Notes
A note isn’t a task yet
A door code, a gift idea, a phrase you overheard: these aren’t things to do. Put them in your list and it becomes unreadable.
There are two kinds of things we write down. The ones we’re going to do — call, send, buy — and the ones we simply want to keep: a door code, a gift idea, the recipe for that yoghurt cake, the name of the book someone mentioned.
Mixing them up looks convenient. In practice, it damages both: the task list fills up with lines you can’t tick off, and useful information disappears among things to do.
The rule: does it get ticked off?
That’s the only test. “Call the plumber” gets ticked off. “4207, the code for the bike room” doesn’t — and the day you tick it off by mistake, you lose the information.
A task has an end. A note has a lifespan: it’s useful until it isn’t, and then you delete it without ceremony.
Write freely, find things by searching
The classic mistake with notes is wanting to file them. Folders, categories, tags — and half an hour spent deciding where a gift idea belongs. Three months later, you can’t remember the folder, and you go searching.
So: write freely, and rely on search. The only discipline worth keeping is writing a first line that reads like what you’ll search for — “Gift ideas for Saori”, “Bike room code”. That’s your title, and it’s what you’ll type in six months’ time.
Turning a note into a task
Some notes become things to do. The gift idea becomes “order by the 12th”. The recipe becomes “buy the ingredients”. That’s the moment it changes nature, and needs to change place too.
The action should be quick — a note that turns into a task with one tap, rather than copy and paste. Otherwise, you won’t bother, and the intention stays stuck in a note you’ll never reread.
And notes attached to a task
The third case, often overlooked: information that only makes sense alongside a task. The file number for the insurance call, the address of the appointment, the thing you need to remember to ask. It doesn’t deserve its own task, or a separate note: it belongs on the task, and disappears with it once it’s done.
It’s a small organisational detail that saves a lot of searching at the worst possible moment — usually in the waiting room, hunting for a number you wrote down somewhere.
Common questions
Why not put everything in the task list?
Because a task gets ticked off, and a note doesn’t. A list where half the lines can never be completed stops being a list.
What about shopping lists?
It’s a borderline case. A shopping list is a note you tick off once a week: it works better as a note, with its own lines, than split into a dozen tasks.
How do you find a note three months later?
By searching, not filing. The first line acts as the title: write it the way you’d search for it.
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