Note-taking

Matter (read-later app) is the best alternative for Instapaper or Pocket

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  • Most functional and elegant user experience
  • Better integrations (add articles and export highlights) for automation.
  • Auto import of newsletters from your email inbox
  • Subscribe with matter’s forwarding handle (email ID like) and spare your email account with clutter of newsletters.
  • Free to use

5 scopes of management in personal productivity

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Task Management (including Projects and Goals Management) – consider financial management as a project inside this.

Time Management (events to attend, meetings)

Notes Management / Ideas, PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) / Minutes / Journaling (including physical notes).

Files Management (including physical resources), Document management.

Communication – Email Management, People/Contacts Management

What are the apps you use for each scope?

4 tips for organizing (digital) content

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  • Do not organize before collecting. (Let order arise from chaos.)
  • Tune the system to simplicity while you using it (don’t procrastinate in building a perfect system).
  • Try to maintain not more than 3 hierarchies/sub-categories/levels (or folders) from the root.
  • Always organize information by where you use it, not where it is found. (tag them by future need, not by present context)

4-Step Instructions (memos)

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  • No instructions should have more than 4 steps.
    • If it has many steps (to follow), find the significant 4 that keep the other actions in alignment.
  • Give “enough” freedom to the team to develop their own ideas to improve the process while preserving the “four steps” that keep the standard and outcomes in line and prevent things from going wrong or bad.
P.S. 4 Steps to write an efficient memo
(1) Write/draft your instructions as action-steps, 
(2) Rewrite them for utmost clarity and simplicity, 
(3) Rephrase the sentences to make every step unambiguous and connected (adopt 3rd person's view or ask for feedback, if needed), and 
(4) Repeat steps (2) and (3) until you make the instructions as short as possible.

3 simple rules of note-taking

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  1. Always write for your “future stupid self”. (Consider the future version of you who is going to read the note is stupid.)
  2. Write/rephrase in your own words (understand it, before you write, you’ll understand better when you write)
  3. Always include more context to the idea/note (eg: time, date, person, place, the current state of mind, mood, source, etc)

Remember. Your notes should be self-sufficient. A well-written note should avoid the necessity of referring back to the source and references.