Why a reMarkable? Part-1
Peter M. Beaumont
HELPING YOU BECOME EVERYONE'S FAVORITE LEADER by Providing Leadership and Organization Cohesion
At Christmas 2023 I was given a present by my oldest son, Max. I have always liked to be on the leading edge of technology, whether it is latest Mac iOS versions on iPhone and iPads or the latest OS for my MacBook Air.
A few years ago when I invested in the new iPad Pro, I went for a terabyte of memory and the Apple case and Apple pencil. I started to take my meeting notes on the iPad as well as other random notes. I use Apple Notes, and so I had everything in one place…and then my son bought me the reMarkable2. It has changed everything for me.
This paper tablet truly is remarkable. Taking notes as well as using it for other things has improved my time management and efficiency, so let me explain how and introduce you to some tips that may help you to.
No Distractions
The first thing I noticed about using the reMarkable is that it negated all the usual noise and distractions of a million notifications I would get on my iPad. There’s not even a clock! Now I know you can switch them off, but do we?
More Action
I love the fact that because you scribble and draw easily I can mark the various things that need Action with a red ‘A’ in the margin. At the end of the meeting when reviewing the Notes, I then group all the Actions at the end of the Notes with the heading ‘Action”. That’s the beauty of the reMarkable. Instead of having to re-write them all, you can select each one and drag or cut and paste them into that?last section. I would then tag the file with “Action’.
I quickly fell in love with being able to file my notes in folders and tag them. As I accumulated notes the main screen was filling up and I needed to start grouping them together. For example, I serve on 3 Boards and I separated them into A, B and C with the Board names and then sorted the various Notes into the folders. However, when I filed the notes into the folders with ‘Action’ items as i explained before, they were now out of site, out of mind. So, I would often miss those Action points. What I have now done is create a folder named ‘Action’. Fortunately, because the word starts with A, it appears first in the folder list. Using a numbering system to prioritize the files does not work unfortunately. The last file to be used or edited always appears first, at the top of the list.
Tags
Because the “search” is powerful for finding? files and folder names, I don’t use tags too much. I do however use a few tags other than ‘Action’, such as ‘Reminders’, ‘To Read’, ‘Current’, and also ‘Print’, if I want to send things to my e-mail to print and I need to do it later.
I use ‘Current’ to find the latest files. As mentioned earlier, the way the files work is the last one you edit or change becomes the first available, and finding the right file, given the limited space for names if you are in the “Grid’ view it is sometimes difficult to find the latest file. So if I have a number of files, say Meeting Notes that are filed in a Board meeting folder, to make sure I can easily find the latest, I just tag it “Current”.
So just a few quick tips for now and in Part-2 we will look at how the reMarkable can be much more than just a Note taker.
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Peter M. Beaumont Helps You Become Everyone's Favorite Leader with my Leadership Momentum Program. I am also a Leadership Partner with Success Authorities. My business operates as Beaumont Leadership Consulting.
I am the author of the book The Relationship Roadmap, a comprehensive guide to building relationships with strategic clients.