How Do You Keep Track of Your Notes and To Do Items At Work?

35 comments

1. I currently have a white board full of todos.

   I used to use todoist which was handy in proving to my boss all the things I do throughout the year, but it got annoying to keep switching screens.

   At the bare minimum using Google suite to track is better than word because all edits and versions are backed up

2. Try OneNote which is part of the Office suite of products. There are Notebooks and then Chapters to help organize. It’s pretty free form and has good widgets like check boxes and also what’s nice is for other MS products you can “Print to OneNote” and then the entire doc will show up on the page of notes you want. So if you’re taking notes during a preso you can put the preso right next to your notes.

3. Google Keep on my phone.

4. I know you mentioned not getting into OneNote, but it is a great tool once you figure out a good hierarchy for the notebooks and sections.

   If you’re limited to Microsoft tools, see if you can get To Do…good for checklists, recurring tasks, and the like.

5. I’ve used Outlook for pretty much everything for almost 20 years now. I’m not sure what more you would need, if you’re looking to manage tasks, calendar, emails, etc? Perhaps Onenote if you really need to manage written notes beyond what you can add to a calendar item or task?

6. note =OneNote

   todo = Microsoft Todo

7. Handwritten bullet journal, plus really good distributed meeting notes after every meeting I am running or a major stakeholder in. Sucks while doing but lifesaving in the long run.

8. No help here, just glad I found someone else who doesn’t get OneNote. It’s just a blank word doc to me.

9. Trello. Synced between phone and computer.

10. I use a pen and a notebook purely for the satisfaction I get from physically crossing things out.

11. Text documents and folder structure with VScode. Don’t need Admin privileges, and is Microsoft, so IT might be ok with it.

12. You really need to give one note another try. Figure out how you can organize stuff in it. If you want examples of how I do it, let me know.

    Also, teams meeting notes are great

13. Here’s how I use OneNote:

    -Create one notebook per year, “Kate’s 2022 Notebook”

    -Each month, I create a new section, “January 2022,” etc.

    -1 page per week, “week of January 1″

    … Then I basically freestyle the jumble of notes I take all week, creating to-do lists, linking docs, sites, meeting notes, etc. Occasionally making a new page for meetings or special type notes.

    Then every Friday I regroup and start the new ” week of..” section and bullet my list of to-do’s and reminders, etc.

    At the moment I’m not using it (though I love that system). So I’m using Evernote, but the structure isn’t the same, so it’s not as organized. Right now I’m working between my Evernote file and using a Google doc Meeting Notes (create a new one every week) to share with my team for our weekly meeting (where I present what I’ve done in the past week, and next steps moving forward.

14. One note

15. Give OneNote another try.

    Also, why not a physical notepad and pen? I use that for smaller tasks that I need to do and then cross it off when it’s done.

16. I use MS Planner for everything since I also had to stay in the Microsoft suite. AMA.

17. Pen and paper

18. I use MS Planner and add a new project to the board for anything that needs doing. I also create some template tick lists for more complex tasks so I can make sure o cover everything off.

19. I use Microsoft Onenote.

    I can separate by segment and department. I can share notes and allow others to add if needed.

    My responsibilities cover marketing, creative, sales, operations, and business development. I take nearly transcription level of note taking during meeting.

    Onenote allows me to pound out notes in a consistent structure that is shareable across devices and team members.

    It works well for me.

20. I use the bullet journal method. Been using it for years and it really works if you keep up the discipline.

21. Bullet journal for the day-to-day, and then I keep individual notebooks for each project meeting/bucket. Keeps everything in one place that way; digital notes do not work for me.

22. One Note is ok… can lose stuff here and there.

    For personal..
    Teams – Task Board view with categories.
    New, In Progress, Blockers, and Completed

    Other Teams I’m on.
    Azure
    Agile

23. Oh an absurd amount of post it notes I’m constantly crossing things off of and piling up.

    It ain’t much but it’s honest work

24. Google keep. We use G-Suite at work so I keep the tab open in Gmail.

25. My workload tracker is in Excel. I’ve tried OneNote a few times but, like you, never really liked it. Minor tasks and notes are kept via Outlook.

26. Sticker notes on my monitor

    I don’t always keep up to date others on my phone and I’ll forget to look at it for updates

    If I’ve got a few bright yellow pages starting at me all day I’m sure I’ll look at them a few times a day

27. This won’t be helpful but whatever. I use notes in my iPhone. You can use the check feature to check things off. I can share the note with my boss and laborer so we all can add or subtract things in real time.

    FYI I I’m a journeymen carpenter building and remodeling houses.

28. OneNote works fine for me as long as I spend a few minutes every few days managing/organizing it.

29. Todoist. App for your smartphones and for your computer.

    Best $4 I spend every month.

30. I use a notebook and a pen for daily/weekly priorities and to-dos, and then I have templates in PowerPoint, Excel, etc. for the regular reporting functions (I’m a construction consultant, currently managing new data center builds for a FAANG company).

31. I do a couple of things. I created categories for outlook (need to work / external response needed / internal response needed / submitted to project team / etc). I create tasks in outlook just for reminders. I use a excel spreadsheet for details. Create an Open tab. Columns: customer name ; customer I’d ; category of the task or issue ; detail explanation; due date : action items (date and what happened) ; where it’s at ; current status category. Once it’s done I move that line to a Closed tab.

32. >Some of my co-workers swear by OneNote, but I’ve never really clicked with it.

    I nay-sayed OneNote for years, in favor of my own system of paper notes, Outlook folders, and files organized in folders.

    What finally turned me on to it was these things:

    * You can drag e-mails into OneNote. Every project of mine has an “e-mails” section where I drag each e-mail onto its own page with a date, descriptive title and maybe a quick summary of the contents. I also drag over powerpoint, excel, etc. By the end of a project, my OneNote for that project is like one-stop shopping for the whole project.

    * Outlook meeting integration. You can “add meeting details” to a notebook page, and it will show who was invited and other info right there with your notes. You can also click the “e-mail button” to send minutes out to everyone who was invited automatically.

    * The search function is really good (though it does *not* search in the contents of files attached to OneNote pages)

    * Sharing with others. If your OneNote is on a shared rive, you can send a link to your OneNote page, or tell them “It’s in the OneNote” and they’ll know how to find it themselves. You can e-mail a single page of notes to someone. It works better than Teams, Sharepoint, and Shared Drives.

33. Habitica and obsidian if you like markdown syntax. Put the obsidian folder on whatever ms has for sharing folders, sync with phone that way. Habitica is great because of recurring to-dos. Haven’t seen that in other todo apps. The rpg aspect I mostly ignore except for levels, which gaming my recurring todos.

34. Excel gant chart, outlook calendar, outlook tasks, post it notes, personal phone with tasks, google keep, calendar, field notebook, word or txt docs, and wall calendar. All in no particular order, and in varying degrees of adoptance or regularity of use.

35. I recently moved everything into Apple Notes and Reminders, as it was spread out across a dozen or so tools I bounced around and tested over the years. However, this isn’t ideal as I am also in a MS heavy environment, so the stuff is locked to my laptop and I can’t access it on my phone like I could with the MS stuff… but I’m ok with not having work on my phone. I finally decided that 1 imperfect place is better than 15 imperfect places. In my search to get from 90% of what I want to 100%, I made a giant mess. But I did learn a lot along the way.

    I used MS To Do for a while, it worked pretty much the same as Reminders. I liked it well enough, but it would crash from time to time on the Mac. I’ve messed with Planner a bit, it could work, but it really depends on the type of work you do and how you like to work. When I was doing my consolidation I found a ton of stuff in Planner that I had no memory of doing, lol. The downside of Planner is that it’s only web based. I like having my To Dos right on my desktop. You can shrink the MS To Do app pretty small and throw it up in the corner with your Today items on it. I have been using the Ivy Lee method to avoid getting overwhelmed with things, but I usually pick 2 or 3 things instead of 6… https://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee

    I’ve also has issues getting OneNote to work for me. It is just too easy to let it get out of hand. I think it works best when you define a very simple structure and stick to it, to avoid it turning into a rats nest of notes. I’ve also found it helps to ignore the concept of writing anywhere, and just treat it like a normal text document with everyone in one big box.

    The other option for notes, which may or may not work for you depending on your needs, would be to just use a text editor. Something like VS Code (from Microsoft) can have a folder structure in the side bar with all your note files organized and searchable. Markdown can offer a way to format. There are also some plug-ins for using VS Code as a notebook if you look around. I’ve tried this on and off with VS Code and Sublime Text, but ultimately needed a little more flexibility in terms of easily adding images or tables. You can store your folder of notes on OneDrive if you want to have it backed up and available everywhere.

    You may also have access to SharePoint, which would be another option. At various times I’ve made my own personal SharePoint site and used it for notes and things. it’s a little bit overkill and too much to manage if you don’t actually need the collaboration features.

    Anything that actually has to be done at a certain time/date I put in Outlook. I don’t use my To Do app religiously enough to trust it for those kinds of things.

    This is what I’ve always disliked about Microsoft. There are so many tools and options, but 0 solutions. You just need to cobble something together and hope you can maintain it. The less complexity you create the better.

    One last thing…. Set some time aside at the end of the week to sort out and file away any stray notes or To Dos so you can stay on top of whatever you settle on. Without this you’ll always feel like things are an out of control mess.