Open your notes app and scroll to the bottom. If it looks like mine did, you’ll find wifi passwords for hotels you left years ago, old grocery lists, a phone number with no name, and “call back re: Tuesday” with no idea which Tuesday.
None of those were meant to last. They were useful for an hour or a day, and then they stayed, because nothing ever asked me to delete them.
Two kinds of notes
Some notes are worth keeping: minutes from a meeting you’ll need again, a recipe, research for a project. A notes app with folders, search and sync is a good home for them.
Most of what I write down in a day is the other kind: a code from a text message, the name of the person I’m about to call, three things to buy on the way home. These notes have a short life, and when they sit next to the long-lived ones, both get worse. The notes you want to keep get buried, and the temporary ones never get cleared.
Give temporary notes their own place
Keep short-lived notes somewhere quick to open and easy to clear, away from your real notes app. That’s what Notestaking is for. It opens from the menu bar with ⌥⌘N over whatever you’re doing, you type, and Esc hides it again.
Parking
Level -2, spot 41, near the lifts.
On the way home
- Pick up the parcel
- Bread, eggs, basil
Door code
Building B: 4471, then the bell for flat 3.
Clear it every day
The habit that makes this work is deleting. At the end of the day, or first thing the next morning, go through Today:
- If it’s done, delete it.
- If it still matters but not today, drag it to Someday.
- If it turned out to be worth keeping, copy it into your real notes app, then delete it.
Notestaking doesn’t delete anything on its own. A note stays until you clear it. I prefer that to a timer, because you’re the one who knows when something is finished.