Hi Nick

Thanks for posting in Lucidchart Community! To create notes off the page as shown in most templates you need to first make sure that Auto-Tiling is toggled off. You can check this by going to File from the menu bar -> Page Settings. You should be able to toggle the feature here. 

Once you have done that you can simply insert a shape and place it outside your board. If you'd like you could also copy the notes from the sample templates and insert them into your own document. For more information about Auto-Tiling I recommend taking a look at the Page and Document Settings Help center article. I hope this helps!