Evernote is making me more productive

[Richard E Davies 1]

I have just started to use Evernote and I am so impressed with it that I decided to share my experience.

I have always taken notes in a variety of books. A4,A5-hardback,spiral bound.That’s also been where I have stored by to-dos. A book has usually lasted 6 months. At the end I keep the old books but hardly ever look back at them. On occasion, I have left my note book in another country no business trips. I then felt a bit exposed. That note book helped my short-term memory. It had my emerging ideas. It’s a serious loss !

The other drawback with physical paper note books is it’s not easy to find things. My quickly scribbled notes are not easy to read and diagrams that are made in haste may have made sense on the day, but 6 months later I struggle to recall what I must have been thinking.

For important meetings, I often will “type up” these notes for emails, word docs or PowerPoint. I’m sure that everybody relates to this “old way” of working. This way of working is a habit but the world is changing and I’ve changed many things. But this is one area where I know I’ve not been as productive as I could be.

I saw a very insightful quote in a recent internet trends presentation by KPCB which says that we’re at a point where there’s a “Re-imagination of nearly everything – powered by new devices and connectivity.” This applies to note taking.

<See the whole presentation on Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trends-2012>

This prompted me to find out more about Evernote and now that I’m a “convert”, I’ve started to use Evernote to take notes, save interesting web pages, create to-dos, attach images and PDFs etc. The killer feature is the syncing.

All of this might be really obvious to Evernote veterans, but it's all new to me !!

I'd like to hear any tips that you have for getting the most out of Evernote.

[deanouellette 23]

Keep playing with your systems and tags. There are dozens of productivity systems, no right and wrong answer, just personal preference.

Tagging works great for making notes to-do and tasks. If you ever have questions come back and ask for tips and advice and many will share

[evb 30]

You do not have to give up notebook and pencil. I started using the livescribe pen and synch those notes which I want to keep electronically into Evernote. A nice add-on. --> Livescribe in the trunk.

[Joshua Zerkel 7]

@Richard E Davies - Welcome to the Evernote community! It's always great to see people find ways to integrate Evernote into their lives. Keep customizing it to meet your needs and the way you work, and keep us posted as to how it works for you!

@evb - Lots of my clients use paper in conjunction with Evernote. In addition to LiveScribe, some just take photos of their paper notes and send the photos into Evernote, while others scan their docs in. Options!

[JG@lr 0]

For years I have being trying to find the "right" system for my work. For years I used a "workbook" but found that my entries tend to be verbose and then could not find what I was looking for

At least with Evernote's powerful search engine I have a chance of finding what I have written. I am also try the GTD system using Evernote as the primary tool. So far using the single notebook and some tags to keep it organised without too much effort spent on the organising!

[Bojan011 27]

Welcome to the community mate. You've defeated a note monster

[Karol_1978 8]

Hi,

I'm Karol, the CEO of OneMln, the developer of www.everdo.it

EverDo.it is an app that allows you to create tasks / events out of notes or part of them. It also allows you to put an event / task to your calendar. The iPad version will be available this month. So to sum it up - EverDo.it adds the GTD experience to Evernote :-)

You're all invited to comment on our GTD app for Evernote lovers

Would really appreciate your feedback!

Regards,

Karol