Skip to main content

OneNote as a Task Management Tool — My System for task management

OneNote 2013 and OneNote in general is a very useful task management tool. It is really designed for note-taking and organizing your notes. When it comes to task management, its main purpose is not to organize your tasks unless you use it together with Outlook tasks, but I have developed a pretty good system that works well for me by utilizing some beautiful features of OneNote.
How did I end up using OneNote?
Over last 9–10 years I have spent time trying to improve my organization skills and as a result of that, I searched for tools that can simplify my professional and personal life. I liked the simplicity of Tasks application on early Blackberry phones and I was a big user of that app. I also went through the phase of maintaining my to-do list in text files and managing them via some useful editors such as Notepad++, Editpad, and CrimsonEditor. As my role and responsibilities changed and as the need for rich text format notes increased, I needed to find a tool that is Microsoft Word with better organizational features. That tool ended up being OneNote. I call OneNote IDE / Visual Studio for notes and tasks; if you are a tech person, you know what I am talking about.
What exactly do I use OneNote for?
- Taking notes in meeting
- As a knowledge base application (aka my Wiki)
- Reading emails and saving a useful piece of information/email into my Wiki in OneNote
- Keeping track of tasks that are current
- Keeping track of tasks that are in the backlog
- Organizing the tasks and all the details for my projects
- Sharing notes and to-do tasks with the team through a shared notebook in OneNote
- Team collaboration through a shared notebook in OneNote
Why OneNote?
It is a complete solution for note taking and organizing notes. If you use GTD (Getting Things Done) concepts, then you can use it for task management. However, if you expect to be reminded to do a specific task, you will either have to integrate OneNote with Outlook tasks or find some other product that had alerting system. Please watch my YouTube video below to see the system I am talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiI_AERTCYo



Thank you for reading this article. 

Almir Mustafic


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brand New programming language and one solution OR …

Brand New programming language and one solution OR Two existing programming languages, one solution for EACH? I understand that there is no right or wrong. It all depends on your software architecture, team structure, team skills and other factors, but I still want to explain the scenario as it may look familiar to some. Let me explain. Let’s assume that you have microservices and common libraries in two major programming languages. You have some teams who are experts in one and some teams experts in the other programming language. Now you need to come up with a solution for a scenario that all teams will need to leverage. Let’s assume that your cloud platform has an off-the-shelf approach for this but it is supported by a 3rd programming language that your teams do not have much experience in. What is the right thing for your organization and not just from the technical point of view? A) Do you embrace what your cloud platform gives you off the shelf and implement thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

10,000 foot level view in technology

10,000 foot level view in technology: How useful is it? What can be done at this level? If the 30,000 foot level is the CTO level, then consider the 10,000 foot level as the level that software engineering managers and directors operate at. To achieve the success at 10,000 foot level, you as a software engineering manager need to dive deep into technical details, help the team lay the foundation from BOTH organizational and technical side. It is the little moves that get the team to this level. Once the team’s applications and results at that level, then you as a manager have ability to perform the high level analysis and troubleshooting without necessarily being in code on daily or weekly basis. Therefore, your ability to troubleshoot technical issues at the 10,000 foot level is a testament to the great work of your team. Go TEAM !! Almir Mustafic
Post a Comment
Read more

Programming languages to teach students in high-school and university

Python-like or C-like as the language to introduce programming to students in high school and university? The question is: Do you introduce programming concepts to high-school/university students using languages that handle memory and other things for you or do you start introducing all of these concepts in languages like C that require you to understand all aspects. I will tell you what worked for me. I was introduced to programming in grade 10 using Basic programming language. There was a version called Better Basic and also Quick Basic. Then in grade 11 we learned procedural programming in a programming language called Turing (not Turing machine but a Pascal-like language developed by University of Toronto for teaching purposes). Then a year later, I started getting interested in C and C++. As you can see, I eased into the languages that introduced me to NULL exceptions and memory leaks :) With this approach I was not overwhelmed and this set up the foundation for a fun journey ...
Post a Comment
Read more