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You should have an Everything Bucket. And just in case you are wondering what that is: an Everything Bucket is that tool/app/whatever that is your go-to for information and files that can be catalogued and organized for search and reference. An Everything Bucket should be able to easily integrate files and other programs.

Clear? Confused?

Where do you store random notes at meetings? Where do you keep your personal expense sheet? Where do you keep your passwords? Where do you keep your bookmarks? Do you use separate apps for this? Can you collect all of these pieces of information in ONE PLACE? If you can, that’s your Everything Bucket.

How I Use It

My choice Everything Bucket is OneNote. As a pro-Google/Microsoft-beefing person, OneNote is one tool that totally works for me. Here’s why:

    • It allows me to start writing from any location on the page. This is opposed to the regular start-from-the-first-line other text-editing tools confine you to
    • I can easily paste screenshots  at any location- bottom of the page, middle, out of the page, left of the page etc
    • Text on screenshots and pictures are searchable. For instance, you have a picture of a car pasted in your OneNote document, you forget where you pasted it and need to search for the image. If you remembered the plate number instead, you can search with that criterion.
    • I can attach files to OneNote documents. I attach my projected/actually spends document(which is in Numbers format, call it Excel for Mac) in a OneNote page.
    • I save my passwords here. I use Dashlane to keep my passwords, then I export the hashed password to my page.
    • I keep a journal in OneNote with a password protected page. See the tab below where Pet Projects is written.
    • I store random articles that I need for article references
    • Record audio at meetings where I don’t want to write.
    • I could scan my documents and receipts if I want. For instance I have my passport page saved on a page.
    • I can sync it to my mobile phone and of course to the cloud(by cloud I mean Microsoft servers).

onenote

At the end of the week/months when I do my course corrections, I can filter information stored, rewrite notes I didn’t complete, rethink ideas that I wrote earlier or discard of information I don’t need. But of course my file anchors(passwords and documents) still remain.

Why you should

I use OneNote for my Everything Bucket. You can too. But if you think something else works for you, that’s fine. All that’s important is for you to have that singular reference point where you can reference the most important things to you. I hear you ask the question ‘what happens if this crashes’. Life is a risk you know. Of course you have to add ‘backing up’ information to your schedule.

Let your Everything Bucket of choice be promoted to ‘authority’ when it comes to saving, achiving or making central the information that’s important to you.

 

One Comment

  • Ayo says:

    Since I switched to using Apple products, I have found that Notes works for me. Before then, I was a Google Keep fan.
    The best part about the “Everything Bucket” idea is futuristic for me. Going through notes I had made 2,3years ago is nostalgic and good for keeping things in perspective.
    A good example is how I’ve observed that the quality of my ideas have grown when I compare what I wrote down years ago to recent notes. How much I’ve made progress in pursuing those ideas if any at all.

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