I have always realised the importance of making notes about my work with the spirit world. This habit has become increasingly more important these days as the old walnut in my head seems to be less effective at holding stuff!
I’m disappointed when I hear of others who don’t keep journals or make notes. They must have super-brains that retain everything important. Either that, or they don’t understand the importance of writing things down.
I get annoyed with people that can’t remember passwords and ask me how they can recover them. Or when I repeat something valuable to someone for the second time because they forgot the first time I told them.
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever I attended the churches in Dorset, I always had a little notebook in my inside pocket to note something the speakers said that I found valuable. I would guess it was around 15 years ago when I started keeping notes digitally, online or on my computers. Nowadays, I use different apps to store things that I come across.
I thought I’d share the three online systems I use daily for my notes.
This is one of my favourites and is FREE, yes FREE. Based on simple post-it style notes, the notes can be labelled into folders, colours can be changed, and the service is available across all platforms. It’s especially good if you have a gmail or Google account which, if you’re an android user, you have one.
In my Keep account, I’ve probably got in excess of 1000 notes arranged under labels such as ‘Tarot’, ‘New Words’, ‘Quotes’, and a lot more. When I read a book on my Kindle, and I want to make a note of a word, phrase, or quote, I highlight it, then choose the share option, where I email it back to myself. As I write this, I see 10 emails in my Gmail inbox that I sent from last night’s reading session.
Google Keep is where I’ll copy and paste most of the quotes whilst sat in front of the telly in the evening. The service is free and easy to use on any device, especially if you put a shortcut to it, or download the Keep app to your smartphone or tablet.
I love this website. This service offers a place to store screenshots, memes, notes or pretty much anything in one easy-to-access secure website. The site requires you to create an account and is free to use for the first 100 or so saves. It’s quite cheap to take out a subscription if you feel you need more space. I’m still using the free version.
The most convenient thing about mymind app is the way an option appears in the context menu on most devices that offers to save whatever it is you choose. I find it particularly useful for memes I find on social media that I want to recall. Right click on the meme, share to mymind and that’s it!
NOTEPAD
This is another free app that is part of windows. It’s a basic text note app, and one I use daily. You can’t format anything in it and there are no customising options, but it works well and files are .txt and can be opened on any platform.
For my uses, this is a staging app where I temporarily make notes for filing or using the text elsewhere. When I digitise the WFSIW sessions, I do so using Notepad, before copy/pasting the text to the website page where it can be fully customised to suit.
Don’t worry, IOS from Apple also has a similar app for the purpose of basic notes. It’s free and already integrated into the operating system. Winner winner for note-taking.
I do use a few more note-taking apps, such as Notion, Evernote, and even the humble email service. If you have a gmail email address, did you know you can create new emails from the one where specific emails can be sent?
For example, my main email address is psychictrev@gmail.com. When I want to send a note to myself, I state my email address as psychictrev.notes@gmail.com. Google automatically ignores everything after the dot and sends it to me anyway. I have a filter set up where when emails arrive addressed to psychictrev.notes@gmail.com they automatically forward to a folder I’ve set up for notes, where I can review or deal with them in my own time.
In this day and age, when we all carry smartphones in our pockets, there really is no excuse for not keeping notes instead of relying on our ever-forgetful minds. I always think, imagine how our teachers would have felt at school if we hadn’t been made to write things down.
Another side-bonus of making notes, is in the edification it shows to someone that tells you something useful. They see you making notes and immediately they know you’re a serious student.
Don’t do it for me, because I’ve asked you to. Instead, do it for yourself. Create the habit of WRITING THINGS DOWN!