Keeping on top of everything in your life—from to-do lists and finances to the articles you read and the random ideas you have—can be a nightmare. All of these things will often be found in different places, saved to entirely different apps, or not even documented at all, to begin with.

OneNote, a free note-taking app from Microsoft, is one great way to round up all odds and ends in your life. It's not perfect, but these OneNote hacks, tips, and tricks will help you make the most of what it does offer.

1. Organizing Information

With OneNote, you can set up different notebooks for entirely different parts of your life. Within each notebook, you can create tabs, and within those tabs, you can store individual notes. These notes are indexed and searchable, so you'll be much less likely to lose something important in the long term.

OneNote Organization Example Screenshot

This structure makes for a logical way to organize potentially thousands of notes within a single app, in much the same ways as you would organize a ring binder.

Some examples of OneNote notebooks include notebooks for school, broken down by subject, and OneNote notebooks used to keep track of bills and other expenses. How you organize these notes is entirely up to you.

2. A To-Do List That Works

You could choose from a number of powerful to-do list apps, but if you like OneNote, the app can certainly stand in as a serious competitor.

To Do List Onenote Example Screenshot

You can use OneNote as a master to-do list, populating a page with a long string of things that need to be done. A more useful option, however, would be to create something like you can see above.

This is a Kaizen setup, where your aim is to move tasks from left to right, depending on their current status. You can easily add a new table for each project that you're working on, dragging and dropping them wherever you like.

I've also included a checkbox shopping list, which is another way you can organize lists in OneNote. This could be set up as a separate note and then shared with your partner, allowing them to add to the list as necessary.

3. Tracking Your Fitness

If you need a habit tracker, OneNote is more than capable. Some of our favorite OneNote organization examples include templates that help you keep track of your personal health and fitness levels.

If you want to keep things simple, you can create a new notebook for each aspect of health and fitness that you want to track. You can then create a basic table to document what's important.

Fitness Log OneNote Example Screenshot

Alternatively, if you're using the Windows version of OneNote, you're actually able to import an existing Excel spreadsheet into OneNote. This means you can find a fitness tracking Excel template and use it right from within OneNote.

4. Project Management

If the simple Kaizen to-do list setup isn't enough to help you manage your projects, OneNote can be used as a complete project management tool, as well.

Depending upon the complexity of your projects, you may want to set up a new notebook for each one. Within these notebooks, you can add detailed to-do lists in OneNote, track emails, share information, create a team wiki, and document meeting notes. You can then share all or part of this notebook with your team members.

If you want a step-by-step guide to all of this, the video below will help:

If many of your projects are similar, you can also create OneNote templates; these make starting a new project extremely easy.

5. Managing Your Finances

The easiest way to track your finances in OneNote is to import a suitable Excel finance spreadsheet into your OneNote notebook and keep it up to date within the app. If you're a Mac user, you'll first need to create a simple table.

Tracking receipts in OneNote.

Another handy feature here is the ability to store all of your receipts in OneNote. To do so, download the OneNote app to your smartphone; this app lets you take snaps of each of your receipts conveniently. Be sure to send these to a dedicated section in OneNote, just so you're able to manage them all easily and at-a-glance.

The app's OCR, or optical character recognition, makes each of these receipts readable. You can search for dates or items quickly instead of sifting through huge piles of fading pieces of paper.

6. Setting Goals

Another popular way to organize goals in OneNote is to create a new tab titled “Goals” and then create a new page for every new goal. Each page will then become a OneNote project dashboard for everything that you want to achieve.

Goal Setting OneNote Example Screenshot

On this single page, you can create schedules, list your action items, store research (A lot easier if you use OneNote's Web Clipper), jot down notes, and keep a record of your progress. Having all of this relevant information in one place helps you stay extra focused.

7. Daily Journal

Journaling can help improve productivity and reduce stress. There are tons of ways to get started; OneNote is definitely an option to add to that list, where you can create a single note to keep adding to regularly.

If you're not sure how to start journaling with OneNote, examples of daily topics include:

  • Gratitude: list one thing that you're grateful for.
  • Intention: how do you want to be today? Focused? Spontaneous? Light?
  • Priorities: what are the three most important things that you want to do today?
  • Progress: what progress have you made toward your goals?
  • Opportunity: every day can be an opportunity. What will be yours today?
  • Request: ask for what you need, from yourself, from your family, and from the universe.

The type of journal that you start is up to you. Among these could be a gratitude journal, weekly overviews, daily snapshots, and random reflections. The list goes on.

Whichever you choose, creating a quick journal template is easy. The template above was written by one of our own writers for an article looking at seven different types of journals you can keep.

This could be used simply as a way for you to clear your mind of distractions each morning, or a way to relive special memories.

8. Master Lists

If you're the kind of person who loves to keep lists, you probably have a huge list of movies you want to watch, books you want to read, and bands you want to listen to. Instead of leaving these scattered around your hard drive, why not import them into OneNote?

Master Lists OneNote Example Screenshot

This should be as easy as copying/pasting them into a single note and maybe adding a check box next to each one. This allows you to see all of your lists in one place; if you need to store more information, you might want to separate each of these master lists into different notes.

9. Your Content Repository

The amount of content we consume these days is astounding. Not surprisingly, we forget most of what we've seen as soon as we're done with it. To combat this, there are some useful OneNote integrations you can use to keep track of that content.

OneNote Integrations With IFTTT Feature Example

To set any of these up, you'll need a free IFTTT account. As soon as you do, you'll be able to:

For any other content you come across online, simply use OneNote's Web Clipper to save these directly to a specific notebook. If you wanted to, you could even turn OneNote into your own RSS reader.

It won't take long until you have an impressive library of interesting content you can look back upon and search through whenever you like.

10. Social Media Photo Backups

If you're paranoid about losing the photos that you've posted to your social media accounts, you can back these up to OneNote with a little more help from IFTTT.

Social Integrations OneNote With IFTTT Feature Example

To name one example, you can have all of your Instagram photos saved to OneNote. It's a quick and easy operation; just hit the switch and go.

11. Simplify Life With Checklists

Are there little things in your life that you're constantly forgetting? Sometimes, it can help to create processes or a series of checklists for these things to make each step easier to remember in the future. Your OneNote dashboard is the perfect place to do this.

Checklists in Onenote Feature Example Screenshot

This could be a list of things to pack for a vacation, things to leave for the babysitter, or things you'll need to throw a party. If all of these lists can be found in a single OneNote tab, you'll never forget anything again.

12. Brainstorming and Note-Taking

Finally, one of the most widely-applicable OneNote ideas: note-taking and brainstorming.

Basic OneNote Overview Screenshot Example

When taking notes, you can insert screenshots, lists, text, tables, and images. Inserted drawing elements like lines and arrows help you make mind maps, laying each idea out clearly for the future.

Related: Little-Known Microsoft OneNote Features You Will Love

OneNote Hacks for a More Orderly Tomorrow

OneNote makes storing all of this information and keeping it organized a straightforward and simple matter. Your ability to tailor the program to your needs, in particular, makes it an incredibly versatile all-in-one productivity app.

By using some of the ideas above, you could easily take things further—you can keep a list of contacts, a gallery of business cards, a list of online subscriptions, and much more with ease. Anything that you need to get out of your head can be stored in OneNote for you to access at a time that's more appropriate.