any of these areas of my life I know where to check and I have a better sense of all the things I need to keep track of and support in my life. What this means is I'm much less likely to overcommit to too many projects as I know I will put my key areas at risk if I over commit elsewhere in life. I have a list of resources that I can check if I'm ever interested in those topics again, but at the same time I don't need to look at this list very often. I'm probably going to look mostly at my projects since those are the most relevant to me each day and I'll just check my resource notes when I need them. And finally, I have my archives. I don't ever need to revisit these if I don't want to, but they aren't cluttering up my other categories of notes and thoughts in the meantime. Step 4 begin a daily Practice okay, so now that we have our Quick Capture and we're starting to gather inputs in our life and sort them into new categories based on what they actually mean to us and our specific circumstances and objectives, let's talk about how to make this a practice. First, every day, capture Notes into your Notes app. Whenever something resonates with you, save it to your Quick Capture note. Second, start every day by simply reviewing your task list. Note what's important to do today. Third, once or twice a week as often as makes sense for you, review your Quick Capture and sort it into the new notes we talked about in this video. That way you can focus on your tasks and set aside time to consume new content, work on major projects, or find the important resources that matter to you based on category. Lastly, once a week, review your projects and areas notes. If a project was completed, move it and all the information about it to the archives for your active projects, the ones you're working on right now. Add new tasks to your task list so you can move the project forward. This week when you check your daily tasks for your areas, check out anything new and make sure you create tasks for anything important that you want to honor this week. If you consistently follow this practice with your Notes app, any notes apply, I guarantee by the end of 30 days you'll have a radically transformed sense of peace, control and momentum in your day to day life. Let us know what you learn or any questions you have in the comments below. And if 30 days or 60 days or 90 days from now, you want to learn more about how to use your projects, areas, resources and archives effectively and apply these categories more rigorously choose. Check out our complete video series on PARA on this channel which has a step by step guide to organizing and growing your note system over time. Thanks for watching and for joining us on your own journey towards building a second brain.