26 replies to this topic

[GrumpyMonkey]

yep. there are lots of ways to organize, and you have to find your own way. its nice to have this forum and be able to borrow ideas from others.

as for the instant search (starts with w), it is nice for five notes, but 5000 generates spinning beachballs on the mac. sometimes i have to type out the search in a text edior and paste it in to avoid the insanely frustrating feature. at 50000 i'll probably have to give up searching altogether. evernote really needs to reconsider this. just because google inflicts this pain on me doesn't mean that evernote ought to follow suit. at least google lets me choose.

more options please

[hostricity]

yep. there are lots of ways to organize, and you have to find your own way. its nice to have this forum and be able to borrow ideas from others.

as for the instant search (starts with w), it is nice for five notes, but 5000 generates spinning beachballs on the mac. sometimes i have to type out the search in a text edior and paste it in to avoid the insanely frustrating feature. at 50000 i'll probably have to give up searching altogether. evernote really needs to reconsider this. just because google inflicts this pain on me doesn't mean that evernote ought to follow suit. at least google lets me choose.

more options please

I'm talking about assigning or searching on a tag - which I plan to keep to a small number, even if I have 500,000 notes.

[anjoschu]

Now this structure worked for while and I had high hopes for it but after a while i started finding it difficult on finding this that needed attention now.

Every evening, I look all my current actions and give the 1 or 2 that I absolutely need/want to do the following day the additional tag "@MIT" (most important task).

Also, I have a tag "waiting for" which I revisit every week or so.

[Angelo]

After many hours spent in thought regarding this, the best situation I could find is the one I had originally. Keeping as few notebooks as possible and tagging everything with precise and accurate tags.

I've tried creating notebooks for projects, and other topics but I was just not happy with the look and feel of it. So I've attached a screen of my new structure and coupling them with the following rules;

Projects will be tagged with !Projectname instead of folders. This allows much more flexibility. Action items start with a # to keep them near the top but below projects (I class projects more important to see). Interests (such as guitar, photography, etc...) will be prefixed with @ to keep them together and under action items. Source tags are prefixed with S. to find web articles easier and such.

Tags are kept in a flat structure as this keeps things simple.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and suggestions. I've taken on Grumpy's suggestion of note title structure. I prefix all my notes with the date (120204 for today) followed by 3 or 4 keywords

I will post somewhat of a guideline to creating an evernote structure following this post. Hopefully this will make things easier for newer users.

The real task comes in sticking to discipline and working hard at it in the beginning.

Attached Files

•  New Organization.png   19.88K   119 downloads

[Angelo]

Here is a quick guide line you could use to build your evernote structure if your having troubles with tags and notebooks and such. Hopefully this will help you start your massive note collection and keeping it well maintained and organized.


1) Organize all notes in to 1 single notebook.
This can be the default notebook or a created notebook called 'Pending' but there should only be this notebook plus the default notebook in your collection

2) Go through all the notes and write down any attributes that come to mind
This can be as broad as 'Work' or as specific as 'Lasagna'. Make sure to capture as many keywords as you can without using words within the title of the note

3) Go through the list of words and remove any plural forms, making them singular
This will help down the line with searching

4) Applying these as tags
Using the list you just made, begin applying these attributes to each note. A personal rule I use is no more than 3 tags to a note.

5) Create broad-scoped notebooks
One method of Evernote organization is to place notes in very generalized named notebooks (ie; work, family, personal) and use tags to be more specific. Use as few notebooks as you can get by with.

6) Separate notes in to notebooks
Practice keeping the default notebook as empty as possible for better organization.

7) Create action tags
In addition to the tags already existing, creat action tags using !, @, # to keep them at the top of the tags list for easy reference. Action tags are tags that describe what needs to be done with a note (ie; !Todo, !Put off, !Completed, etc..)


Other Notes;
To help reinforce any Evernote structure to succeed, here are some tips;

• Pick a time in each day where notes in the default notebook are tagged and processed in to an appropriate notebook
• Use available hot keys for quick and easy note creation
• Note hoarder? Create an archive folder, and put notes in here whenever you are certain you are done with them and remove the tags. This will keep things cleaner in the tags.

Regards,
-Angelo

[ralph_malph]

Angelo,

Thanks for taking the time to post your Evernote organizational "schema" process - this marks my first official post to the Evernote forums - and the thought processes you describe mirror similar "streamlining" ideas of my own.

Of course, being a routinely overwhelmed 4th grade general education teacher in a suburban public school keeps me on the verge of "total system failure" as far as managing my never-ending load of work-related data is concerned. The national trend towards classroom teachers spending inordinate amounts of time in data-mining is a big part of my more recent migration to paradigms such as Evernote, dropbox, Googledocs and Googleapps.
I've also tried a variety of hardware platforms to better meet my needs; my wife (also a teacher) and I have to integrate working with Dell laptops issued from our school district. We both use Mac machines at home and on the go, she uses an iteration of iPad and I use a MacBook - and we share a Mac desktop machine. Also, I recently decided to add a Nook tablet to the mix.

Evernote friends - thanks for providing good ideas - as I try to find that "perfect balance" of time spent working versus time spent organizing and data mining!

Adam

[princhipi]

I sorted out my Evernote caos that I had by doing the following reflections.

 

1. Figure out my needs

2. Figure my GTD

3. Make my resume (GTD=INBOX, NEXT ACTION, MYBEE) and all are taged

 

I did't sort out all my INBOX yet, is 1 AM and I am pretty tired.

 

Question: In the notebook NEXT ACTION I do have every single note, did I forgot something

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

Attached Files

•  ScreenShot040.jpg   18.55K   28 downloads