I've been testing many note-taking apps in search of the right one for me, and how to increase my productivity. With endless options promising to streamline my workflow, I distilled my experience into a few simple and powerful hacks that can transform the note-taking game. Whether you're jotting down ideas, organizing projects, or just keeping track of life’s chaos, these hacks will help you make the most of any app. I used Standard Notes, Obsidian, and Notion for reference.

4 Applying tags and keywords is a must

It will help you find the notes later

Remember that the only reason why you’re taking notes is to find them later. This might sound like a truism, but we’re usually only concerned about taking them, leaving the part about finding them for you in the future. The best way to find your notes later is to apply tags and keywords, or color-code them if possible. Tools like Standard Notes or Obsidian have pretty complex ways to structure your notes.

In Standard Notes, you can create tags and then drag and drop your notes into the corresponding ones. In Obsidian, you can type #tagname in a note to classify it automatically. Both tools also have the option of nested folders, which allows you to have actual trees of folders for even better classification. After you organize your notes into tags, categories, or folders, it’s a lot easier to retrieve them.

3 Taking voice-to-text notes works perfectly

It’s the fastest way to take notes

I tried using voice-to-speech before, but I eventually stopped because the capabilities were not up to reasonable standards. When I looked at the notes at the end of the day, I needed to edit at least half of them, which got very frustrating.

Recently, I tried the experiment again, and I was amazed by the results. Press Win + H, and the Voice typing app just starts transcribing my words into the note-taking app right away, with the correct punctuation, no less. It works seamlessly in any field where you need to input text, not only in note-taking apps.

If you want to go a step further, you can use the Whisper plugin for Obsidian. However, you will need an OpenAI API and enough credits to perform the speech-to-text feature. Even if you don’t have credits, the plugin will still take your notes in the audio form.

The advantage of using Whisper is that you can quickly set the voice language in its settings. With Windows Voice typing, you have to add your language from Settings -> Time & language -> Language & region and set it as the preferred language.

2 Interlinking your notes and files

Great for complex scenarios

You might just need to write down some ideas, but as it often happens, you might also find another idea later that is connected to the old one. You could just find the previous note and add to it, but in this aspect, Obsidian has a great feature to simply link a note to another one.

If you press the [ key twice at the end of a written line, you will be able to include the link to the previous one if they are in the same folder.

Another great way to improve the knowledge base in your notes is to link files. Obsidian, Standard Notes (in the Premium version), and Notion have that option. This can be particularly useful when your note is connected to a digital file that adds to your information.

1 Templates will get you started faster

You don’t need to start from scratch

If your note-taking app comes with different templates, it's a good idea to use them. That’s what I especially like about Notion. It provides access to countless pre-built templates for any type of note, from a simple grocery list to habit tracking and project management plans.

Not all the templates are free, but most of them are, and they simply increase your productivity tenfold. In contrast, you can build templates in Obsidian, but it’s much more complicated. The only pre-built ones are the time and date structures. Standard Notes only comes with a few types of notes, but only plain text is available in the free version.

Bring your note-taking to the next level of productivity

Organizing your notes and interlinking them with other notes or files are just some ways to boost your productivity. Once you get the hang of just speaking your notes and transcribing them, you will step to a higher level of efficiency.

​​​​​​​However, the main step of this process is to find the best note-taking app for your needs. From my experience, Standard Notes, Obsidian, and Notion are the most relevant for anyone who thinks of note-taking apps as productivity tools, but whatever app you are working with, the productivity hacks above will definitely help you.