Writing something down where it will be found
Notes keeps short-form writing against the work it belongs to — notebooks, sections and notes, with templates for the shapes you write over and over. This is how to write one that is still useful to somebody else next quarter.
When you have done this: A note in the right notebook, shared with the people it concerns, whose earlier drafts you can still read.
- 01
Make the notebook before the note
Notebooks hold sections, sections hold notes. One notebook per ongoing thing — a client, a project, a committee — rather than one per person. A notebook per person is a filing cabinet with everybody’s key on their own desk.
- 02
Start from a template when there is one
Agenda, Action items, Decisions, Discussion, Goals, Milestones, Overview, Purpose, Risks, Scope, Steps, Top priorities — or an empty note. Templates are not decoration: they are why the twentieth meeting note has the same headings as the first, and why somebody can skim for the decision.
- 03
Pin the two that matter, favourite the rest
Pinned is for the notebook — everybody sees it at the top. Favorites is yours alone. Confusing the two is how a notebook ends up with nine pinned notes and no top.
- 04
Share it with the people it concerns
Sharing a note gives named people a role on it. Shared with me is where the other side of that lands, so a note shared with you does not have to be found by searching for it.
- 05
Read the version history before you rewrite
Version history is there because notes get edited by more than one person. Read it before you replace somebody’s paragraph — often the thing that looks wrong is the part that was argued about.
- 06
Duplicate rather than copy and paste
Duplicate keeps the structure and starts a clean history. Pasting one note into another gives you two notes that look alike and disagree by Thursday.
- 07
Archive when it is over
Archive takes a note out of the way without destroying it. A notebook you never archive from becomes a notebook nobody scrolls, which is the same as losing it.
What people get wrong
- A note attached to the work it concerns is findable by the next person. The same note in a document on somebody’s drive is not.
- The activity feed and a note are different things: the feed is what the company is telling itself, a note is what the work knows about itself. Announcements especially should be rare enough to still be read.