Overview Of Jott

By Matt:

I have referenced Jott before in posts, particularly as an input device in my GTD capture arsenal. It's a handy tool that quickly transcribes voice messages into text, and delivers them to your email or cell phone. Here are the basics:

• Capture Messages: To capture a message simply call the Jott number from your registered cell phone and record a message just like you would a voicemail. Capturing messages this way is most ideal in specific situations, like when you're driving in the car and writing text messages is not a safe option.

• Set Reminders: Once your message is captured you can set a reminder for yourself so that a text message reminder will be sent to your cell phone at a later time. You can remind yourself to pick up milk on the way home tomorrow, to return your library book in two weeks, or even to call your mother for her birthday a year from today!

• Notify Friends: Not only can you send messages to yourself, you can also send the message to any of your contacts you have listed with the Jott service. You can even send messages to groups of contacts, enabling you to remind entire departments, teams, or organizations of important items.  Your contact list can be anyone and everyone (even other apps like Twitter!) so get creative with it.

Getting Started
As with most of our favorite web-apps Jott is a free service requiring only an email address and cell phone number for registration. Literally takes a couple minutes to sign-up and confirm your information. Jon and I are both Jott users and can vouch that Jott does a great job of protecting your information and you will not be the recipient of unwanted spam (email or phone).

Any current Jott users out there? The basics of Jott are pretty cut and dry, but if you're using the service in a creative or unusual way, it would be fun to hear about it in the comments below!

The Simple Beauty Of A .TXT

By Matt:

Ever since I started hacking corporate life I've been trying to figure out what I should do with all of the notes that I take. From meeting notes to conference call notes to personal brainstorming sessions... I've got notes everywhere.

I think I've finally hit upon the solution, and it wasn't near as complicated as I thought it would be:

Reviving Plain Text: The Power Of A .TXT
One of the most basic programs that come standard on any computer is a plain-text editor. On Windows systems this would be Notepad, and on Macs TextEdit. These simple, no-frills programs capture plain unformatted text and allow you to save it as a Text file (or .TXT).

I've recently started logging all of my notes - whether entered directly, or transferred from my Moleskine journal - into Text files. Here's why:

• Text editors have a minimal impact on your computer's RAM so they open quickly and run fast
• The text is plain so time isn't spent "beautifying" your notes - bolding, underlining, making pretty tables with colors, etc.
• The files are extremely small and easy to move, upload, and share cross-platform

Where To Store
It's important to keep all of your Text files in one central location. I've created a folder called 'Text Files', creative I know, and have placed a shortcut to the folder on my desktop so I can get to it in one easy click. Ultimately it doesn't matter where they are stored, as long as they're together and easy to get to.

I also maintain a subfolder called 'Archive' and periodically move outdated and unused files here to keep down on clutter.

How To Name The Files
File naming is critically important to maintaining your family of Text files, and there are several elements that go into each of my file names:

Uber Marker | Project | Filename | Date .txt

• Uber Marker: Is a general differentiator that denotes what the category of the file is. I use three categories - Notes, Lists, or Reference
• Project: The project level component defines what the broad subject of the document is - this could be an account name or the name of the person I met with
• Unique Filename: This is the most specific part of the name which drills down to the specific topic of the document
• Date: My date format is yyyymmdd, so April 9th, '08 would be represented as 20080409

My Uber Markers -

• # - Notes: Notes from meetings and phone calls. I use the "number" symbol because 'number' starts with "N" and so does 'notes'.
  
• @ - Reference: Reference documents are long-term files containing information that is relevant in my day to day job on an ongoing basis.
  
• ! - Lists: These are quick simple documents that contain exactly what the name suggests... lists on everything from to-do items to groceries, and marketing concepts to ideas for pranks to pull on co-workers. An exclamation mark looks like a lowercase "L", and 'list' starts with "L".
  

Example File Name -
So based on these guidelines, an example filename for a document of notes from a conference call w/ an account called "Stinson", regarding the launch of a product called "Widget 35X" would be...

# Stinson Widget 35X 20080410.txt

File Tagging
A final identification practice I do is "tagging", and this happens within the document, usually after I have transcribed my notes. On the first line of the document I enter in several keywords that I would associate with this particular file - things that would come to mind when trying to search for the document, but may or may not have been explicitly use in the notes themselves. This aids in searching for the files later, for example:

TAGS: Stinson, Widget 35X, Widget Launch, Spring Promotion Plan

Recall: Searching For Your Text Files
Being able to call up your notes quickly, on the fly, without hesitation is key to this entire process. PCs and Macs both have built in search functions, but I find these somewhat clunky and slow. Ultimately everyone has their own search preferences, but the key to my searching success is Google Desktop.

Google Desktop brings the power of Google's search engine capabilities to your hard-drive and networked drives. It is a powerful, and in my opinion, unmatched resource.

I do not use the Google Desktop Gadget - these eats up computer RAM. Rather, I use the keyboard shortcut - pressing 'CTRL' twice - to bring up the search dialog. If I am searching for a notes document, I simply type in a combination of keywords, and immediately the file I am looking for appears:

EXAMPLE SEARCH: .txt # stinson spring promotion

Two final notes on Google Desktop, and a matter of personal preference:

1. I set my default search option to 'Search Desktop' as oppossed to 'Search Web' - with Google Desktop I'm primarily concerned with finding things on my hard-drive and not on the internet
2. I also tell Google Desktop to index everything except Web History... again, I don't want to pull up my browsing history in my search results
   

Tying It All Together
Proper note taking, integrated with your ability to manage your to-do list and maximizing personal productivity are core components of GTD. Admittedly, the note-taking aspect of GTD has taken the longest for me to perfect, and due credit needs to go to Merlin Mann at 43 Folders for his insight on the process. My tips written out here are a modified form of his TXT Setup.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on this subject: How do you catalog and store the notes you have taken? What program do you use to search for notes you've stored on your computer? Do you even look at notes after a meeting... or are they just a time killing process for you?

Well, Hello Lifehacker!

By Matt & Jon:

To our surprise and delight yesterday Lifehacker featured one of our recent posts about Taking Meeting Notes on their blog. If, as a result, you found your way to The Corporate Hack and are a new subscriber, we welcome you!

The response to our post yesterday on Lifehacker was interesting. There were a bunch of folks who thought our concept of sending follow-up notes to the meeting leader was a blatant attempt to suck up. There were those who felt this practice would ultimately lead to being designated the permanent de facto note taker for all future meetings.

But there were also some great insights from readers: EricSoderberg offered that taking and distributing notes ensures that your voice gets heard, even if you tend to not speak during the meeting. EricSlaw appropriately points out that notes must be sent immediately after the meeting as he's not getting paid for his word-smithing abilities. ProlificProgrammer got a raise for taking notes and posting them to his company's internal wiki!!

Jon wanted to offer this follow-up to the post in response to the many great comments:

I was absolutely blown away by the comments we got on this post -- tons of great insight and some surprising stories of how well this method paid off. One of my favorite anecdotes on note-taking actually arose recently at lifehack.org, another great productivity blog.

Turns out one of America's greatest inventors wrote over 5 million pages of notes in his lifetime. Thomas Edison took incredibly detailed and organized notes, yet had a powerful memory with which to recall them all. Edison is proof that taking detailed and action-oriented notes, and cataloging them for easy retrieval can greatly improve your business strength and flexibility.

Now, I understand we can't spend all day slaving over pen and paper (and a lot of meetings just aren't noteworthy!), but choosing the right time to jot a few things down can really pay off. Even if you don't send the notes around, having them on hand for future reference can really save you from looking foolish or unprepared.

If you haven't had the chance to read the original post yet, Quick Tip: Meeting Notes, please do! And be sure to give us your thoughts as well - we enjoy the dialog! In the meantime, here are some other recent posts from The Hack we think you might find interesting...

Recent Posts...
GTD 101: A Brief Overview Of Getting Things Done
Action Oriented: Create Meaningful To-Do Items
Pushing Decision Making Down
Quick Tip: Subdivide Tasks For better GTD

Getting Things Done Is Hard When You've Completely Forgotten Everything

Now, I definitely remember this. We take the left one... I think.

By Jon:

Here's yet another look into the world of GTD in relation to being proactive. I've got a really bad habit of using some parts of GTD and ignoring others. After all, the whole point is to be more productive and effective, but I've only been trying to make my job easier and free up more time.

Lately I've had a nasty problem of checking off a task and letting it leave my mind. Don't get me wrong, that's certainly an aspect of GTD -- getting your tasks out of your brain and into an organized list -- but I'm implementing it wrong.

Normally when I finish a task I just let it go and my mind moves onto something else. Weeks or months later, details about a task might be needed; instead of recalling the situation, I'll make some incorrect assumption and look foolish.

It became obvious that in order to cover my bases, I needed to become more proactive. Here's what I'm doing:

Keeping detailed handwritten meeting notes (in a Moleskine, of course)

Creating a folder of organized text docs of unique situations that come up in my somewhat repetitive work

Send myself or others reminder emails for upcoming to-dos

Set far-off and distant reminder tasks in my GTD app of choice

Adding a "notes" column to an Excel spreadsheet I frequently work out of to help maintain my projects

Obviously there's a lot of failsafes there -- I'm pretty forgetful. I've considered memory aid apps like Mental Case, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to subject myself to flash cards yet. On the bright side, there's something really inviting about the smile on that suitcase, don't you think?

Quick Tip: Meeting Notes

This post was featured on Lifehacker on April 3, 2008. We wrote a follow-up post in response to the comments made which you can view here.

By Jon:

In the event you get pulled into one of those unbearable, often unavoidable corporate experiences called meetings, this quick tip will help you make a good impression on superiors while keeping you from zoning away into the ceiling tiles.

The simple secret: Take detailed meeting notes

Note taking engages your mind (stymies off that post-lunch energy crash), provides you with a personal account of the information, and lends towards bonus points by demonstrating you're an active participant. So even if you're not the official note-taker, try these steps during your next meeting...

• Write or type your notes in the margins of the meeting agenda (there should be one!)
  
• Use bullet point format - subdivide by topics discussed, paraphrase information, and boldly call out action points and those responsible for them
• If you are the official note-taker for the meeting, send notes to all meeting attendees; otherwise, only send to the meeting leader (you don't want to come across pompous)
• Send notes immediately after the meeting (no more than 5-10 minutes after the meeting has adjourned... why?)

The End Result
It's our experience that taking personal notes at meetings somehow breeds respect and approval from superiors, and managers enjoy having a simple list of bullet points and action items at-hand. The long and short - if you have to suffer through the meeting anyways, make it a valuable investment of your time by providing a valuable account to meeting organizers... you will be rewarded with respect and trust.

---

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