Notebook 3 – OneNote for Mac?
Since switching to a Mac, there has always been one application for which I haven’t been able to find an equivalent. Windows users will undoubtedly have heard of Microsoft OneNote, which is the de-facto note taking application. Linux users have had Basket which does the same thing, but perhaps not as feature rich as OneNote.
There are lots of good note-taking applications out there for the Mac. None of these do however have the intuitive and easy to use interface bundled with the annotation features of OneNote. Some of the applications I have tried and have been using:
I finally found the Circus Ponies website which have a product called Notebook 3. I watched the screencast which shows most features in the application, and it seemed like a very interesting application to try out – and I was right.
Notebook 3 has everything one needs to read, write, collect and manage large information chunks. It can be used by students, in meetings, project management or almost anything. For an in-depth review, have a look at the above mentioned screencast.
The following image shows off some of the features of the application. Click on it for the full version.
So what are you waiting for? Head over to the Circus Ponies website and download the application.
Do you know other applications for the Mac which have similar qualities as OneNote?
My workflow in Things
I have previously mentioned Things, my preferred application for managing tasks and basic project planning. This post is about my workflow in Things and why it makes me more productive.
There are two tasks I do every day and every week. The daily task is to look through the projects and areas to see if there is something that I want or need to do today. The Next view is very helpful here too, since it provides a great overview of all projects and areas.
The second recurring task is done every Monday. It consists of project planning, and this is where I look through all projects and areas and plan what I will be doing that week. All projects that are on hold are moved to the Someday area, and all projects that are planned for the coming week or at any specific time in the future is moved to the Scheduled area.
Using Things this way makes it very easy to see which projects I should currently focus on, as well as keeping the inactive projects hidden to clear them from the point of distraction. One thing I rarely use is the Inbox area. I most often try to tag and place the task in the correct project right away when I add it using the quick entry dialog. This eliminates the process of interpreting randomly entered tasks and try to work out where to file them.
Add context and remember what to do
Have you ever found yourself looking at a scribble with just a number, a name or some other piece of information without any context?
Always add context when writing anything down.
Instead of just writing “Call Bill”, write “Call Bill about the car on 12345678″. Now you have every piece of information you need, because it will be impossible to remember everything.
How I get things done on the Mac
Having moved from a Linux desktop to a Mac, I have been forced to find new applications to help me read email, manage tasks and projects, take notes very easily and everything else work related. After investigating the options, I have found some applications which does their job very well. Read on to find out which applications are on the top of the game.
For reading email, I now use the built-in Apple Mail client. It does its job very well indeed, but it does lack some features. It is for instance not possible to use client certificates for IMAP and SMTP yet for some strange reason, but it was a breeze setting upp stunnel to listen for unencrypted connections on localhost, and forward these to the mail server, encrypted using my client certificate.
I also have problems with my todos, especially when trying to attach them to email messages. The following message appears in the log:
WebKit discarded an uncaught exception in the webView:didFinishLoadForFrame: delegate: trying to set a non-ToDo MailboxUid for a ToDo. The MailboxUid for a ToDo must be a ToDosMailboxUid
Hopefully Apple will have a solution to this problem soon.
For some pointers on how to keep the mailbox sorted out, have a look at 43 Folder’s Inbox Zero series, or one of the many Lifehacker posts.
Taking notes
Even though it is quite possible to store notes in Apple Mail, there is definitely a use for a more powerful application such as Evernote. If you are a Lifehacker reader, you will probably have it downloaded for free. With it, it is possible to take notes on just about anything, and if there is something interesting on a website, it is just a matter of selecting the text and select “Paste to Evernote” in the menu. Brilliant!
Evernote has a built-in syncing facility, which makes it possible to browse all notes directly on the web from any computer! There is also a Windows client, but I have not had the chance to try that one out.
Managing tasks
To manage tasks, the popular Things is the perfect choice. Although it is just a beta, it does what it’s supposed to do – and it does it very well! It also seems to match up well with other popular project management applications. For instance, read the iGTD2 vs Inbox vs OmniFocus vs Things comparison (Thanks Maria).
I fell head-over-heels in love with this application. Right from visiting the excellent website and then firing up the application for the first time, I knew Things was something special.
A pictures says more than a thousand words, so here is one (but with the words censored out though).
It displays the task in true GTD style, which will hopefully make it fairly easy to actually manage everything. For a more in-depth introduction, have a look at the screencast on the Things website.
Calendar
Most people would assume that using iCal would be the optimal choice. Perhaps. But most people I work with are using Google Calendar, which basically forces me to use it as well. There are some tools such as Spanning Sync for syncing iCal with Google calendar, but they all seem to have some problems. It works very well syncing to the phone using GooSync and subscribing to it in iCal.
I am quite happy with this setup, and it seems to be working really well. The only thing I can complain about is that Evernote does not save all formatting from websites, like for instance Apple Mail does with its notes feature. Not a big issue of course, since the text iself often is the important part, but still an annoyance.
Simplify your life with Scrybe
Although still not released, the video preview of Scrybe is remarkable. It is a web application but has full offline functionality, which puts it on a different level from other currently existing personal information management applications. Since it has yet to launch, it is hard to tell whether it will be a good product or not. The website states:
Scrybe is a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today´s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way. Simple solutions for some age old problems.
You just have to watch the video an decide for yourself.
Getting things done tips from Raible Designs
The good people at Raible Designs have written an article on how to get things done.
“The first and most important means to getting things done is to keep a todo list”
There are lots of good tips, so do take a minute or two to read the suggestions mentioned.
How to be better in school with a little effort
We have all been there — You sit down at the exam and look at the test, realizing that you know nothing about the questions. How can one turn this around and be one of those who always seem to get the answers correct on each exam?
The first thing is to know what kind of class you are taking. Is it a math or math related class, or is it about facts which can easily be read in a book? Math related classes are best experienced if you first read the relevant chapters before the class starts. It may not be easy, but try at least to scan though the text a couple of minutes before class. Try to refrain from taking notes, except where you know that it is not covered in the relevant books. It is much easier to grasp a complicated concept if you don’t have to worry about getting all the notes down on paper.
If you instead have a fact based class, you may also want to read the relevant chapters beforehand, but it is not as important as with math related subjects. When making notes, only write what is absolutely necessary and try to understand the message that your lecturer is trying to convey to you. After class, you may want to finalize your notes, and add other things that you might have come up with. When you later read the book, just add that information to the notes as well, so you build up your personal information store. It will be invaluable to you when the exam is coming close.
Ideally you would have read all course literature when there are two weeks left until the exam, and you would have a large collection of notes and information from all the lectures. Get yourself hooked up with some friends and study together. You will experience much better results if you work together with a few people instead of just sitting alone and trying to understand everything.
It is of course always good to reward yourself when you have been studying for an exam for a week or two. Go see a movie, buy a game, go out and eat or anything else you enjoy.
Getting things done starts at the desktop
To get things done there are lots of things to be done, such as stop procrastinating and to love your schedule, but there is one thing that I still have not touched — The desktop.
When I have no tasks, the desktop is completely icon free and the schedule is empty. I do often however, get tasks that need to be worked on. An example is articles and other freelance work. There is a document structure where all my projects, articles and other documents are stored. The basic idea is using something like this:
Documents/Publisher/Article xyz/
Under Article xyz there are some sub-folders, such as Research and Documentation. When I get an article request for example, I create this folder structure (basically adding folder Article xyz, and dragging a shortcut onto the desktop starting from the top left corner. The more important or high prioritized the task, the farther away from the corner it gets.
Of course, the calendar will show you what you will do at a given time, but the icons will help you make that schedule and prioritize between all the daily tasks a little bit easier.
Procrastination gets you sick
Psychology Today recently posted an intriguing article about the damaging effects on procrastination. There seems to be some serious health issues accumulated when being a chronic procrastinator.
Just over the course of a single academic term, procrastinating college students had such evidence of compromised immune systems as more colds and flu, more gastrointestinal problems. And they had insomnia.
It sounds rather frightening, as I also do procrastinate once in a while. It is mostly like pushing things after the weekend so I get some free time, so I hope to be in a safe zone for the moment. Success also seems to be affected by chronic procrastinators, which is fairly obvious since they seem to lack any kind of structure in their lives.
There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination. Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.
This is really fightening to say the least. Do read the article and try to figure out if you are in fact a procrastinator.
How to structure up your life
Have you ever been at that point when your calendar is full and your task list is falling apart from all items jotted down? Well, thanks to To-done and the How I learned to stop worrying and love my schedule article I have begun laying out all tasks in the calendar itself.
It may seem like a common thing to do, but when you use it, and I mean really use it, everything seems to fall into place automatically. There is no need to worry about what I am going to do next, or if I am focusing on the correct thing at the moment – Everything is laid out in front of me on my P910i.