I've done my Flylady Babysteps, but really, I haven't been doing as well as I could. I am fluttering, just not flying! I thought I would re-invigorate my passion by starting my control journal, and just to make it interesting, starting it in OneNote! I'll do a series of lessons, which are actually just "This is what I did" blog posts, on how to use OneNote as a Control Journal. It will be a shared learning experience - comments and suggestions are always welcome!
First we need to Start a new notebook.
When you start Notebook you will open into a default notebook. Click on the down arrow next to the name of the notebook (to the right of "Control Journal" though it will be named something else as your default notebook) and it will open a drop down list - the top option is to add a
notebook.
So you go through the motions of the set-up - make sure you save to either Skydrive or Dropbox if you want access at other locations or on your smart-devices. I use Dropbox but Windows 8.1 makes it really inconvenient to set-up - you have to go hunting for it!
Next we will do a basic Inbox set-up.
I love using an Inbox for each of my Notepads
as it just makes it so easy to send stuff to each one.
So what is an Inbox and why use it? Just like on your desk, an inbox lets you put stuff somewhere until you have time to get around to processing it. By setting up an Inbox tab, it's like have a folder slip in the front of your notepad to keep post-its, notes, receipts, cut outs from magazines etc that you collect through out the day, and get then decide where to put them later when you have time.
This is great for cutting back on clutter, and for while your setting up your Control Journal and might not have a place for everything yet! Everything that goes into the inbox needs to be either deleted or put somewhere - so it's kind of like de-cluttering before it gets into your Control Journal!
**Disclaimer: the Inbox tab wasn't my original idea - I was reading up on a productivity technique called "Getting things Done" and came across a few tutorials on how to set up OneNote using those concepts.
So lets get to it!
Change the title of your first Tab to Inbox (I've already done it in
the picture up above. You can delete the
other stuff on the page though you may want to read it first if you are new to
OneNote!
Now we are going to go into the "File" tab - the big
purple one at the top left! Go down and
click on options. You can change some of these if you like - I changed my font in
general to New Times Roman 12pt, changed my display around so my page list is on the left, and I recommend just having a look through
all the options to make sure they suit you. Try a few things out and see what happens!
The big deal here though, is the 'Send to OneNote" section!
I have my Inbox set up in a Notebook called 'getting things done' -
it is my entry Notebook and I use it to process any 'incoming' information.
Anything I send to OneNote goes to that Notebook - and in particular - the
Inbox. I do this because I use OneNote
primarily for processing my information at work. I may end up changing this so that it asks
where to send to it on my home computer so I have more options at home! (But
work is work!)
So click on 'Send to OneNote' and take a
look. This is what mine looks like:
Yours will most likely have something different! Just click on the little arrow down for each
one and select 'set default location…'.
You will then have a box come up with a directory of your notebook (very
pretty too I might add!). Choose the Tab
you labelled Inbox for your Control Journal Notebook. Remember to do this
for each of the items! This gives a quick idea of
just how many ways you can quickly and easily send information to OneNote!
Now anything you see on the web, or emails or anything really you
can use the little OneNote add-on button (you'll see it on your browser tab, in Word,
Excel, Outlook - by right clicking, or even printing to OneNote!) - and send it
to this Inbox page!
Setting up our "Control Journal Project"
Here is the fun part! We will use this tool to quickly and easily create a Journal page for making our Control Journal so we don't have to try and find the webpages each time.
So let's head to the Flylady Control Journal Webpage. Can you see the OneNote add-on in your tool bar? A purple cube with the letter N and an arrow underneath? That is your 'Send to OneNote' button. Hit that button. If all goes well, your OneNote program will leap to the top of your screen and you will see a new page in your Notebook! Now, click back to the webpage, hit the link for the first step and when that page opens up, hit that 'send to OneNote' button again, back to the webpage, hit the 'next step' link, send to OneNote - and yes, you need to keep repeating until you have all 15 pages!
If someone is adventurous and tech savvy they might see if there is a way to select all 15 steps (with their links) on the Control Journal page and "send all target links to OneNote" at once!
If you are just starting out you can do this for the 31 Baby Steps as well.
Once that is done I want you go to the second Tab, the one next to Online, and call it Control Journal Lessons or something along those lines.
Next head back to your inbox and check out those 15 pages of Control Journal lessons sitting there! Isn't is amazing that you can get that much info at your fingertips so easily! Now we want to move all these pages into the right section - EASY! Click on the top one to highlight it then move your mouse to hover over the last one, hold shift down while you left click to select them all. Now right click on the list (or Ctrl+Alt+M) and select 'Move or Copy..'., select the right tab from the list and hit Okay!
Go to the Control Journal tab and check out your handiwork!
But.. I hear you say - there is a whole bunch of webpagey stuff on there and its just not very pretty!! I say go for it.. make it pretty, edit it, add to it, play with it. Make notes, draw on it - use every feature you can find and have some fun! You can even re-name the pages so you don't have see "Control Journal" 15 times in a row! Get it pretty, but most importantly "Brainstorm"! Get all your ideas out of your head - set your timer for 15mins and spend some time on each page jotting down thoughts about how you envisage that part of your control journal - do you need it, have you got other ideas of what could work, where might you find some information, is there anything you might want to do now to get ready for it? And most of all HAVE FUN!
I did a basic clean up and this is what I had before my brainstorm!
If you are up for it, go do the same for those Babystep lessons!
If you are an Outlook user as well... Go to the first step page.. Highlight the heading text and right click, selecting the flag in the top right corner of the edit box that pops up. This flags the item as a task. If you go to Outlook you can add a reminder to the task at a certain time, or throw it into your calendar - which ever way best works for you to remember to get back into it. I'll be explaining this in more detail as I go. I'm really enjoying Outlook and OneNote as a productivity team and they should work well with Flylady!
I hope this gives you some idea of how powerful the OneNote software is and how it can really simplify things and help cut back on clutter!
I will link to the next lesson here once it is done!
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