It’s true: my mind is an ever-collapsing sand dune of ideas, inspirations, needy rants and buried treasure in the form of secret, detailed amazing memories that may or may not be completely fictitious. It is subject to the merest hint of a breeze, reshaping thoughts and feelings and plans. It simply cannot focus, instead sniffing and somersaulting into new territories like a greedy ferret.

Recently I have been extolling the virtues to anyone who would listen – and many who weren’t – of OneNote. It comes free with the Microsoft Office suite (2007 onwards, or you can buy it as a standalone package), and has quietly revolutionised my burgeoning collection of ideas, quotes, favourite words, things to do, places to go, secret recipes…everything in fact.

OneNote is an application that allows you to create multiple online ‘Notebooks’, linking pages, ideas and research together. I dabbled with it a few years back but was wary of its ‘handy hints’ and offers of help. Wasn’t a simple word document just as good Actually, no.

I stumbled into OneNote again recently and was re-inspired by notes and tit-bits I had collated in my initial foray, and subsequently forgotten about. I could pinpoint the exact dates too – OneNote automatically saves that information for you. Not just a snappy name then.

*** Disclaimer – I am in NO WAY associated with Microsoft or working on commission ***

You can have as many Notebooks as you like. Mine have names like Journal, Creativity, Writing. Within each Notebook you can add numerous tabs along the top for different sections. So in my ‘Writing’ notebook I have tabs called: Quotes, Fonts, Words, Research etc. Within each tab you can create different Pages down the side. Under the Journal tab for instance, I just add a new page for each entry I write and give it the title of that date. Simples.

I keep it open while browsing the net and paste things into all different Notebooks and Pages, often creating new tabs to cover new subjects… like coveted fashion and accessory must-haves.

Unlike word, things don’t need to sit within a page from left to right, all uniform and in straight lines. You can paste anywhere on a blank or busy page so you can overlay ideas if you like or add lines linking them. This greatly appeals to my non-linear thought process. 

Each little posting or word or line of text can be formatted differently to highlight it or plot relationships between ideas. Once you start playing about with it, you will, like me, wonder how you ever managed without it.

It also pastes the url of where the information was originally found, which can be handy when doing research. And you NEVER need to click save so everything is automatically stored and safe. Unless your computer shows you the screen of death and you haven’t backed it up. Let’s not think about that.

The pièce de résistance? You can add password-protection to pages with all your super-secret extra cool I-would-die-if-someone-stole-this-from-me ideas. I use that for my Journal. And cocktail recipes.

All I need to do now is transfer a decade of random notes into their new, digital depositories. I’ll probably keep the hard copies for use in a collage one day. And dedicate it to OneNote.

As a comparable sidekick: Google Docs also warrants a mention here. Again, not on commission, but wouldn’t say no to a large influx of cash. If you want.

Anyway, I only discovered Google Docs when my IT-professional husband mentioned it in passing. I leapt on it like a cantering horse and wondered why he had never thought to introduce me to it before. He thought I knew…maybe I’m the last to know?

Upload any kind of document to the simple G-Docs portal: text, images, presentations, spreadsheets et al, and you can work on them, share them with friends/colleagues and access them anywhere, without having to clog your email system with large files or remembering to take things around with you on a memory stick (and end up unable to retrieve said files because you aren’t allowed to use an un-encrypted stick in your library/uni/place of work. Delete as appropriate.)

It also means never having to save your precious work on a computer that isn’t your own, as you can create any type of file you like from scratch and work on it over the net. It also has a fool-proof saving mechanism that automatically saves your work every few seconds. And it’s totally free. What’s not to like?

The furious horses of creativity propelling me into new and exciting stables of thought have finally slowed to a trot. I can stop and breathe. Thanks to OneNote and Google Docs, I can glue my ideas into a semblance of useful order. And print them out and play with them and reorganise them in groups and patterns and visit them in cyberspace for like, ever.

In: Lifestyle, Wannabe Journalist, Writing | tags: brainstorm, creativity, docs, files, google, google docs, microsoft, mind map, mind mapping, notebooks, one note, onenote, organising, pages, planning, tabs. | #