I am starting a small mini series of how I get my hand written notes on my iPad converted and stored in Notion. With the workflow I also automatically process actions out of the meeting notes and store these into my task database, this is also in Notion.
This will be a multi part series, and I will show how I start and to the steps I take. There may be a bonus post about the current iOS automation I am working on as well to simply this even more.
This involves a couple of apps in iOS which will be listed, as well as a couple of services. Not all are paid apps/services although you will need them all for this to work. I can supply all the code required.
Now to start I am sure of this can be simplified and will be, but currently this is working perfectly for me and is saving me a ton of time, so the small monetary investment is worth it in my eyes.
First app I use on the iPad is Notability, this for me is the best app on the iPad for making hand written notes with the Apple Pencil. This is perfect for scribbling down notes. It is so fully featured that you could talk for hours about this one app. One of the best features is you can search your notes even with the hand writing.
I use this app to quickly write down notes and actions in meetings, sometimes you are not able to type all the time, this is where the key feature comes into play. This feature is the text conversion, this manages to work out nearly all of my scrawls into actual typed words. When I am taking notes in meetings, or quickly after a call etc. Then any actions for me I prefix with the @ symbol. This is to mainly let me easily spot the actions I need to take and It will come clear in the other parts of this series how the automation also picks these up.
Once I have the note completed, I draw an outline around the note and then use the best feature, the convert, this to me is hands down the best feature of the application. I use this to translate the handwriting into text. Now even with my child like handwriting this does an excellent job of being able to translate this into text.
It gives you a preview window and then from there you can confirm the conversion to text, or you can copy the selection to the Clipboard. This is what I do, once I see the text is as expected I then copy the text. You can then carry on with the conversion, or you can cancel the conversion and keep the handwritten note.
Once I have the clipboard, I go the app Drafts for the next step of the process…..
Applications used in this workflow series, iOS
*Notability
*Drafts
*Notion
*Pythonista
Services
*Dropbox
*Zapier
Part 2 in this series can be found here.
