(Archived) Need help organizing my notes

[derdree 0]

Hello ,

i'm new to evernote and just started to read a lot of tips and tutorials for evernote. I also added a lot of notes but now i am thinking how i can organize mynotes.

At the moment i have my standard notebook, thats my "Inbox". Here comes all i have quickly in. Later i give these notes tags and a title and then it goes to the notebook "archive". Because i am a student in computer science i have also a notebook called "studies". Here i add all notes about my studies and about programming. Thats it at the moment.

All special things like the kind of programming (php, javascript, xt:commerce, ..) is added by tags. I also write my bachelor thesis at the moment, so all about this goes to the "studies" notebook and gets the "bachelor thesis" tag.

My problem now is that i am not really satisfied with this organisation. Because at the moment the most things are for my studies the archive has only 8 notes while the studies notebook has 50. And also te studies notebook contains things about php and so on but thats sometimes not directly for my studies, i cant seperate that all the time i think.

So what would you suggest me to do? How do you think is my organisation?

I hope some people can help my here because i really want to use evernote a lot and be more organised

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

My problem now is that i am not really satisfied with this organisation. Because at the moment the most things are for my studies the archive has only 8 notes while the studies notebook has 50. .

To answer that, you'd need to tell us why you're not happy with the organization? What's not working for you? Note count alone is not a reason to think the method is failing you.

And also te studies notebook contains things about php and so on but thats sometimes not directly for my studies, i cant seperate that all the time i think.

You could keep study info strictly in the studies notebook & other helpful information in another notebook, say "computer info". You could then tag the notes with php. Then, to find all info on php, search all notebooks on the php tag. If you only want the study info on php, search only the studies notebook with the php tag.

[derdree 0]

Thanks for the quick reply

Yes the reason why i am not really satisfied is that my studies notebook is to generell because of all the content and that it has more notes then the generel archive. But yes you are sure, the plain count of notes doesnt say that much in that case.

My problem is, that i dont know if i can always seperate the studies notes and the programming notes. Sometimes i have code snippets wich are generel programming codes but used in a special studies project. Ok maybe i should consequently put such things to "programming" notebook and really only explicit studies things like organisationthings and concrete excercises to the studies notebook. But yeah i hope i can seperate it all the time.

Another thing im not sure if i do it correctly is tagging notes. In my studies notebook i tag things like i sad with "php" and so on. But sometimes i have just generel notes about studies i cannot conect with another topic. Should i tag these notes with "studies" like the notebook name or just leave it without a tag because its already in the same named notebook?

And a next thing are the titles. At the moment my titles for example for my bachelor thesis are like "use cases" and "constraints". So they are really generel. Will this be a problem later on when my studies notebook maybe has notes with the same title? I thought if this gonna happen i will still have the tag "bachelor thesis" to seperate them. But maybe its more efficient to name the notes for my bachelor thesis like "bachelor thesis: ...." or is this in connection with the tag double work?

Sorry for my many questions but i want to start well thought and correct from the beginning on so that i have no problems later correcting things.

And thanks again for your help

[bernar 3]

start with these suggestions:

http://examinehealth.com/personal-produ ... rnote.html

[Moe D 0]

I love your post.

It's so difficult to understand exactly what you're trying to communicate, but I can TOTALLY RELATE to how the massive freedom of organization EN provides....can expose our own INTERNAL lack of organization in our minds.

The tool, no matter how awesome, will NOT organize your thinking for you. It can help though.

Here's the telling info for me:

"...i have also a notebook called "studies". Here i add all notes about my studies and about programming."

"I also write my bachelor thesis at the moment, so all about this goes to the "studies" notebook..."

My suggestion: keep the ARCHIVE notebook, lose the STUDIES one. At least for the first couple hundred notes. Just use tags until it becomes painfully obvious how you will BENEFIT from a particular notebook.

Practice using search. F6 and type. Let your inbox notebook get fat and sloppy. Prove to yourself that it doesn't matter. Then you can come back later and add more RELEVANT notebooks that works FOR you, not against.

Most knee-jerk uses of notebooks ends up being too restrictive...and doesn't just lose effectiveness, it lessens it.

Go commando.

[megsaint 441]

Moe D-

That has got to be one of the most brilliant posts of read on beginning to use Evernote that I've read. Not that other people haven't said much the same stuff, in great ways, of course.

Thanks!

[Moe D 0]

Moe D-

That has got to be one of the most brilliant posts of read on beginning to use Evernote that I've read. Not that other people haven't said much the same stuff, in great ways, of course.

Thanks!

Thanks Meg, you are a saint!

[jbenson2 2,147]

start with these suggestions:

http://examinehealth.com/personal-produ ... rnote.html

Very impressive work!

Unfortunately it difficult to read with the green background, so I copied the 4 sections to my Evernote account. I clicked on the Simplify Formatting option to make it standard black text on a white background.

I am going to grab my iPad and sit back in my recliner and read the GTD post. Thank you for all the work you put into the article.