Taking notes digitally has many advantages – your notes are accessible anywhere, easily searchable, and you to deal with bulky notebooks. However, when not organized properly, online notes quickly become a jumbled mess of disjointed information. By implementing some simple strategies for organizing your online notepad, you maximize efficiency and make accessing and using your notes a breeze.
Use sections to organize topics
The most effective way to organize disparate notes is to use sections to group related content. For example, you may have one section for work notes, another for personal notes, and additional project or class-specific sections as needed. Sections allow you to quickly filter down to the relevant notes you need access to without having to sort through everything. Take advantage of sections to organize notes by topic, project, purpose, or any other system that makes sense for your needs. Many online notepads like Ever note, OneNote, and Notion provide tools to create tabbed sections for further dividing your content. Sections transform your notes from an endless stream of information to a neatly organized filing cabinet https://notesonline.com/ check more info here.
Tag frequently for better
Once you’ve organized notes into broad sections, tags are the perfect complement for adding more layered metadata. Comprehensive tagging makes searching for specific notes far easier. Tag notes by keywords, project names, and people involved, locations, or any terms related to the content. When you need to pull up a note later, you search across tags rather than just note titles or content. Tags also allow you to sort notes in multiple ways beyond the overall structure of sections. You may tag meeting notes by date, participant, and location to intersect those attributes when searching. Take the time to add multiple relevant tags as you create notes to maximize their discoverability later on.
Outline long notes for readability
For lengthy notes spanning multiple paragraphs or sections, use outline formatting to create a visual hierarchy. Outline formatting includes tools like bullet points, numbered lists, and heading styles to break up walls of text. Visually partitioning long notes makes it much easier to quickly parse and locate the exact information you need when reviewing. Never create dense blocks of text without formatting – no one wants to trudge through that. A clear outline structure also helps reinforce the logical flow and organization when jotting down the note. Orderly headings, numbered lists and bullet points naturally force you to organize thoughts in a coherent progression.
Develop consistent formatting
Whatever formatting conventions you utilize for structuring notes, aim to across all notes. For example, always use h2 headers for main topics and h3 headers for subtopics. Or make bolding signify key action items consistently.
Consistent formatting ensures notes feel cohesive and easily scannable regardless of which one you open. Familiar structure also enhances your ability to synthesize notes taken over many weeks or months into unified ideas. To accomplish this, create a notation guide for yourself specifying formatting conventions to follow across all notes. Include details like when to use specific header styles, list types, emphasis, links, tags, images, tables, etc. Refer back to this style guide regularly.
