Usually after taking a break from blogging, I need to reset and write one of these “It’s been a while” posts to get the ball rolling again.  It sort of mirrors the way I think and do things: I like to do a reset, reflect on what happened, and start fresh, with a new set of goals.  I guess this proves that achieving personal goals must be a low priority for me, huh? 

On to the resetting…

Life has moved insanely fast since I last blogged.  A lot of my personal life’s challenges (Ex. my girlfriend finding a job, finding an apartment, furnishing the place, transportation, etc.) has been overcome.  I’m blogging from a completely different place in a completely different time zone.  It seems like what I wrote before was foreign.  I wasn’t even sure what I was looking to achieve there.

However, I think I know what I want to achieve here.  A lot of what a PM does involves written communication skills.  Our role is mostly about filling the gaps between the developers and the customers, and completing all the other not-so-cool tasks that the devs and testers don’t have so much time for.  Well, I don’t give PMs enough credit – because the success/failure of a feature can rest at the hands of a PM.  So I’m just playfully bashing a PM because, well, I can, since I’m one.  But you, cannot.  Sorry

Anyway, you can bash me because upon writing my first document and going through several iterations with my managers on the content, one thing becomes abundantly clear: I need to improve my writing.  I need to write wherever I can and whenever I can.  Looking at where I am weak in writing, the immediate gaps are in my ability to communicate to the point, to state things in a formally, and to write meaningful sentences as opposed to fillers.  Also, I must improve my ability to convey ideas from my head onto paper. 

It has been said to me many times that a PMs legacy, after they leave a place, will forever lie in the documents, so the document that you write better be the best damn thing you ever had or the trail you leave behind will be a pile of… you get where I’m going.  So what I am trying to say is (ironic how I can’t have said what I’m trying to say earlier), I will be using this as one of the mediums to hone my writing skills.

Hmm, I feel a lot more personal in this post than I’ve ever felt writing before.  Pat on the back?  Sure, why not.

So it’s incredibly useful for me to be able to type my notes on my desktop computer, then take my laptop home and be able to read and type more notes on my laptop.

The beauty of it is that when I type on my laptop, it automatically updates on my desktop OneNote. And to grab notes from my desktop computer, I just press Shift+F9.

Here’s the steps to do it:

1. On your desktop computer, open your OneNote Notebooks folder.
2. Right-click -> Share -> With specific people
3. Just leave sharing permissions as yourself. Click OK.
4. On your laptop, right-click your notebook -> Properties.
5. Change the path to the one on your desktop notebook.
6. You should get a confirmation message saying it is now synced.

And that’s it. Now I can make notes from meetings on my laptop and come back to my computer and see it all there. And before I leave work, I just hit F9 and sync up my laptop again.

That’s all! Please leave me a comment if you run into any errors!