Maintaining Track of my notes

[Rogue909]

I work as a manufacturing/process engineer at a medium size company. I'm a bit younger and I've found I have trouble controlling my notes.
Specifically the problem I find myself running in to is when I get called away to put out the day-to-day fires. Sometimes I may be working on a larger scale project at my desk and I'll get called out to have a look at something. I'll grab my notepad and head out to the floor for note taking. Eventually this will end up with me finishing off a notepad where I have [Project A], 7 pages of fire-fighting. [Project B], 4 pages of fire-fighting, [Project A], shit-hits-the-fan week 17 pages, [customer/accreditation audit] pages, [Project A], [Project B]. Where did those notes for [Project 0] go?....
I tried keeping track of things on different notepads. So notepad 1 is for large-scale projects and notepad 2 is for the firefighting hat. The problem I've had with this is when a fire-fighting project evolves or shows a weakness in our system. After all, fighting these fires then fixing the problem to prevent recurrences is part of my job position. Naturally I'll get called for both and it's not always obvious when an issue is something where someone needs guidance or if something is going to develop in to a larger project. This ended with me having a firefighting notepad littered with notes that I was then trying to find to transcribe to my large-scale notepad.

How do other people here handle this?

Does anyone have a preferred writing pad? I've tried the engineering yellow pad for a bit; those don't survive trips to the shop floor. I'm using a cambridge pad right now but I've found as I near the end of the pad they become top heavy and cumbersome. Due to my poor note taking method I can't start ripping sheets out because I don't know if I'll be ripping out sheets relevant to some of my longer term projects.

For what it's worth... Obviously I realize that this organizational method doesn't work. I'd prefer if the comments were more constructive than 'organize better!'

 

[FreddyNurk]

Other tech solutions can include things like Evernote or Onenote, depending on what options you've got for setting up keywords, categories and so on. This allows you to link notes to specific items, and also to index chronologically as well as by whatever else you might want.

Scanned handwritten notes filed into the above systems can work too; if I do handwritten notes, its per project, and will get scanned and filed into our document management system. I don't, though, tend to keep personal notebooks of company projects, most stuff gets filed to company storage and that's about it.

3 of my employers also provide specific notepads with prompts for date, author, project details and number of pages, which tends to work well when I need to go file them.

EDMS Australia

 

[skeletron]

Handwritten notes on grid paper or eng paper. Rip off the sheets, number them, keep them clipped if I have to move on. Once that "task" is done I will scan/PDF the notes and upload to a folder.
MSWord document tracker for design projects that require iteration. This helps me capture the "why did my design end up like that?" answer. This also helps me capture images/diagrams from computer output.
Field book for daily task listing and some field notes. These eventually get filled and shelved.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Everything I do is filed by project number, and I abandoned paper note-taking a decade ago. Separate file for each project. I insist on email communication for anything important, because then they can be filed with the relevant project. If someone calls up wanting to discuss something new, they get a new project number and new project file assigned.

 

[Finglas]

Im a big fan of OneNote also. Love the tabular layout. For me I use it as a learning Wiki. I write down key things I learn during the day into it. The thing with me is I have a sive like memory and in order for things to stick, I need to read over my notes again and again. I spend an hour or two a week after work doing this on the iPad. Also, being out of the workplace, just being in a different environment helps me think outside the box on reviewing. Often in design review meetings a lot of things are said and I notice people don’t follow up on a lot of their promoses. I think this is because thy dont write stuff down. Happy to share a link with you if you like on how I structure my OneNote.

 

[jari001]

For the firefighting stuff, I keep a pocket sized notepad in my jeans/lab coat, only write on one side, and keep it chronological. When I'm at the desk working on longer term stuff, I tend to keep notes on the computer (Google Sheets). I have tons of those little notepads in my desk and at home; when one is filled up, I will write the start and end date on the front cover and keep it at my desk so it doesn't get lost at home. I will transcribe anything super important/time sensitive to Sheets so I am not at the mercy of forgetting/losing my notepad. If I have a bunch of pages I want to preserve, I'll take pictures on my phone. Important note, the notes I generally take are things like data points, personal thoughts, notes from others not drawings/sketches that convey subtle details so maybe the small notepad size is a deal breaker? I like this method because it eliminates having to keep track of multiple notebooks and intra-book subsections.

 

[leeekim]

Bullet journal on a Moleskine for day to day stuff and Trello for project related work. I use two system so I can filter out the day to day noise from my longer term project notes. I tried to put everything on a single notebook but that got too messy for me.

 

[Ron247]

I use mostly digital recordkeeping and convert paper notes to digital. I keep a spare camera and voice recorder in my vehicle besides the ones I carry to a jobsite. ALWAYS have a backup. If I take any written field notes or sketches, I make sure they are dated and have a project number. When I get back to the office, I use a Neat scanner to make them into a pdf. I also have a good pdf software that can edit and combine pdfs. I add the new scanned field notes to the older ones for that project. Once scnanned, I thrown the notes in a box with all other older notes for any project. I keep them for awhile and then throw them away.

Digital takes some getting used to but when you do, it works better on more difficult projects. Most field notes go on the voice recorder and when I get back I can transcribe if I want or just move the file from my recorder to my computer. You soon learn some Dos and Don'ts for both digital cameras and voice recorders.

 

[BUGGAR]

"I dont understand how the engineers of 50 years ago managed to build anything or maintain their files. Imagine, not a computer in sight, and yet things still got done"

Let me think about that.

 

[nikiti]

me personally I use evernote. its very good for management . I don't have good relationship with paper to tell you honest.