[Originally published in 2014]
I am struggling to learn how to use Microsoft’s OneNote™ product more effectively. I have used it for years (it was our dog food at the company for a while, several years ago) but I am convinced that I use it sub-optimally and am working to change that.
Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4
It occurs to me to blog today about the advantages of electronic versus paper notebooking. That’s my term, by the way, notebooking. I carry a notebook and always have. A big fat three ring binder full of everything I might need. I also carry a tablet — right now a Surface Pro 4. There is something wrong with that picture, to be sure, but I cannot put my finger on it (no pun intended).
Then it occurred to me that the wise employee/teacher/leader will indeed carry both, and often does. He or she can have their cake and eat it too! It reminded me of a quote I heard several years ago about “the tyranny of OR versus the genius of AND.”
Yes, anyone can have both a paper notebook and an electronic one. In fact, I have come to see the former as fodder, if you will, for the latter. My paper-based notebook gets scanned into Microsoft’s OneNote on a regular basis. Cocktail napkins are even there, as are my hand-written blog posts. There is a time and a place for whipping out the tablet. But there are also many reasons not to have a piece of technology separating you from your customer, your employee(s), your clients, or your boss. Better to have the paper notebook out with a pen at the ready.
You know something? Often, the paper notebook is the recipient of print-outs from OneNote, of things that I want readily at hand. For example, if my organization’s mission statement has just been updated, a copy (a print-out) of that statement makes its way into my 3-ring binder. Org charts, carried under their own tabs in OneNote are inside my 3-ringer as well.
One informs the other, but I will admit that OneNote “governs.” It is the notebook of record, if you will.
Not everything gets synced between OneNote and the 3-ring binder. There are not enough rings in the world for everything inside of my OneNote world. Only those things that I want “at hand” are printed out and put into my paper notebook. The rule is this:
I have as much as I believe I will need inside of my paper planner in order to conduct my affairs.
My electronic notebook is huge and growing by the day, and it contains everything I’ve ever needed to conduct my affairs, even if that information is no longer current. Still, it is there should I need it. And since it takes no space – no endless rows of filing cabinets – I see it as having no limit. Moreover, it won’t get left on trains, or in taxis, or in the overhead bin of an airliner.
On the other hand, my paper planner never runs out of battery power, doesn’t need an internet connection, and could not care less about how many bars of service it has. It can get lost, of course, and this is why I have my vast OneNote collections AND its paper cousin. This is truly the genius of AND.
Both have their own strengths and weaknesses and both can be used at the same time however you see fit. Either-or is a trap. You needn’t be constrained.
You needn’t suffer the tyranny of OR.
