How to Use OneNote Effectively to Organize Your Life

OneNote is a robust note-taking app that lets you gather your thoughts all in one place. Whether it’s creating simple to-do lists, budgeting for your home, or managing a project, it has the features necessary to help you organize various aspects of your life. You just need to know how to use OneNote effectively to make sure that you achieve your goals.

Good to know: be more productive by learning these OneNote keyboard shortcuts.

1. Creating and Managing To-Do Lists

We all need to get things done to keep life moving. However, this can be challenging if you don’t have a reference to keep you on track. If you don’t want to use a dedicated to-do list app, you can easily use OneNote.

The app allows you to create various lists, add items to them, and add tags to track them. For instance, you can click on the Insert Tag button in the top menu of the Home tab, and select To Do. This tag will add a checkbox next to the items so that you can tick them off as you complete each one.

You can add more than one tag to an item, such as Important, Critical, and Remember for later. You can also create custom tags to manage the list better, such as In progress and Completed. All these tags are searchable, making it easy to pinpoint tasks in a pinch.

You can even create and do some light editing to the lists using the OneNote mobile app. If you are out doing grocery shopping, you can whip out the OneNote app on your smartphone, and check off items as you place them in your cart.

2. Brainstorming & Ideas

You never know which one of your ideas can turn into gold, and it would be a shame to forget it. Listing your ideas in OneNote is a good way to ensure that you save them for a brainstorming session later. You can even add more information that will help you flesh out the ideas, such as pictures and links.

If you need to sketch out the idea, you can use the Draw tab. Use predefined shapes, such as lines, circles, and squares. You will find them all by clicking on Shapes in the top menu and selecting the one you need.

Alternatively, draw freely with one of the pen tools toward the left side of the top menu. You could quickly sketch your idea, or create a mind map.

3. Project Management

If you have a simple project going on, use OneNote as your project management tool. You can neatly separate the phases of your project, from planning and execution, all the way to monitoring and completion.

Create separate pages or sections for things like meetings, milestones, research, repositories, and wikis.

If you don’t feel like manually creating everything from scratch or don’t know how, OneNote has templates you can insert into your Notebooks. Bring them up by selecting the Insert tab, then clicking on Page Templates.

Find the list of templates in the panel on the right.

If you can’t find a template you need, there are several sites that allow you to download OneNote templates for free. Furthermore, if you managed to complete a project using OneNote, you can use the notebook as a template for the next one.

Keep in mind that while OneNote can work for small projects, it’s not really suitable for large, complex ones. The project management features are rather limited compared to something like Asana or Trello.

4. Tracking Expenses & Budgeting

Also create a budget in OneNote by inserting a table with all your calculations. These can include how much you’ve spent and how much you have left. You can put the budget next to a grocery shopping to-do list, for instance, for better cross-referencing.

You can also insert pictures of receipts to keep track of what you’ve bought and paid for, and how much it costs. Furthermore, OneNote has a great OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. Use it to extract important information from images of receipts, including the name, price, and date of purchase.

To extract text from a picture, just right-click it, and select Copy Text from Picture. Then, paste the information somewhere in OneNote to recall it later.

If you do your budgeting in Microsoft Excel, no problem. Import the sheet into OneNote, or create a new Excel sheet. Click on Spreadsheet in the Insert tab, and select either Existing Excel Spreadsheet or New Excel Spreadsheet.

FYI: if you’re a Notion user, check out these free Notion budget templates.

5. Planning & Routines

If you’re making a plan or routine, OneNote can help. A good example is a meal plan, which is an excellent way to eat healthy, budget for your food, and save time. Create a table by selecting the Insert tab, clicking on Table in the top menu, then selecting the number of rows and columns.

Arrange the rows and columns for the days of the week and the food you eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you have any additional notes, research, or dietary information, you can also include it here.

With that same approach, you can also use OneNote to create something similar, such as a fitness routine or itinerary.

6. Tracking Birthdays & Events

If you have a busy social calendar, you can manage it all in OneNote. Create a notebook and have separate tabs for things like birthdays, concerts, and parties. Within the tabs, you can have information about the events, such as the dates, names of hosts, and locations.

You can also use tags to keep track of the most important events, and filter out the ones you’ve already attended.

Flags can help you set reminders so that you don’t forget any upcoming birthdays or events. To insert a tag flag, click on Outlook Tasks in the top menu of the Home tab. Select a flag based on when you want to be reminded about the event.

Choose one of the predefined dates, such as Today or Next Week, or set a custom date. Once you set a flag, you will get an email reminder in Outlook, ensuring that you don’t miss important events.

Organizing Life OneNote at a Time

OneNote is a digital notebook that can help you organize various aspects of your life. Whether you’re looking to get more done with simple to-do lists, manage a project, or create a meal or fitness plan, the app has you covered.

There are so many ways to use OneNote to organize your life. If you want to get the most out of the app to organize your life better, learn some useful OneNote tips.

Image credit: Pixabay. All screenshots by Chifundo Kasiya.