😌 3 ways to make your note-taking easier

Most people make note-taking a lot harder and more complex than it needs to be. Your goal should be to do more note-taking while spending less time on it.

Here are a few ways to capture more thoughts and ideas in 2025.

📆 1. Make your notes a daily home-base

I’m quite certain that I could get nearly anyone to succeed at starting a daily note-taking habit if I could just force them into taking daily notes for 2 weeks.

Use a dedicated note for each day. Write down your to-do’s, journaling, ideas, meeting notes, links you find... everything.

The easiest way to start is by keeping your simple daily to-do list in a daily note.

Once you’re in the habit of that, start collecting some other things.

2. Get in the habit of transcribing your voice

Making the move from typing to speaking your notes is life-changing. It’s not only more pleasant, but an infinitely more effective way to capture your thoughts.

It’s faster – you speak faster than you can type, so you’ll be able to capture more information and context.

It’s more natural – have your notes more closely capture your actual thoughts and tone of voice.

It’s more convenient – record notes on the go while walking around or driving.

At first, transcribing your voice notes might feel a bit awkward. You'll get used to it and soon it will feel more natural than typing. Start by doing it in a private space so you don't feel self-conscious.

Reflect has a voice transcriber built in that's quite reliable. If you'd like to transcribe your voice outside of your notes, check out Super Whisper.

3. Save templates and prompts

Most of us take similar notes day to day. Lists, daily reflections or journaling, meeting notes, or even more unique things like writing project proposals.

You can save a lot of time by saving templates and custom AI prompts you can re-use.

Templates are good for things like a list you want to call on each day, or note-taking formats that you like to re-use, like a daily reflection or packing list.

Custom AI prompts are better for formatting existing pieces of text, like a voice transcription. There are existing prompts you can use right out of the box, like pulling key takeaways from a meeting transcription. But you can also save your own. For example, you can transform a client call into a project proposal, or a ramble into LinkedIn posts.

There is a lot more you can do, but take it slow. You should be excited to open your notes each day. If you find yourself resisting, there might be too much friction.