c/paperless-notebook-hacks

leer12•18d ago

Paid $40 for a hyperlinked planner kit, total waste of cash

Thought the auto-linking would save me time but it just broke every time I moved a section, took 2 days to fix what I could've typed in 10 minutes. Anyone else ditch those fancy kits and just build their own sticker sets in Goodnotes?

1 comments

wade438•19d ago

One bad week with syncing made me go back to basics

Last Tuesday my whole Notability setup fell apart. I had 6 tabs open, a planner template, and a recipe page for dinner. The sync kept dropping and I lost a whole grocery list I spent 20 minutes building. My phone was at 3% and I was in the parking lot of a Safeway in Boise. I just stood there staring at a blank screen. That night I deleted all my fancy multi-layer templates. Went back to one notebook for everything, just plain lined paper with a simple date stamp. Slower at first but honestly, I havent lost a single note since. Anyone else ever have a full digital meltdown like that? How do you handle the fear of losing stuff in the cloud?

1 comments

dakota479•19d ago

My professor's note about my handwriting made me ditch the stylus completely

Tbh I used to write everything by hand in Notability with a stylus, but my professor marked my notes as 'unreadable' last semester and suggested I try typing. I switched to a keyboard for lectures and kept the stylus just for diagrams and math. Now I can actually search my notes for keywords and my study time is way faster. Has anyone else gotten feedback that pushed them to change their whole note system?

1 comments

elliotw37•20d ago

The $4 highlighter trick that made my Goodnotes actually usable

I always thought those premade highlighter sets were gimmicks, but after 3 months of messy notes I tried setting custom colors to match my paper size and now everything sorts itself out. Anyone else find a cheap setting that quietly fixed their whole workflow?

1 comments

rowan849•20d ago

My train ride from hell turned into a template discovery

I was stuck on the Amtrak from Chicago to St. Louis last Tuesday, and the guy next to me kept sneezing on my iPad screen. I tried to redo my notes for a work meeting, but my handwriting was all over the place because of the bumpy ride. Out of sheer frustration, I opened a blank grid template and just wrote everything in boxes, one idea per square. It looked so much cleaner than my usual freeform notes, and I actually caught myself using it for the whole week after. Now I use a 5x5 grid for every meeting, and the sneezing guy is gone, but his weird gift stuck. Has anyone else found a lifesaving layout in a totally random, annoying situation?

1 comments

the_morgan•20d ago

My boss's one comment about my meeting notes changed my whole system

Last Tuesday my manager glanced at my Goodnotes page for our weekly sync and said, "You write down every word, but I still can't find the action items." That stung because I thought being thorough was enough. I switched from a straight chronological log to a two column layout: left side for discussion points, right side for tasks with checkboxes. Now I open each project with a linked note and tag who owns what. Has anyone else had to rebuild their template after someone called out their weak spot? I'm curious what your fix looked like.

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finleythomas•21d ago

Serious question: does anyone actually use those pre-made planner templates?

Tbh I used to be all in on the fancy Goodnotes templates with the stickers and the habit trackers and the color coded weekly spreads. Last fall I flew to Austin for a work conference and my iPad died mid session, so I had to write notes in a physical notebook for two days. When I got back, I realized my digital setup had way too much decoration and not enough actual thinking space. The templates look great but they slow me down. I now use a blank page with a simple 3 column layout I drew myself, and I get more done in half the time. Does anyone else feel like the pre-made stuff is more about making your notes look pretty than actually helping you study or work? What do you use instead?

2 comments

thomasm41•23d ago

Dropped $34 on a digital planner I never opened, back to my free template

I finally admit I blew $34 on that fancy yearly planner pack from Etsy back in January. It had all these hyperlinked tabs and dashboard pages, but I ended up just using the free Cornell notes template that came with Goodnotes. The thing is, the layout felt too cramped on my iPad mini and setting it up took me like 2 hours. Anyone else bought a planner bundle and just abandoned it for a simple sticky note or blank page?

1 comments