How Organising With Tags Keeps Things Simple

12 Aug, 2025

If you’re in the market for a new note taking app you have a very large selection to choose from. However, when choosing, it's much more than aesthetics; it should be more about what you need from it?

Write in Markdown; keeping your hands on the keyboard, allowing you to flow, freely
Attach photos and / or files; not something I do very much
Use tables; whichever note-taking app I’ve used, I’ve always found the implementation of tables to be hit-and-miss. But it is something I like to have
Record audio notes; not a showstopper, I rarely talk to myself!
Text formatting capabilities; a note has to look good. I do like formatting features, to make certain points stand out
Simple text files; text files are good, and can be exported elsewhere. Proprietary formats are not great for future-proofing.

The list goes on.

However, one of the main considerations (in my opinion) is how you want to actually store your notes. The organsiation method.

Are you into your folder structures, or do you prefer something a little more flexible?

I’m going to try and convince you, if you need convincing, that tags are a much better way to organise your notes, than folders.

Using tags instead of folders can make your life a lot easier when it comes to organising and finding information. Here’s why:

More flexible:

Tags allow you to categorise an item in multiple ways without duplicating it. For example, a document about “Manchester” can be tagged with “City”, “Travel” and “UK” all at once. If it’s related to work, you can add the “Work” tag too. Folders force you to choose just one category, which might not cover all the bases.

Less thinking:

With tags, since you don’t have to worry about where exactly to store something, you can simply add relevant tags and move on. This removes the stress of deciding the “perfect” folder and also saves time.

It’s never fixed in stone, so you can always amend or remove tags as necessary.

Easier to search:

When you’re looking for something later, searching by tags is easy. You could combine multiple tags to narrow down your search (e.g., “Travel” + “UK” + “2024”), making it much faster and more precise than navigating through a bunch of nested folders.

On the subject of ‘nested’, you can create nested tags too. For example, I have a take for work, then within that I have a tag for each project.

I also have a tag for people.

Really. Since they are probably tagged in multiple notes, it makes it really easy to find all notes related to a person when they are mentioned.

At work, this is ideal if I’m working on their personal development plan; it’s a simple case to search for them, and review those specific notes.

I should also add that this tagging isn’t just related to notes, I also do this, to a lesser extent, with files on my MacBook.

Using the tags allows me to have a single folder for the subject, but then break them down by tags.

Tags are a smart, dynamic way to organise; once you get the hang of it, you’ll probably find it hard to go back to folders!

Do you have a favourite organsisation structure?