Years ago when starting my business, a mentor taught me the “3-click rule”. Since I work as a brand strategist and UX (user experience) is a huge part of what we deliver, I was very familiar with the concept in web design.

Essentially, it means that if the user has to click more than 3 times to get/find what they want from the website, you will most likely lose them.

In the context of our business, my mentor meant that we should be able to access any documents, sales, leads, financial data, etc. in 3 clicks or less. So we’ve structured our business organization around this concept.

With the Forever Note framework, this is still a good rule of thumb. The action button on my phone is mapped to the “Open Today’s Note” shortcut and on my phone’s home screen, iPad’s Home Screen and MacBook desktop, I have the widget that shows 2 shortcut buttons at a time. The top one opens the home note, and the bottom one opens today’s note. They are consistent across all devices in their placement so it’s an easy habit and I have instant access from a single tap..

As I’ve been thinking through my organizational structure and adding more hubs, I have been keeping the “3 clicks” rule in mind.

The examples Matthias gives on the site and the videos mostly follow this rule. For example, [Home] —> [Hub] —> [Note] gets you to a final destination in just 3 taps.

A concrete example for me looks like this:

[Home Note] —> [✱ Education] —> [Title Of Book]

I know, technically, with small screens and collapsible sections, it might be more taps than just three, but my point is you should be able to reach just about any note in your system within 3 notes or less. For large numbers of notes, links to smart folders still make the 3-clicks rule achievable.

In my system, I create a shortcut for each smart folder so I can link to it from its corresponding Hub. It’s a great way to round up large groups of notes and it keeps me from having to go back to the home screen of Notes and scan through a long list of folders. In fact, I don’t have any reason to use the home screen of Notes with it set up this way other than to add a new Smart Folder.

Thought this might help someone create a better UX for their notes.