Build the control center for your life with Noteplan 3
By: Didier Varlot
Tags: Productivity, Notes, Organization, Projects, Life

Build the control center for your life with Noteplan 3

How to build a productivity system that is central to your life but still simple around this new version of Noteplan. Didier varlot Nov 23, 2020·6 min read

Who I am.

I am a freelance consultant, expert in theory of constraints, a methodology of continuous improvement and problem-solving. I am also a project manager with a long experience of large project recovery (people call me when things go wrong, and I help them get their project back on tracks) and an industrial quality adviser.

This means that I manage several projects for different clients daily in addition to my personal projects and try to fit my personal life inside the big picture. I manage at any moment about 25 projects, most of them are small and takes a few days and a few are long-term ones.

I cannot do all this scheduling and managing in my head, I need a system to support my activities.

This system must run and synchronize smoothly on all my devices: mac, iPhone and iPad.

My past relationship with productivity apps

As far as I remember, I was always searching for the system that will help me manage my activity. I used things 3, todoist, Omnifocus, asana, trello, reminders, good task, tick tick, 2do, To-do. I was taking a chance with all the new productivity apps that was released and I can put my hand on.

In addition, I used agenda, bear, Ulysses (I still use it to write articles) and scrivener (I stopped using it recently, I replaced it with Ulysses) for my note-taking activity.

The lockdown forced most of us to think about our organization, even if I was used to working from home for the last seven years.

Recently, I decided to simplify my digital life and rationalize it. I had to design a better productivity system for my activity.

My needs

I began by creating a list of mandatory criteria that my system must fulfill.

Simplicity. The system shall include as few apps as possible while still filling all the functionalities.

Journaling for keeping track of information and progress on the projects I follow.

Quick access to my information, so a search function is a must-have;

The use of keywords seems obvious to categorize the notes and help find them later.

I manage projects for clients and family, so I need to be able to refer to people.

I adopted recently the PARA method of organizing my data, so the app shall be compatible with this method for organizing information.

My information needs to be safe and perennial, so I must be sure that the format of my information will not become obsolete. This means that my information shall not be stored in a proprietary format. I need it stored in an “open” format and the obvious one is text files. I adopted markdown during the last year, so it was an obvious choice.

The format of storing the information should allow me to access from different apps if possible.

I was conscious that this was ambitious, but I didn’t want any more compromise to simplicity and reduced number of apps.

Search for the ultimate solution

I reviewed all the options that came to my mind and retained mainly some that I used before:

Things 3 is wonderful. It works well with spark email app. But it is not possible to reuse the notes outside it, and storing lots of comments on a project is tedious and difficult to consult or search.

Agenda is not supporting markdown and the notes are stored in a proprietary format. Therefore, it was a no-go. I want to store notes for projects but also for references, and Agenda is not designed for this. A note shall be assigned to a project so you have to create fake projects to attach the references to them.

And then I received the announcement of the beta test of Noteplan 3.

I used Noteplan 1 and Noteplan 2 in the past, and I was pleased with it, but I let some influencers on the web influence me (this is what they do best) and I convinced myself to test other apps.

I decided to give a new chance to Noteplan with the version 3.

The main objective was to get a task/project management app that gives me the flexibility to add notes to task and projects to register the progress.

Love at first sight

Well, in fact, not really, but nearly.

Adopting an application to be the control tower of your organization needs you to understand first what the philosophy underlying it is, and what will be your philosophy using it. An application is a framework and you need to be sure that your organization will fit inside it.

Noteplan 3 offers calendar notes (linked to a date) and non-calendar notes. It has the flexibility to link any note to other information (internal or external to Noteplan), and offer backlinks.

The first task was to figure out how to organize my information inside this framework.

First, I created a set of folders:

I am using the PARA (Project/Area/Resource/Archives) method of storing information. I created a folder for each one of these categories. Later I suppress the dedicated Archive folder to use the archive function.

In the project folder, I created one note for each project that I am working on.

I also created two subfolders: one for projects “on hold” and one for supporting documents.

I store in the supporting document the notes that are related to the projects (minutes of meeting, call reports, progress notes). Each of these notes is linked to the project note.

I organize the project’s main note as follows:

The title of the note is the name of the project with some emoji encoding some clue of whom the client is and the time frame of the project.

The first section of the project note is including some metadata about the project, links to other relevant notes and links to external information.

If I want to link to a file, it is stored either in Dropbox or keep-it and I add the link to it.

Then I create a section called timeline. This section records the events, and tasks to be done.

When the task needs to be scheduled, it will appear in the daily task with a link to the project note.

If I have any deadline, I add a bullet point in the timeline with a link to the calendar note of the date.

In the daily calendar notes, I organize the tasks by categories/project and add the mention “at xx:xx am to xx:xx pm” to have the corresponding time block appearing in the calendar.

Below the tasks, I record all the necessary information during the day (meeting, notes, thoughts on projects, progress notes).

If a piece of information relates to a project, then I link it to the project master note.

I use @mention notation to refer to people I met or spoke to.

I use keywords for priority or classification of some information.

This is how Noteplan 3 appear on Big Sur

Where am I now?

It required some work and some efforts to get used to this new organization, but it is worth. Using Noteplan is not difficult and in no time you get up to date with all the functionalities.

Now, Noteplan is one of the few apps that remain open the whole day on my computer and that has the honor to be in the dock of my iPhone and iPad.

I erased several other applications from my computer and devices. I now have a better view on the projects I manage for my clients or for me.

In a few weeks, Noteplan became the heart of my information management system and brought me the simplicity I was looking for.

I used Obsidian to create a PKM (personal knowledge management), but the lack of a mobile application convinced me that it was not so suitable, so I transferred my information into Noteplan.

I also started a limited zettelkasten system, and a CRM (customer relationship management) all in Noteplan. Future articles will explain how I set up Noteplan for these uses.

Noteplan is not the perfect application. It is still lacking some functionalities, but the developer (Eduard Metzler) is working hard to bring the necessary improvements. He is very responsive and always listens to his users. This also contributed to my decision to give my trust to Noteplan.

Noteplan will be available from November 24 on the app stores for MacOs and IOS