Multi-tasking is actually a bad habit of mine. I have to multi-task a lot as I handle several roles at once as we run a lean backend team. Everytime I switch from one task to another I lose track of what I've been doing before, what I was thinking about or worse - what we were talking about. As a result, a lot of things fall through the cracks and one thing would lead to another and another. 

I've looked out for solutions to help me cope. The first route I tried was going digital as I always have my smartphone with me and so far all of the applications now boast of advantages such as easy tagging of notes and search functions.

Solution 1: Wunderlist and OneNote

I categorized the things that I need to keep track of into three buckets - tasks/reminders, meeting notes and ideas and reports.

Wunderlist is awesome for tasks and reminders. Below is a screenshot of my current list. As you can seel I have a lot of things on my plate.

2.) OneNote for Ideas and Reports

I use OneNote for ideas, newsletters and notes that I have to review and go back to for future references. 

All of these things help but I found out that while I remember most of these things now I cannot seem to grasp them. 

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One category of Urban Traveller that I've always been fond are Notebooks. Majority of the brand partners that we have - Bellroy, Qwstion, Orbitkey collaborate with notebook brands in their Instagram and product campaigns. It got me remembering of how I used to write things down in my notebook back in the university. The things I wrote down in my notes I easily remember without review and comprehend without much thought. I also came across this article during my light readings.

Link: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away

The essence of the article is summed up below:

"When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can't write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them."

I decided then to dive into the Notebooks category thinking that if I encounter this need of writing things down. I found an interesting brand that not only provides notes but also enables the user with a system.

Solution 3: Word.

Word Notebooks uses a bullet point system that is already integrated into the product. The system guides you also on how to utilize it in a very simple manner. Each notebook has only 48 pages making it extremely light and portable.

Word Notebooks has now become my go to notebook. Writing things down enabled me to listen and comprehend what was going on during a meeting. The system is also handy for quick tasks and reminders. It also doesn’t strain the eyes or cause distraction compared to the being on the laptop. It's old school, it doesn't have the fancy functions but it works! 

Does it replace Wunderlist and OneNote? To a degree it can but what I did is to simply integrate both digital and traditional. If I need to concentrate like say during in a meeting or brainstorming I use Word notebook to initially take notes and then scan them to integrate them to Wunderlist and OneNote.

Word Notebook is available in Urban Traveller for only 500php for a 3 pack combo already. The other thing that I love about word is the array of designs that it has. Check out some of them below.

You can check out the array of designs for Word Notebooks here.