Taking Notes...both analog and digital...

In my day job, I leverage Microsoft OneNote to keep track of everything.  Each year, I create a new digital notebook—currently "2014"—and create tabs for each month as I need them. Then each day gets a page with the tasks of the day on it. Conversations  and projects also get pages. Because OneNote is searchable, it is quick to find my notes because when "Joe Smith" calls again a few months later, I can quickly search "Joe Smith" and everything we discussed before is right in front of me.

The beauty of the OneNote platform is that of all the platforms I've tried, it is the best at allowing multiple users to contribute to a page in real-time. (Michele—my counterpart in our San Diego office—and I share the notebook. )  Each day has its projects and tasks, then whatever isn't finished gets moved to the next day's page.  As a system, it has worked so well that I've been using it since 2007 (with a few forays on other platforms to see if there was something better).

I recently discovered an analog system that I've started using for my personal notes called Bullet Journal.

Here's a short video that explains:

Or check out more about visual notetaking and journaling at yourvisualjournal.com.