This simple tool gave me a leg up. It’s not what you think. The notetaking tool that saved me is called Workflowy. A simple, but profound bullet point list.
Workflowy is a notetaking tool that is easy to manage and fun to use. The magic of workflowy is in the Infinitely Expandable and collapsible (my favorite feature) bullet point list. A single place to put all of your ideas.
It’s actually a lot of single places in one place, as well as one place to put a lot of single things.
Here are 10 reasons I love Workflowy as a notetaking tool.
10. This Notetaking tool is Affordable
The number ten reasons I Love Workflowy is simple. Workflowy is affordable.
$50/year for peace of mind I don’t get anywhere else. I take joy in paying this bill annually. Workflowy does not have an affiliate team, so this is not an affiliate ad, though it should be, because I talk about and recommend this app very often to lots of strangers because it affected my life in beautiful, organizational ways.
9. Workflowy is very simple.
Simplicity is key for me in a notetaking tool.
I’ve asana’d and trello’d and while all that … Monday, etc … kanban card style works well for collaborating and process-driven notes and instructions, it doesn’t work for me. It’s too much.
I don’t want so many categories. I want just what I need and nothing more. And I want it in one place.
8. Easily Organize Your Ideas
Once you’ve written your cute little note, whether it’s a one liner or an essay, it’s easy to organize.
You can scooch, slide, move, duplicate, or delete your note. Handwritten notes need physical files, and tend to congregate in little caches.
I use Workflowy to quick-capture ideas of any size, subject, or status and organize everything later.
It’s just a tap, flick, or type away to ultimate organization. (ewwy I hate that word. **deep voice daisy** ultimate blah blah blah.)
At the top of my list, I have a bullet called “current” and that’s where my notes go first.
7. Hashtags make search easy.
There’s also just a regular search. Magnifying glass style, search for any words. You can search within a bullet or the whole she-bang.
Some hashtags I tend to use are:
- Quote
- Book
- Idea
- Copywriting exercise
Hashtag Tricks on Workflowy
You can also “explode” your tags, which is to say … make them disappear.
And you can color-code tags, too. So if you want #books to be blue, or #quotes to be yellow, you can totally do that. For me, monochrome, por favor.
6. Infinitely Expandable notetaking tool
Just keep notetaking.
Just keep notetaking.
When you need a tool that can hold all your big ideas, look no further. For a cool $50-ish per year, you can use this notetaking tool to hold all of your dearly beloved ideas.
5. Backlinks
The notetaking tool feature you didn’t know you needed.
Yeah, okay, actually I don’t use this one that much. You start a backlink using double brackets. Basically, it’s to keep you in your flow. Breaking flow can often mean you never get it back. Surfers HAVE to drop in on the wave when it’s their turn, or they miss their chance. You can’t just get the next wave. I mean, you CAN, but it’s not the same wave you were on.
So if your creativity is on a good wave, you want to ride it out. But what about when you get a good idea about what [[recipe]] to cook for dinner?
You can literally just write it like that, [[like this]] and you’ll start a new bullet point that will let you go back to the recipe idea later.
I use brackets in my novel writing when I want to keep my flow going, but know I’m not using the perfect word choice. Diction is important to the mood of fiction books, and when I know I want to say something different, but am trying to keep with my flow, I will just put the [sweet] descriptor in brackets so I know I wasn’t perfectly sure if sweet is the right way to describe the person, place, or thing. Heck. It might be salty.
Whether you are writing a research paper, or planning a year’s worth of meals, you can use [[backlinks]] to create a new note that will be a little reminder to go back to it later.
4. Customer Service
You can email Workflowy and someone from Workflowy will email you back. They are faster, nicer, and more appropriate than Notion customer service. Thank you so much for responding quickly and nicely, workflowy.
3. Keyboard Shortcuts
The feature that makes your notetaking tool flow like water.
Workflowy has a little side toolbar that will help you learn the keyboard shortcuts for your new favorite notetaking tool. When your hands leave the keyboard to reach for the mouse, tasks take longer. Flip out workflowy’s side toolbar to practice the keyboard shortcuts a little each time you use it. Practice makes you faster.
2. Mirrors
Two notes, one dot. When you update one dot, you update the mirror.
1. Infinitely Collapsible
My favorite feature of Workflowy, the notetaking tool I love to love, is that it is infinitely collapsible. My workflowy account as thousands of individual bullet point notes. Some are as long as an essay and many are just a few words. My absolute favorite feature of my favorite notetaking tool is the “collapse all” command.
And with another click, it returns.
In just a click, everything disappears. Like the close of a book.
Magic. 🪄
I’m obsessed with it.
