Microsoft OneNote is the tool that keeps my life from devolving into a puddle of chaos

If you work in any kind of office setting, you probably use or have used some of the Microsoft Office programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. Those are the most widely utilized.

A level down in terms of popularity are Publisher, Visio, SharePoint, and maybe Lync. I imagine Bill Gates and Co. rake in billions just from these apps alone.

Also among that second tier (and teetering on the third tier for many) is a program I use every day, both professionally and personally: OneNote.

I have trouble describing to people unfamiliar with it just what OneNote is. I guess the easiest way to sum it up is that it's a place where I put lots and lots and lots of information and organize it in a way that makes it easy to find and easy to act upon.

Does that make sense? It probably doesn't do it justice.

Maybe it's easier if I give some practical examples:

• I have a system of notebooks, sections and pages within OneNote that cover every aspect of my job. I take notes in every meeting I have and store those in the appropriate areas. I can easily search all of OneNote later for keywords if I can't find a piece or data or a note I took.
  
  
• But it's not just words I put into the program. I also take photos of things people write on whiteboards or other visuals that will come in handy later, and then I store them in OneNote. And if I'm in a setting where it's easier for me to take handwritten notes than to type notes directly into my laptop, I'll snap a picture of those notes and, yes, store them in OneNote.
  
  
• I can draw my own graphics, notes, figures, highlights, etc. on the screen over my typed notes for emphasis, easier information finding, etc.
  
  
• I keep my weekly to-do lists, both for work and for home, within OneNote, which provides handy little checkboxes I can use as I complete tasks.

• If I think of a blog post idea on the fly, I either quickly type it into a page I have reserved for blog post ideas within OneNote, or I record a quick note to myself also to store on that page.
  
  
• I also put sound files and videos into all of my notebooks as needed.
  
  
• I share whole pages, meeting notes, etc. with coworkers.
  
  
• All of the stuff I cram into OneNote is synced across all of my devices, so I can easily pull up the most current versions on my laptop, phone, or tablet.
  

The barrier to OneNote entry for many people is the time they assume is needed to learn the program and set up their notebook structure. And to that I'm happy to say this program is truly really easy to use. You'll pick it up right away with only a little bit of online training and personal experimentation.

The thing to consider, though, is that when it comes to programs like OneNote and Evernote, I feel like you're either all in or all out. It's not an app you really dabble in if you want to benefit from it.

I'm all in when it comes to OneNote. The mental effort required to do that is not nearly as big as you think it is.

It's all a far cry from WordPerfect, which I used to use to print out weekly to-do lists on a dot-matrix printer via my old, green-screen IBM XT computer.

We've come quite a way since the late 1980s.