Microsoft OneNote

"Wow, your handwriting is so elegant and easy to read!" – said no one to me ever, unfortunately. By my calculations, my dedication to practicing handwriting technique was in full force around the 1st grade, peaked around 3rd grade, and its legibility has been on a slow decline ever since. I, of course, do not blame this on myself. Everyone knows it is never the artist, but rather his tools. So clearly my handwriting prowess, or some might say…lack-there-of, is to be blamed on the emergence of technology, and the fact that everything is "written" on computers nowadays. However, despite the emergence of technology, the need to take random notes, make to-do lists, or just jot down random thoughts has definitely not gone away.

Over my sales career, I have found that the most obvious solution, pen and paper, does not fit the bill like it used to. I used to bring a notebook and paper to every sales meeting but found issues with this practice very quickly.

Issue number 1: If I lost the notebook, which I have NEVER done…all my work was lost.

Issue number 2: It was very time consuming to transfer these notes to a computer in order to utilize them for any proposals or documents I may need to construct.

Issue number 3: Through absolutely no fault of my own, people can’t read what I write down if I were to hand it to them.

Issue number 4: The organization of my notebooks was abysmal to put it lightly, so I couldn’t find anything I needed when I needed it.

To solve these issues, I turned to the most obvious solution, Microsoft Word. It fixed the legibility issue, and I now had digital notes from which to work, however, it still wasn’t great for organization as my files got cluttered quickly. Then, on occasion, when my laptop decided it was tired of working and would randomly shut down, I would lose open note documents.

Finally, Joel Baglien, VP of Business Development here at High Monkey, and true technological visionary, pointed me toward Microsoft OneNote. This tool is not only extremely simple to use, but it solves every problem I’ve faced thus far. As you may have guessed by its name, it is basically a digital replacement for your notebook. You can have multiple notebooks, each with its own color-coded tab categories that can each contain thousands of pages. It has a similar look and feel to Microsoft Word when typing out notes, but includes drawing capabilities, graph and chart capabilities, and even voice recordings can be inserted into any pages or notebooks. Another nice feature being there is no "Save" button, as everything automatically saves as soon as it is typed out or inserted onto a page. I have never been a particularly organized person, but OneNote has made it much easier to store and find information that is crucial to my daily needs and tasks. I can say with confidence, this program has made my job easier and made me a better sales rep.