Sometimes ideas come to mind in the most unexpected times and being able to note them down is critical for making the project or idea successful. As a content creator, I constantly get ideas but the trouble is that by the time I get to work on the idea, I would have forgotten all the important parts of it making it useless.

You could be waiting in line at the supermarket or you could be down at the pub with your friends, ideas are worth noting down even if you never make any use of them.

This post is ideal for anybody working on a project, it could be a blog article, a YouTube video, or even your dissertation, writing down your ideas is critical for success.

Best Advice I Ever Received

Over the years I’ve received a lot of great advice, but one of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever received is…

“Always carry a notepad and pen with you”

This was the advice given to me whilst I was studying for my undergraduate degree in Computer Science. It was actually given by a graduate student who graduated several years before me and is well into his chosen carer path. He said that whilst he was writing his dissertation he carried a small notepad and pen which he used to note down ideas. It went to a point where he would pause socializing by excusing his friends so that he could note down an idea after which he would continue to socialize. He continued using this method throughout his successful carer path.

I think that this is a brilliant idea, but I don’t like to carry loads of things in my pocket, especially a pen that might leak and ruin my trousers, this is where technology comes in. I too used this method at university because I found it incredibly useful, particularly for jotting down ideas during lectures and other places.

The Search For The Best Note Taking App

After finding the idea of carrying a notebook with me beneficial to my studies and content creation, I began the search for the ultimate note-taking app. Now, until today, my favorite note-taking app would most likely be either OneNote or EverNote, but in my view, these should be used for bigger projects and not noting down ideas on the go. An app for noting down ideas should be minimal and well designed.

I started off with using Apple Notes which I found incredibly useful but at the time the only Apple device I had was an iPhone, making accessing my ideas on other devices cumbersome. So I tried to use OneNote which was the app I used to make lecture notes, but I found it to be slow on my phone, and in some cases by the time the app loaded up, I would have lost the idea, so I went back to Apple Notes.

Soon after, I decided to upgrade my phone as it was coming up for renewal. I upgraded to the Samsung Note 10, which obviously had the stylus and a well-built default note-taking App; Samsung Notes. I found and still find this app great today but sadly there aren’t many phones that come with a pen, which is a real shame.

At the same time, I was really looking into the Google Ecosystem and decided to Give Google Keep a try, I found it to be great, particularly since I could access my ideas from many apps including my watch!

I use Google Keep to this day, it’s a great little notebook and I can’t recommend it enough!

Why Google Keep?

✅ Pros

• Fast
• Accessible on various devices and platforms
• Works very well with other Google apps
• It’s FREE!
• Easy to use
• Voice Notes
• Labels
• You can make to-do lists
• You can send things to keep
• Great Gmail Integration

❌ Cons

• No desktop app
• No Notebooks
• No Text Formatting

Google Keep holds numerous opinions, some people hate it because it has no text formatting options or features and some love it for that reason. To me, Keep looks similar to a Post-it note board which in my mind means that the notes should be made simple and without any formatting, more like an idea or reminder board. If you are someone who is looking for a full-on notebook app, I don’t think that Google Keep is for you and if you ask me, I would recommend something like OneNote which is an excellent notebook app.

The app is great to use as a shopping list app, particularly with its checklist feature. I tend to use Keep a lot for that purpose, particularly as I can access my shopping list from my phone.

One of my favorite features of keep is that you can share things to it. For example, if I found an article online but I don’t have time to read it now, I can send the link to keep and read it later, the same goes for videos.

What’s The User Experience Like?

Google Keep has been designed with simplicity in mind, therefore there is no learning curb like there is with some apps. If you need to make a note, you just press the big “+” and make your note. As there are no additional formatting options, the overall app is extremely easy to use and it performs extremely well. For this reason, I think it’s perfect for storing ideas for content.

Whilst there is a web app, there isn’t a desktop app but at the same time, Gmail doesn’t have one either. The thing is, I actually like the fact that there’s no desktop app because these apps tend to waste space on your hard disk. Now I know that hard disks are much larger than they used to be these days, it’s important to remember that not everyone has a large hard disk, especially if they are using devices built for the cloud such as small Windows netbooks and Chromebooks.

Overall, I think that the app performs extremely well as a daily notepad, that’s exactly the reason I decided to use it as an idea notebook for my content.

So How Do I Use It As A Content Creator

I don’t actually use any specific methods for managing Keep. I tend to keep it as simple as I can (No pun intended). To keep things simple, I currently keep 3 labels consisting of Blog Article, YouTube Video, and Growth. Obviously, I use the Blog articles to mark ideas as blog articles and YouTube video ideas as YouTube videos but I also use growth which is an area I save ideas and links to articles that help me grow my online presence.

I use it as I’m out and about

Whenever I get an idea when I’m out and about I will just jot that idea down in Google Keep, I will quickly put a title, label, and maybe a description explaining the idea. I don’t really want to spend too much time doing this which is why it’s perfect for noting down ideas when on the go because let’s face it if you’re at the pub you don’t want to be spending too much time noting things down anyway.

I use it in Gmail

Now a feature that many of you may not be aware of is that you can use it with Gmail! So if you want to make some notes about an email you can actually go into that email and make a note on it. The app will associate the note with the email and it will enable you to make notes before you actually reply to an email. I find this feature extremely useful when I’m working on a long email or a project from an email.

What do I do with the ideas after?

So many of you may be surprised, especially after reading my article on why I moved away from Notion because at the end of the article I have mentioned that I still intend to use it for the Tech With Dom project. All my ideas are added to a Kanban chart within Notion where I work on them either using my iPad Pro or my desktop PC. I still don’t enjoy using Notion on my phone, even though I now use the much larger Pixel 6 Pro. That’s where Google Keep comes in with its simple interface. When I migrate a note to Notion, I instantly delete it from Google Keep to keep it clean Once again, no put intended).

The Verdict

I think that Google Keep is a brilliant app made for capturing quick notes, ideas, and links. It’s an app designed to be used quickly and on the go, therefore if you are looking for a notebook app, I would look elsewhere.

The app itself falls short of many features such as text formatting and I hope it stays that way too, as I don’t think that the purpose of the app is to become a notebook but a small pocket notepad and you wouldn’t write a massive article in a small notepad.

What do you think? Have you used Google Keep before? Share your opinions in the comments section!