Using the best software to benefit your life from a Strategic Planner
We are constantly learning and often writing down the knowledge we learn in notebooks or scraps of paper that gets filed away. I’m here to share a little known (actually an open secret) on how to get and stay organized if you are a student, professional, or just an engaged, busy person with travel and life. My skillset is founded on Microsoft projects, and one of the most potent tools that saved my career is called OneNote. I began using this software once I achieved the position of Director of Planning for a $1 billion new resort development. I reported to the company president and helped him manage eight company divisions (Admin, I.T., Finance, Marketing, Security, Hotel, F&B, and Human Resources. I was overwhelmed and needed help to keep track of my to-do list and other critical action items owned by the divisional executives. I asked existing project managers who kept composition notebooks of their meetings and action lists, but that method is an old school solution to a 21st century management issue.
Composition notebooks are often used by project managers to record meeting notes and follow up action items. This form of note taking is outdated and is cumbersome and only provides an analog physical search option to look up prior data.
Thankfully an I.T. professional gave me the work life-changing advice to use OneNote by Microsoft. This is a remarkable tool to help organize enormous amount of notes, action lists, research, contact information and all other important information you need at a moment’s notice.
Since learning about OneNote about fifteen years ago, I’ve been a user ever since. I believe it is one of the most beneficial tool for a busy professional or student for elementary school, middle school, high school, college or at the graduate level. I used OneNote for my two year executive MBA. By using this software, I was able to stay organized and access all of my notes from the cloud from any device at any time. I had confidence that my important material was backed up in several locations so it didn’t matter if I left my notebook at home – I could just pick up my phone, tablet, PC or Mac to access my notes.
Enough discussion on this topic; an excellent example of Microsoft OneNote is a five-minute video of my favorite OneNote notebook. You can also visit the video on YouTube at this link. (I recommend watching the video in YouTube for the full screen option plus you can increase the speed to 1.5 times to reduce the time to 3 minutes.
Thanks for watching and please comment if you have used OneNote or can offer other suggestions for note taking or staying organized.
Plan the Plan 