Part 4: Project Notes Best Practices

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In the previous articles, you’ve learned how to schedule tasks and link notes to each other using  [[note name or date]] and >date. And you know you can organize your notes in the left sidebar using real folders. 

In this article, you will learn some best practices so that every note is where it should be and easy to find. 

1. How to structure your sidebar?

An easy way to get started is to use the system  PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive).

Here is an example of how you can name your four main folders: 

10 - Projects  
20 - Areas
30 - Resources   

(You have a separate dedicated Archive folder in NotePlan)  

What should you file in these folders?

Projects 
File notes for things you are working on  right now, your current projects. 

Areas
Areas in your life you are maintaining at the moment. Such as your health, relationships, sub-areas of your job or business (marketing, hiring, growth, strategy...). File notes here that help you keep up your areas: insights, learnings, things you read somewhere, lists, plans, etc.

Resources
This folder contains topics of on-going interest. Read something interesting in a blog, book or tweet? Create a note for that and file it under the appropriate topic. Some day you may need the notes you capture here. But at the moment they are just interesting.

Archive
Completed projects and areas of your life that are not relevant anymore (you quit your job and started a business). Or resource topics that are not interesting anymore. These are notes you probably won't need, but they can become useful reference material later. 

(Please do not use @ in front of the folder. @ is reserved for special folders like the Trash and Archive. This is to avoid naming conflicts. NotePlan excludes folders starting with @ in many ways like task detection). 

Learn more about setting up a folder system.

2. Meeting Notes

There are roughly three different ways to take meeting notes:

  • One note per meeting
    • Use this if you write very long meeting notes
  • One big note with meetings as sub-headings
    • Use this for shorter, reoccurring meetings. Collapse the headings to hide irrelevant information.
  • Meetings as sub-headings in your daily notes
    • Add meetings to your daily notes only as a form of inbox. Make sure to file the meetings later somewhere.

Where should you file your meetings?

  • If the meeting is on a specific project file it in your project folder (see "PARA" above).
  • If the meeting is across many projects file it in an area folder under a topic.
  • If projects and areas don't work for you, create a general "Meetings" folder and file them per month (each month in the year gets one folder, prepend the month number, such as "08 - August 2022" so they sort nicely).

Finally, use templates and the integrated meeting notes feature to automate your meetings. Learn more here (with video).

3. Linking Notes

Every  [[note link]] creates a backlink at the top of the target note. You can use the backlink to navigate backward and the links inside the note to move forward. Or vice-versa.

Create a chain of notes to find related notes faster without having to search for them. This works especially well if there is a sequential relationship between notes like in meetings.

4. Note Properties: Metadata, Icons and Colors

Here's how:

  • At the top of your note, click "Properties." (For a daily note, first select "Add Properties" from the top-right menu.)
  • Click "Add Property" to create your first property, then enter its name and value.
  • To add an icon, create a property named icon, click into its value field to choose an icon, and set its color with icon-color.
  • To set background colors, use bg-color and bg-color-dark (for dark mode).
  • Alternatively, click the AI button in the bottom-right to auto-generate properties.

Use metadata like  state, category, and owner in your notes to enable grouping, filtering, and sorting in folder views (we will come back to that later).

It's your turn

Migrate your old notes to the NotePlan archive folder or a separate "Import" folder. Start by adding your projects as sub-folders under '10 - Projects', and life areas under '20 - Areas'. Then, as you work on your projects, add notes to the appropriate folders as needed.

In the next email, you will learn how to switch between notes quickly without using the sidebar, nor mouse.

Pro Tips

  • Clicking on links to non-existing notes will create that note and copy the link name.
  • Learn more about PARA and Johnny.Decimal, and how you can implement these methods in NotePlan.
  • Open notes in separate windows by right-clicking the note in the sidebar, then "Open In New Window". Or CMD+Click a note link inside a note.
  • Open notes in a split view using Option+Click.

Next up: → Part 5: Find Notes With the Command Bar

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