Using OneNote for organizing and prioritizing tasks

Start with top-level organization

Make projects manageable by thinking through your top-level organization. Before we get into the details of prioritizing each small and large task, let’s look at the bigger picture. Start by deciding where your project-related lists and materials should live. Here are three options for overall structure, from largest to smallest:

Notebooks

Notebooks are the highest level of organization in OneNote. A notebook can contain as many sections and pages as you want. If you’re managing multiple projects, you might make each project its own book. Or, if you’d like to separate your notes into those for work, home, a hobby, etc., make a separate notebook for each.

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Sections

Within a notebook, you can create sections. These are represented by colored tabs along the top of the notebook window, and you also have the option to see them listed like a table of contents below each notebook on the left-hand sidebar. You might think of these as folders that hold individual note pages. Move, color code, and group these tabs to organize them and make priority sections easy to find.

Pages

This is where the notes really happen! Within each section, you can create as many pages (and even subpages) as you like. Add, move, rename, and organize pages in the right-hand sidebar. These pages are even better than a hardcopy blank page because you can navigate your cursor to any part of the page to start adding text, images, video, and more. Start from scratch on a page, insert a built-in template, or design templates of your own!

Make a next-level to-do list

Time to get into the details. To organize and prioritize tasks, you can start with a built-in OneNote to-do list template. Here are three options:

• Simple. With just a column of checkboxes, this is a clean and simple starting point.
• Project. This template lays out standard project tasks (such as planning and preparation) and adds a note section beside the task list.
• Prioritized. This template is broken into three columns marked high, medium, and low priority with a column of checkboxes in each. Tasks can be dragged from one column to the next, and you can also see tasks listed by priority by navigating to Home > Find Tags.

Build off any of these templates to make it just right for your needs, whether that means adding columns, copying the template into a new page to change the background, creating separate boxes for types of tasks, etc. With a template as a base or starting from scratch, OneNote makes it easy to find or innovate a to-do list that works for you.

Tag by due date, category, and more

If you have a long to-do list that feels overwhelming and disorganized, tags can save the day. They are icons that can be placed anywhere within a page. OneNote comes with dozens of tags at the ready, and you can customize as many of your own tags as you like. In the Home menu, see all your built-in options via the Tags dropdown. Choose from tags like Important, Discuss with <person’s name>, Send in email, To-do priority 1, etc. By clicking on a tag in this menu, the icon, checkbox, or color coding associated with the tag appears on the page, making your priorities and task types easy to sort visually.

If you select Find Tags in the Home menu, a right-hand sidebar will appear with all your tasks listed by tag. If you’re using the prioritized to-do list template, you’ll also see your tasks listed by priority. This can help you find your most urgent tasks quickly and get a clear sense of the types of tasks ahead.

Because they’re customizable, tags are also a powerful, personalized solution for your organizing needs. You might create tags to manage tasks by day of the week, the person assigned to complete it, or status. Design whatever tags work best for you!

Create (and check off!) tasks in OneNote and Outlook

Here’s one more way OneNote task management really shines. You can add Microsoft Outlook-integrated tasks to your to-do lists. In the Tags menu, select Outlook Tasks to flag any item as a task that needs doing. The task will automatically appear in your Outlook calendar! Select Open Task in Outlook to assign it for a specific day and time, make it a recurring task, and more.

Inside your Outlook calendar, head to View > Daily Task List or To-Do Bar to see tasks organized by date. Thanks to OneNote task tracking, wherever you check off your task, whether it’s in OneNote or Outlook, it gets marked as done in both programs.

This is just a starting point for the many ways OneNote can help you organize, prioritize, and complete tasks. To learn how to use OneNote for project management and more, head over to the Life Hacks Hub.