On paper, staying organized almost happens on its own. One notebook per subject, a colored cover, an underlined title at the top of each chapter. On a computer, everything often ends up in a “Classes” folder piled with files that have vague names. Good news: your notebook habits work on a screen too. You just have to bring them over one by one.
One notebook per subject
The idea
One notebook per subject is the basic rule, and there’s a reason for it: when you study history, you only want to see history. One big file for every subject is a bag where everything gets mixed up.
If you work with files, make one folder per subject, and one document per chapter inside it. Name each document with a number and a short title: “03 Cold War” sorts itself into the right spot.
In Cayer
In Cayer, each subject is its own notebook, with its own color and its own pages. When you open the list, you see right away where you are and what you worked on last.
The free plan gives you two subjects and thirty pages in total. Start with the ones where you write the most. With Cayer Pro, subjects and pages are unlimited (see pricing).
One color per subject, all year
One subject, one color, and you don’t change it all year. After a few weeks, your eye links the color to the subject before you even read its name. That’s exactly the job your notebook covers used to do.
Chapters, dates, color titles
One title per chapter
Every new chapter starts with a title you can’t miss, on a new page. Under it, each main part gets a subtitle. The rest is regular text.
Cayer puts these three levels on the ruling: title, subtitle and text. Each one keeps its place on the lines, and the page stays as easy to read as a notebook page.
The date at the top of every class
Write the date at the top of every class, even in the middle of a chapter. The day a teacher says “go back to what we covered on the 12th,” you find it in a few seconds. The date also shows you a missed class: if there’s a gap between two dates, you know what you need to catch up on.
Colors: one job each
Colors help as long as each one keeps the same job everywhere. For example:
| Color | Job |
|---|---|
| Dark ink | the body of the notes |
| Red | titles and what the teacher says is important |
| Green | definitions |
| Yellow highlighter | what you have to know by heart |
In Cayer, all the colored inks are free, and so is the highlighter in yellow and blue. Don’t add new ones along the way: a code that changes every chapter stops helping anyone. We explain why three colors are enough in Take notes faster on a keyboard.
Photos of handouts and labs filed in the right place
The problem with loose photos
A handout from class, a diagram on the board, a lab setup: you take a photo, and it ends up in your phone’s camera roll, between two vacation pictures. The day you need it, you can’t find it.
The rule is simple: a class photo goes in your notes, on the page of the chapter it’s about.
Paste the photo on the page
In Cayer, you paste your photos right onto the page, like a sheet stapled into your notebook. You can move it, resize it, and it prints with the page.
Two tips so it’s actually useful:
- Crop it in Cayer. Once the image is pasted, “Crop” in its toolbar trims the unneeded edges, and the page stays readable with no need to go back to your phone.
- Type a line above it. Write a caption above it with the keywords: “Lab 4: acid-base titration, setup”. That’s the line search will find.
Lab results in a table
For lab measurements, a table beats a list. In Cayer, you insert a table whose rows land on the lines of the sheet, you add rows and columns as you take measurements, and you jump from one cell to the next with the Tab key.
Finding a topic before a test
Search for a word
The night before a test, you don’t have time to flip through everything. In Cayer, you type a word into search, and it takes you to the page where it’s written, even if you skip an accent or a capital letter.
With a caption typed above each photo, search also takes you to your photos of handouts and labs.
Write the keywords out in full once
Abbreviations save time in class, but a search for “revolution” won’t find “revo.” Get in the habit of writing every important idea out in full at least once, in the title or the definition.
A summary page at the end of each chapter
End each chapter with a summary page: the definitions, the dates, the formulas, the three ideas to remember. That’s the page you’ll open first when you study. If you’d rather study on paper, print it or export your notebook as a PDF: it’s free.
| In a paper notebook | On a computer |
|---|---|
| one notebook per subject | one subject per notebook, with its color |
| the underlined title | the title and the subtitle |
| the date in the margin | the date at the top of every class |
| the stapled handout | the photo pasted on the page, with its caption |
| flipping through before the test | searching for a word |
Start this week
No need to reorganize everything at once. Pick one subject, the one where you take the most notes, and follow these rules for a week. Only then move on to the others.
If you’re still choosing your ruling, Seyès or Small grid, read Seyès ruled paper: what are all those lines for?. It’ll help you pick the right paper for each subject.
Well-organized notes are notes you can find the day you really need them.