I add tags by topics, person, company name, project titleā¦whatever will quickly bring together notes with a common theme. Examples:
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#JohnSmith ā obviously quickly finds all notes involving John Smith, which could be many varied things scattered throughout my notes.
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#ProjectName ā everything having to do with a certain project, which could be notes on items purchased, vendor discussions, etc.
- #CompanyName
- ā¦(you get the picture)ā¦
So thatās the basic idea. My basic method for organizing notes is by topics (e.g., Tech, Psnl, Work, etc.) with many sub topics under each major topic.
I also keep a DROE (Steven Covey) ā with a quick log of all the major activities for a given dayā¦many of which are links to more detailed notes in the Topic Listing just mentioned.
But as notes accumulate, there may be something related to #JohnSmith or #CompanyName under many of these topic headings or DROE entries. Searching for a #TagName at the top level quickly reveals all the entries related to a given person or company. I scan these to quickly isolate the specific notes I need ā and zoom in to focus on just those notes.
So I drop tags throughout my notes that I know will help me find the note later without remembering where I filed it, just by knowing who was involved or the major topic involved.
Very, very handy. In a flash I can, for example, find all events related to a given person going back over the last year. No other program allows me to find widely disparate notes and then jump to the one needed as quickly as Dynalist.
I use Dynalist all day long. I really count on it. Iām a firm believer of the old (I believe Chinese) proverb, "The palest ink is better than the best memory.ā
See this article on keeping meeting notes. I keep at least a few lines logging each meeting Iām in ā key participants, what was agreed upon, actions to me or them, etc. And meetings are just one portion of my work and hence just a portion of my notes.
Iām a very busy manager dealing with many projects, people, and companies. Finding information on any of these quickly is invaluable. But there are a lot of topics, people, projects, and companies ā hence a lot of tags.
BTW, this should help clarify why I would benefit from tag auto-completion in the search bar. I can typically recall the name of the people, project, etc., involved and so know how a tag starts. But I canāt recall quickly the exact spelling ā for example, whether thereās an āsā at the end or did I hyphenate vs run all the words together, etc.
I wind up using the top few lines of a document to enter my search instead of using the search box. This way I get auto-complete assistance in entering the tag. Then I can click on it and get the search I want.
It makes no sense to me that I get tag auto-completion in the document, but not in the search bar. In any case, I would find this feature very helpful. As I mentioned, Workflowy does this and thatās where I got used to it.