Just thinking out loud for a moment...

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So today I had a series of four meetings, but on reflection I realised that I had taken notes for each in a different way:

  • Meeting One – on my tablet, in portrait mode, in OneNote, written with the stylus
  • Meeting Two – on my tablet, in landscape mode, in OneNote, typed on the keyboard
  • Meeting Three – on my mobile phone, as a handwritten note, written with the stylus
  • Meeting Four – old school – pen and a pad of paper

So now I’m at the end of the day and wondering – how do I consolidate all of this? Obviously the two OneNote sessions are fine and possibly the mobile phone note might be ok (and no, didn’t think of using OneNote Mobile at the time), but the pen and paper… guess I’ll have to transcribe it.

I just find it interesting that I switched between these various modes of note taking without conscious decision – it just happened. And this was all just in one location too, combine it with home, office, transit, and you end up with many different contexts where you want to keep your data.

At least we’re part of the way there with software like OneNote allowing us to enter information in multiple ways, and services like Mesh that give us access to the same data store in multiple locations without having to think about it.