Greetings, data-tamers!
A few nights ago, one of my kids asked for a printout of some things he wanted to take with him into his bed to study and memorize. (No joke...this actually happened.)
So I opened Word.
It was exactly the right tool for the job. Quick content entry, easy formatting, simple font changes, preset titles and headings, quickly adjusted margins. I did it in about three minutes, hit print, and it looked exactly how I envisioned it.
Fifteen minutes later, I was back at my computer to jot down notes about my mom's document migration project (remember, that's my Q4 Consistency Challenge), and my muscle memory almost had me creating a new document in Word, since it was still open. But I caught myself just in the nick of time (well, okay, it wasn't actually that close) and switched over to my notes app instead. I've internalized the difference between writing for someone else and writing for myself.
A Simple Question
If you remember last week's discussion about breaking up with Word, the problem isn't with Word itself, but rather the friction that comes from using a basic desktop publishing tool as a knowledge management system. It's possible to wrestle it into submission enough to make it work for this task, but it's an uphill battle.
So how do we know when Word is the right tool for the job vs. when you'll be fighting against it? I hinted at this above, and it's actually refreshingly simple. Ready for the world's easiest decision tree?
When you're about to write something, ask yourself: "Will someone else ever need to see this in a formal or formatted way?"
- YES: Use Word (or Pages, or Google Docs, or whatever your formal document creator of choice is)
- NO: Use a notes app
- MAYBE: Start in notes, move to Word if/when needed
That's the entire guideline. It doesn't cover every obscure corner case, but it handles 95% of what you're likely to encounter, and with practice you'll develop your own intuition for what to do with the other 5%.
When Word Still Wins
To be extra clear here: Word isn't the enemy. It's good at what it was designed for. You can and should absolutely still use it for:
- Formal correspondence
- Resumes and cover letters
- Documents for clients or colleagues who expect traditional files
- Anything that needs specific print formatting (newsletters for your model rocketry club, etc.)
- Collaborative documents where others need change-tracking features
- Academic papers with strict formatting requirements
Basically, if someone else needs to receive it as a file attachment, or if it needs to physically exist on paper looking a certain way, Word is your friend. (You might still choose to start writing certain things in your notes app before moving to Word later if you want to keep everything in one spot, but that's a more arbitrary choice.)
For a real-world example from my not-too-distant past, I needed a company name verification letter on some official letterhead when I was first starting to set up the Tidy Bytes website a few years ago. I went straight to Word, because I knew I could do exactly what I wanted in ten minutes. My note-taking app, in contrast, would have fallen flat on its face trying to do the same job.
When Notes Apps Shine
Word is great, occasionally. But for just about any kind of writing other than what 's listed above, a notes app will serve you better:
- Meeting notes
- Daily thoughts and observations
- Research you're collecting from various sources
- Lists (grocery, to-do, gift ideas, books to read)
- Journal entries or personal reflections
- Project brainstorming and mind dumps
- Contact information and important details about people
- Recipes, instructions, how-tos you reference frequently
- Random brilliant ideas that strike at 2 AM
- Draft content before it needs formatting
See the pattern? This is all stuff for you, not for others. It's your external brain, not your publishing platform.
Different Migration Paths
Some of you might be thinking "This sounds great, but I can't just abandon my whole system!" while others are ready to burn it all down and start fresh. (There's probably a third group still using Notepad or Neovim for everything, and honestly, I respect the commitment.)
So here are three approaches, ranging from "dipping your toe in" to "full cannonball into the deep end":
- Approach A - The Skeptic's Trial Run: Keep doing exactly what you're doing in Word, but pick one type of note (maybe meeting notes or daily observations) and deliberately create duplicates in a notes app for a week or two. Yes, it's redundant. Yes, it's temporary. But it lets you actually feel the difference without any risk. If you give this a solid effort for a couple of weeks, you'll either be sold on the notes app (and can stop the Word version), or you'll have confirmed Word works better for you. Either way, you'll know.
- Approach B - The Clean Break: Starting tomorrow (or Monday, if you're a "fresh week" person), use Word only for formal documents that need to be shared or printed, and put everything else in your notes app. Don't migrate anything old; that's a project for another day, or never. Just draw a line in the sand and move forward with the new approach. This is what I actually recommend for most people because it doesn't create a massive migration project, but it also doesn't leave you straddling two systems forever. Your old Word files aren't going anywhere; they'll still be there when you need them. And honestly, you probably won't need 90% of them.
- Approach C - The Digital Marie Kondo: This is for my fellow completionists who can't sleep knowing their data exists in two different systems. Block out a weekend (or several), put on your favorite procrastination-enabling podcast, and migrate everything worth keeping into your notes app in a massive copy-paste marathon. (Some note-taking tools might be able to import directly from Word, but there's real value in the copy-paste approach because it gives you an chance to quickly review your old stuff for relevance.) The trick here is to be ruthless about what's worth moving. That document from 2019 about a project that got cancelled? Unless it has information you genuinely reference, let it stay in Word purgatory. I've done this before with during a few different document transitions over the years. The downside? It's a commitment. The upside? Once it's done, it's done.
For those of you who like the idea of the middle-ground Approach B, or if you anticipate actually needing to create formal or formatted documents in Word regularly, there's another trick you can do to help make a notes app your go-to "landing page" for anything you write: create a "Document Register" note.
This is a single note in your notes app that keeps track of important Word documents you've created. Think of it like a library card catalog. For each document, just jot down:
- What it is
- When you created/updated it
- Where it lives (which folder)
- Why it might be important later
- Any key search terms that'll help you find it
This way, you get the searchability benefits of a notes app while keeping your formal documents where they fit best.
The Mindset Shift
Hands-down, my favorite part about using a notes app is being able to relate different ideas together almost without even trying. This frictionless experience comes from approaching writing in a different way than I did before: instead of trying to figure out exactly where some bit of information should go in a complex folder hierarchy, I just go to the most generic, high-level location I can get away with--usually a daily journal-style note--and just start typing. There's usually at least one person or organization or topic the thought or idea is related to, so use link and tag formatting as I type.
For example:
*#home-maintenance #landscaping***
We're planning to move forward in the yard project using [[TS Landscaping]]. This should get all of the front planters to look nice and require very little maintenance. What we'd like to do is...
This is the beginning of a short note that I wrote (for myself) a few weeks ago as we were brainstorming exactly what we wanted a yard project to include. I ended up with a nice bullet-point list of the important parts of the work, which I referred to the next time I talked to the guy in charge of the company we used. The "#" keywords at beginning are tags, which I use to associate general subjects or topics with written content. The "[[ ... ]]" notation is used in my notes app to link to other notes, which in this case is a something of a contact card (or Rolodex entry, if you remember those) for the landscaping company.
With these links, I can get back to this content quickly and easily from multiple starting points:
- If I remember roughly when I wrote it, I can jump to the daily notes around that time.
- If I remember what it was about, I can look up all the content for the "#landscaping" or "#home-maintenance" tags.
- If I remember the company we used, I can look up the note for that company and look through the list of links to it.
It takes a little practice at first, but dropping these links into your notes starts to become second-nature. It's also easy to add links and tags as they occur to you later on, rather than trying to cover everything at once. Just add the links that come to mind at first, since those are likely to be the same contextual clues that pop into your brain later if you're trying to remember something. (Some fancy AI-powered notes apps will even automatically suggest tags for you based on the content.)
The Magic of Connected Information
This technique is so powerful that it has its own name: Map of Content (a.k.a. MOC). A map of content lets you connect ideas the way your brain works, using contextual clues rather than rigid hierarchy.
Here's how it works: you create empty Map of Content notes for important people, organizations, projects, or topics in your life. For example, I have a MOC for "Mom's Document Migration Project." Every time I write something about it (meeting notes from our calls, technical how-tos, lists of her questions, anticipated challenges, etc.), I link it back to that MOC. (In most apps, you just type something like [[Mom's Document Migration Project]] and boom--linked.) Now when I open that MOC, I see every single related note, regardless of where it lives in my folder structure. It's like having a smart assistant who remembers every conversation you've had about a topic.
While not everyone applies it the same way, you can do really cool things with the MOC approach. For example, I use it for people as well: I have MOC notes for family members, friends, coworkers, and others that occasionally come up in my writing. With this framework:
- When one of my kids says something funny, I can write it with a link to them, and I know I can get back to it just by clicking on their name in my MOC list.
- When I need to keep track of a work-related phone conversation, I can just add "Call [[Kevin]] re: [[Sensor Upgrade Project]]" to my daily note and then continue adding details when I make the phone call.
- When I want to note some progress on (or challenge with) a big project, I can start with "The [[Unidirectional Confabulator Design]] is giving me grief today as [[Kevin]] and I discovered...", and there it is in context.
I think of MOC notes as hubs for the things that I write about. The actual things that I write are in a different category: meeting notes, class notes, journal entries, project updates, and so on. They get the real written content. The MOC notes are just jumping-off points that tie everything together.
The beauty of this approach, which you're probably seeing by now, is that you're not locked into predicting how you'll want to find something later. That note about the conversation with your contractor might be findable through [[Kitchen Renovation Project]], [[Bob Smith - Contractor]], [[House Stuff]], or even [[2024 Budget Overruns]]. You don't have to choose—it can be connected to all of them. Try doing that with a Word document without copying it four times.
What's Your Experience?
Some questions I'm genuinely curious about:
- What's your biggest hesitation about using a notes app?
- Have you tried one before and given up? If so, what made you stop?
- What kinds of things do you currently put in Word that you suspect might belong in notes instead?
leave a comment and tell me. I love hearing how different people's brains work with this stuff.
Next week, we'll talk through the migration process from Word documents into Craft. This is only one among many, many, many perfectly good options, so don't automatically assume it's the best choice for you. But I'll explain why I chose it in this case after trying roughly seventeen thousand alternatives (slight exaggeration, but only slight), and point you towards some other options if you're curious.
Fair warning: I'm going to get a little nerdy about features like backlinks and daily notes. But I promise to try to keep it practical and explain why any of it matters for normal humans who just want to find their stuff.
Until then, remember: You don't have to abandon Word. Just ask yourself that one question—"Is this for me, or someone else?"—and let that guide your tool choice.
Happy data-taming!