New Note Taking Solution that Saves Time and Increases Your Productivity | Ep. 104 | Business Podcast
Summary
Resourceful entrepreneurs and business owners are always looking for ways to save time and increase productivity.
Note taking saves us time and and also costs us time, time that we can’t ever get back.
It saves us time because we record information we need and want to retain…
It costs us time because:
1) it can be hard to find the note we know we have, but can’t find, easily or quickly when we really need it.
2) it’s hard to share notes with others. We have to take a picture then sent it to ourselves and then email it or worse scan it and then send it.
I developed a note taking system and used it for over a decade, but I still had trouble finding notes and sharing them.
I found the best note taking solution so far, have been testing it for over four months and lay the whole thing out for you in this episode.
And yes, it saves time and increases your productivity!
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Hello Friends. Welcome to the show. Today. We’re talking about a new note taking solution that I found that I absolutely love and recommend to optimize your notes and be able to find them when you’re looking for him. Later. Here we go. Welcome to build the business success secrets. The only podcast that provides straight talk for entrepreneurs, whether you’re an entrepreneur, starting with an idea or growing your business.
This show is for you. We’ll teach you how to build a strong mindset, powerful body and profitable business so you can achieve success. And here’s your host, Brandon. See White, Almost everybody I know has some form or process or technique to take notes and keep track of them. And I have been using a mole skin gritted notebook probably for the last 15 years to take notes. I really like handwriting my notes. It helps me remember them and for whatever reason it’s just different than typing. I know it’s not quite as fast, but it just has a different effect for me. But one of the challenges that I’ve had and I’ve created a whole bunch of systems have tried to keep find all these notes.
But the biggest challenge is is that when I go back to find the information, It’s been very hard. So probably over the last 10 years I created the system that I have stars, round circles filled in round circles, a light bulb and three lines. And each one of these things in my notebook means something. So the three lines means this was a meeting or a phone conversation.
A star means that it’s just a general piece of information. A circle filled in as around. That means I need to do it right away. And a hollow dot has meant that I need to do it, but I don’t need to do it within that week necessarily. And the system worked. And then at the top what I did is I record the what I call metadata, it’s analog metadata. But I would put a line and then up above I would put short notes of everything that was on that page. So that when I flipped through it later to try to find something, I could look at the top of the pages and I could see the topics on there without having to flip through each page and reading through each one.
And then what I would do, believe it or not at the end is I would create a table of contents because I would number all the pages and then I would go back in the beginning, I had saved a few pages and actually I always didn’t do this. I know JIA mei e a extraordinary is listening and I would give her the book and I would say please go through and create this table contents. And then she would do that. And then I could look back in all of my books and find my notes. But I don’t know about you if you ever had this problem, but you’ll remember that you took a note. You know, you have these notes on either a meeting or a product or something important and then you can’t remember where it is in the notebook nor what notebook it is because but you can see it in your head and that’s been a challenge.
And I’ve spent a lot of time looking for notes that I know I have but I can’t find and I been there, I’ve tried different types of things. I tried typing notes. I just don’t like that. It didn’t work well for me. And it also when I type notes like that, I would want my laptop. And if I was in a meeting, it creates this barrier between you and the person that I just didn’t make it feel good. And then even if we’re doing zoom meeting, I’m looking down and typing and I’m not looking at the camera, which makes it look like I’m not paying attention.
So I just didn’t like to feel that. And I had been tracking the technology of handwriting notes on a ipad or like device. And I was sort of hesitant about it, but over I think it was the holidays. I said, you know what? I’m going to dig into this and just take a look and see where the technology is. And I came across a bunch of websites with reviews and one of the products that stood out was this app And I have no interest in this app. I get paid no money. I selected it because based on the criteria, I probably looked at 10 of them.
This had the features that I wanted. Uh I was looking for when I was looking for is I wanted to be able to convert my handwriting to text relatively easily and I wanted to be able to search meaning. It could search my handwriting for keywords, topics and things like that. And this app, good notes apparently did that. I said, what the heck the other advantage that I was looking for is one of the challenges that I have with GEA. And and actually event my wife is I take these notes and how do you share them without having to go back.
What I used to have to do is I take a picture, fine, spend the time, find the information in my notebook. I would take a picture and then I would text it. Um But and sometimes I draw things if we’re doing a new product or a new app or a illustration, I’ll draw it in my notebook and then I would take a picture of that and send it. It just seemed really cumbersome. So now I’m creating more email. Uh huh. We’ve got texts all over the place, then we can’t figure out if it was in the email or the text.
It’s a whole another problem that company that I’m investing called file finder fixes which it helps you find files, you know you have but can’t find faster but more on that another time. Right now we’re talking about notes and good notes. Apparently did that. So what I did is I built, I bought a mini ipad, I’m looking at it right now and I got the good notes and I got a normal Apple pencil because apparently the Advanced Apple pencil doesn’t work with the mini ipad. It only works with the Pro for whatever reason.
Anyway and then I did some research and JIA help me find a cover, a clear cover for the ipad that’s designed for note taking. So it sort of feels like paper and I’ll be honest, I was really hesitant, I did not think it was going to work But it is now April 15 and I’m looking at this thing and I will tell you that I absolutely love it. I do not think I would go back to my moleskine notebook And I’m a pencil person. So I always write in pencil. I love pencil and I just I love the feel. Um and whatever it does, it’s just different than 10 for me, you can also erase it. Um This Good Notes app has been absolutely incredible and it does the things that’s advertised, it searches my handwriting with actually incredible accuracy. It can turn my notes into text if I need to or want to send them. It makes shapes automatically.
It has colours, it has a grid, what do we call it, template and which works incredibly well. It has unlimited paper, so to speak. It syncs with JIA and my wife if encrypted if you wanted to do that, which it does and it’s just incredible and it really does feel like your handwriting. I know that if you’re if you’re like I type of person I am who really likes to write in pencil or pen and a notebook and you liked that feel, you wouldn’t believe that it could actually produce that feeling. But it does.
So if you’re looking for a new solution, oh I should also say because I’m looking at it right as I’m talking you can actually import pictures into this grafts. So you can embed things in your notes. You could take a picture and bed that in there and then you could write and draw on it, which I do sometimes and mark things up and then send that. It’s just really cool.
Now I am using the same, what do we call it? Um, notation or little icons that I draw. So I still use a star. I still use three lines. I still use an open circle of close circle and the light bulb is ideas that I have. And the cool thing is is that you can draw it once and then you can copy it in good notes and then paste it in different places as you do that. So I’m still using that system but I don’t have to create metadata at the top. I can I still do a title at the top um but the title at the top really is just whatever notes that is on the page and then I have lines that they make straight lines.
I used to carry around a ruler, believe it or not in my moleskine notebook and I would draw two straight lines which would designate that. That was a new something, whether it was notes, meeting, notes, ideas, whatever it was. And now I don’t have to do that because you just draw you click this little button that makes a line even when you’re lying squiggly in a boom, it’s straight.
So this thing is really cool. I couldn’t live without it. The advantages I don’t carry my notebook and another device because this hooks up to the internet, I don’t have internet on it, but it can hook up to my hotspot when I’m on the move and it allows me to check my email and all that of course. But mainly I I really don’t use my ipad for anything else. But there’s good notes ap taking notes. So I highly recommend if you’re looking for something, check it out just for reference sake. I was waiting to do this podcast because I was waiting for myself to find a problem.
But I think we’re four months into this. I’m at 119 pages of notes already and I think that’s enough experience to recommend it to anybody out there. I don’t even think it’s that expensive. I think it’s under 10 bucks 9 99 for the app or something. I mean it’s ridiculous. Maybe it’s 29 99 for a year, I can’t remember. But it’s super cheap. It’s not even it’s so cheap that I don’t even remember. It’s not even worth talking about. So if you’re looking for a new or improved way to take notes, check out this application. It’s good notes. I think you can just good notes, Note taking.
If you google that google, good notes, note taking will come up with the app. It’s on the Apple Itunes store. I believe it’s an android as well. It’s yeah, there’s a computer app that you can install so that you can have your notes there as well. Check it out. See what you think. If you do try it, drop me a line via email, let me know what you think.
Thanks for being generous with your time and joining us for this episode of build a business success secrets. Before we go, let me ask you a quick question, Are you the type of person who wants to get 100 out of your time, talent and ideas? If so, you’ll love our monthly built a business success secrets newsletter. It’s a monthly playbook about the inner game of building a successful business. Recent issues have shown how to avoid losing money on Facebook and Instagram paid ads with this science-backed strategy, how to build a pitch deck to raise money in 13 simple slides, three tips.
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