DevonThink: Manage your notes from everywhere in DevonThink

DevonThink is not only suitable for managing documents, but also for managing your notes. Of course, there are many ways to save your notes in DevonThink.

You have the option:

• Create a template that contains the most important information
• Create a simple note (RTF, Markdown, simple text file)
• Simply create a note in the Sorter and save it in the right place
• Importing handwritten notes (e.g. GoodNotes or ZoomNotes)
• Link (index) with other applications, such as Obsidian, Noteplan, where the notes are stored in Markdown or text and on your device.

How can you organise yourself?

Here, of course, it depends on your preferences as to which system you want to use and how you can find your notes again. It makes sense to have your own database so that all your notes have a place. For example, I have a structure like this:

• Annual notes
• Monthly notes
• Daily notes.

All notes start with the date as the heading, e.g. 20240101 for 01 January 2024, so you can search more quickly, for example if you want to see all notes for a month. I also use the custom meta data, tags and reminders within DevonThink, as well as a script that creates a link of a documents into my calendar.

To make sure I don't forget anything, I've created some smart folders that show me the notes that are still open.

Other notes, such as meeting notes, are indexed in DevonThink so that they are available for searching. For meeting notes, I use Noteplan because I can create notes about the event directly from my calendar. I also use a mix of DevonThink (for documents, research, etc.) and Noteplan for planning projects, where I can add my project tasks directly to my calendar.

With the wiki link function, I can link to specific content in my database so that documents can be found quickly. I make handwritten notes in ZoomNotes, which has the advantage that exported PDFs also have OCR and are therefore searchable.

Which format should you use?

It really depends on what you feel most comfortable with. You can use formatted notes, RTF, HTML or Markdown. It's best to try out what you like best.

Markdown requires a bit of a learning curve to become fluent. DevonThink uses Multimarkdown v6 for DevonThink and DevonThinkToGo (Fletscher).

The advantage of Markdown is also that you can customise the output with a CSS style. Images or videos should be linked and saved in a separate folder.

Planning before you start

I think it's important to plan first and then implement. This makes it easier to turn various points into reality. Of course, the first plan can always be expanded, but it at least gives you an initial overview. A plan could include the following

• what types of notes there will be (daily, weekly, notes without date, knowledge notes)
• What do you want to achieve with the notes? e.g. time planning, knowledge building
• How do you want to structure yourself so that you can easily find your notes (outside of the search)?
• What are all notes for you? (e.g. you can add notes to any PDF file in DevonThink without creating a separate note)
• Do you have notes that you use over and over again? Then create a template with all the content you need.

How do you structure yourself and what do you use for your notes? Let me know in the comments.