Hi all, I use Omnifocus, Evernote, Drafts and Goodnotes for the same thing, and get a bit lost when trying to collate to prepare for a discussion.
Let’s say through the week I write things that I want to discuss in a catch-up with someone on my team. I’ll jot them down somewhere and then in the meeting they’re all in one place ready for me to discuss.
Except they aren’t. They’re strewn across multiple apps that I need to search through. Not ideal!
How do you collate thoughts like the above in a way where you can easily pull up at a moment’s notice for a person or event?
Things I have to talk about with a particular person always go into OmniFocus, tagged with that person’s name. For a scheduled meeting involving multiple people, individual items may go into OmniFocus, but if there’s more they’ll go in either a list of notes for me, or perhaps in a more formal agenda. If it’s an agenda that I’ll be sharing with my coworkers it’ll either be part of the meeting appointment in the calendar or (sigh) Microsoft Word. If it’s just notes for me it’ll either be in Bear or in a Field Notes Steno Pad.
Kind of a variation on @ChrisUpchurch’s approach. I create an OmniFocus task due at the same time as the meeting. In the Forecast perspective the task sits next to the calendar entry. I don’ t keep the meeting notes in the OF task, since editing there doesn’t provide formatting options. I keep those notes in Outlinely, copy the Outlinely x-callback-url and paste that into the OF task so I can click it and open the outline of what I want to discuss. I can also keep notes as the convo occurs, if needed, in Outlinely. And I can format the notes as a checklist and tick them off as the convo occurs.
Everyone on my team is virtual and most interaction is by phone or Skype, so no one is bothered if we’re typing notes while we’re talking. If your interactions are face-to-face you might want paper notes which for me work better in a 1v1 setting than sitting behind a computer or smart phone while we’re chatting.
Limit the apps where I collect such things and entere in a reference in the main task manger as to the locations. For me I’d have a project in Omnifocus with the meeting as an action. Might have had prep actions before that and after action reporting actions after that one. In thenotes field of the project I’d put the locations of all support notes.
Example:
Project in OF “TDRC has a new Savings Account”
In the notes part of the Of Project
Paper signature forms in paper Action Support
Info on other data needed in DEVONThink in Action Support
List of questions for bank officer in DT in TDRC Bank Accounts ?Questions
Action “Meet with BOD of TDRC and get signatures for new account”
Personally I use Calendar, Evernote and Things for note taking and meeting prep.
I create a Note and then use its internal link both to the note field of the corresponding calendar entry and eventually into the note field of a project/task on my task manager (Things).
I find the link approach to be very reliable as I can easily get back to the same and updated note either through default EN search or simply by clicking on the link conveniently placed at the event/task.
Also it can be easily automated through Shortcuts. Even replacing the apps I use for their alternatives will work as well, as long as they offer any support linking to individual pieces of data. The idea is to have a central and only place to store information that can be accessed in multiple places.